Showing posts tagged Amazon

This both makes me sad and laugh so much I tear up a little bit.

Reblogged 1 year ago from bibliofeminista

Tags: bookstores, jon stewart, books, borders, amazon, brick and mortar,

Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller

Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether it’s your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you’ve read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?

In the past, bookstores did have one clear advantage over online retailers—you could read any book before you purchased it. But in the e-book age that advantage has slipped away. Amazon and Barnes & Noble let you sample the first chapter of every digital title they carry, and you can do so without leaving your couch.

It’s not just that bookstores are difficult to use. They’re economically inefficient, too. Rent, utilities, and a brigade of book-reading workers aren’t cheap, so the only way for bookstores to stay afloat is to sell items at a huge markup. A few times a year, my wife—an unreformed local-bookstore cultist—drags me into one of our supposedly sacrosanct neighborhood booksellers, and I’m always astonished by how much they want me to pay for books. At many local stores, most titles—even new releases—usually go for list price, which means $35 for hardcovers and $9 to $15 for paperbacks. That’s not slightly more than Amazon charges—at Amazon, you can usually save a staggering 30 to 50 percent. In other words, for the price you’d pay for one book at your indie, you could buy two.

Using something that isn’t a computerized search engine, but a personalized recommendation is a “dubious recommendation engine”(?) and a million other things to hate about this article.

This Farhad Manjoo kid needs to be slapped.

His entire article, while appalled by Amazon’s campaign to have people-with-smart-phones go into stores and comparison shop for Amazon store credit, is thoroughly mercenary in his opinion about stores. In his heart of hearts, Manjoo must be a staunch capitalist.

The bulk of Manjoo’s article is in response to an Op-Ed piece by Richard Russo that appeared in the New York Times. Richard Russo was writing in response to Amazon’s comparison book shopping thing as well and he sought out the opinions of people in the business: other writers, independent booksellers, publishers, etc. All these people were also appalled by Amazon and rightfully so. Most of their outrage came in the form of “gratitude”, he writes. These authors were grateful to independent and locally owned bookstores for selling their books before the Internet, for hosting book readings and signings, for creating a sense of community that revolves around reading. Russo, and these other writers, are well justified in their opinions. I’m also inclined to agree with them.

I love bookstores. More than anything. More than coffee shops. More than clothing stores. More than movie theaters. Book stores (especially local/indie) are the greatest things ever created. The person behind the counter typically loves books and is willing to talk to you about books for as long as you’d like. And there really isn’t anything better than talking to someone about something you both love. (Remind me sometime to tell you about the ticket man in London’s West End.) These stores, when managed effectively by someone who is passionate about what he or she is doing, manage to promote community the same way a coffee shop or a bar or a library or a children’s park can.

It’s not, as Manjoo maintains, about people buying a shit-ton of books at any godforsaken hour they choose, it’s about that other thing, that sense of community, the people you meet, the conversations you have, the act of browsing through the shelves — it’s a fucking experience. One I, certainly, don’t want to lose.

Reblogged 1 year ago from bibliofeminista

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Tags: Amazon, Don't Support Your Local Bookseller, Farhad Manjoo, Slate, New York Times, Richard Russo, Op-Ed, Comparison Shopping, Shopping Experience, community,

Before I’m Called a Hypocrite…

In the spirit of full disclosure, only moments before I wrote my response to Farhad Manjoo’s article Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller on Slate, I purchased a novel via Amazon.com. It is a Christmas present for one of my siblings. I am very excited for her to read it and let me know what she thinks. I’ve heard excellent things about this book from ~~actual~~ friends of mine ~~whom I trust~~ and I think she’d enjoy it.

Now, if you read my previous post, I laud independent and locally owned bookstores over the souless website … that I had just patronized. What I would like to do right now is tell the Internets why I chose to purchase my sister’s Christmas present from the Souless Website rather than a warm, community inspiring establishment: because we don’t have any fucking bookstores in this town.

We used to have a Borders and we have one secondhand bookshop (which is entirely hit or miss and I wanted this specific volume). But with Borders going under and the selection at the grocery markets and drug stores (and Target) being more abysmal than ever, my only option was a Souless Website. There are, according to IndieBound, three independently owned bookstores within ten miles of my hometown. As someone who does not drive this information is still not helpful. It is amazing that in a city of 38,000 people we have one second hand bookseller that sells chiefly romance and crime novels. But neighboring towns of 18,000 and 6,000 have independent bookstores. Is it really possible that parents in this town are content to purchase books for their children via the Internets or after a laborious twenty five (more like thirty/thirty five) minute drive, one way, down one of the most irritating roads in the area. If we had a local bookseller we could have reading groups, story hour, giveaways, events, a place where people could go and talk to actual people about books they read, about the books their families are reading (there are a LOT of families in my town) and their children and similar books to get them to promote reading. But we don’t. And we wonder why kids don’t read.

Reading starts in the home, they say. If it’s important to the parents it will be important to the kids (like the outdoors or common courtesy). At some point I hope someone is able to open up a new bookstore in town so residents don’t have to battle highways and ridiculously heavily traveled at all hours of the day numbered roads solely so they can buy a book for their kids, spouses, friends or selves. Hopefully, someone sets this up and helps create a sense of community in a town that has very rarely shown me they’re capable of such feats. Hopefully, the good people of this town are one day given another option.

You see, I don’t hate Amazon, I don’t. I just prefer an actual store where I can talk to other people who love books.

Posted 1 year ago

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Tags: Amazon, Souless Website, Independent Bookstores, Locally Owned Bookstores, IndieBound, asofterworld, Yes I use Amazon and I frequent actual bookstores; I own a Kindle I still buy print books; I've downloaded music I still buy CDs and digi..., And quite frankly I don't care that you can buy anything at any godforsaken hour of the day. Why is that a bonus? There are far too few l...,

"Can the Kindle save Anna Karenina?" by Jeff Alexander

In this article Alexander doesn’t dismiss hardcopy books, he doesn’t predict that they are going obsolete, he doesn’t say actual books don’t have merit, nor does he say that old books are bad, useless, irrelevant, or boring.

His thesis is: E-readers may be causing more readers to read Classics. Books that are past their copyright dates are generally free for Kindles, ibooks and Nooks and therefore people are ok with “buying” them, rather than paying 11, 12, 20, 25 dollars for a new book (because, yes, they can cost that much even electronically), and are likely to read them ‘cause they’ve got them.

The implication that E-readers are going to “save” Classic books is somewhat absurd. The idea that people aren’t reading these older books and novels because they are long and hefty volumes is dumb. He cites his Twitter:

as one respondent to my completely unscientific Twitter poll put it, “Finally finished Count of Monte Cristo because I could take it on the bus without blowing a vertebra.”

Have you seen the new Murakami novel? Or any brand new hardcover novel these days? They’re the size of an average sized wall calender. I was going to buy V is for Vengeance for my sister for Christmas, but then I saw how fucking large the volume is and remembered that she likes her books to be reasonably sized. People will drop $25 on a brand new hardcover book by their favorite author and they will tote it around in their handbag or backpack and read it on the bus/train/ferry/subway/trolley car no matter the size. War and Peace and Vanity Fair and Les Miserables may be hefty volumes but so are new books (and there’s always Frankenstein, Silas Marner, Pride and Prejudice, and Washington Square all old, all slim volumes).

Alexander also comments that E-readers as gifts this past holiday season was nearly twice the previous year. This isn’t surprising considering how many options for E-readers there are these days. It used to be your basic Kindle or a Nook, then the iPad came out, then all of a sudden there are multiple options within the Kindle family and Nook family. There are E-readers on which you can check your email and listen to Pandora, you can do crossword puzzles and surf the web, OR you can just read books and shop Amazon. You can work solely off of buttons on your device, or you can get a touch screen. You can have electronic ink or you can have an actual computer screen. It can be black and grey, or color! The options have gotten a little out of hand. But there are more options and therefore more reasons to get an E-reader and more reasons to use one (I have a friend who uses his Nook for checking his email and surfing the web - not reading).

Alexander also writes:

As any Kindle or Nook owner knows, e-reading devices come pre-loaded with at least one free literary classic, and the iBooks app for iPad includes Treasure Island.

as if already having a Classic book on an electronic reading device is going to inspire the average reader to explore more “classic” authors. (Also, I don’t think this is true; I think the only volumes that came on my Kindle were two dictionaries and the user’s guide — maybe things have changed in the past year.)

Along with his claim that people are choosing classic “free books” because they can’t afford new books and to pay their bills on time, Alexander maintains that E-readers and “free books” (and the current economy) are giving people the opportunity to read books they’ve been meaning to but haven’t. He writes:

On the other hand, that pang of guilt you feel every time you pass Tolstoy or Austen sitting unopened on your shelf now has an electronic remedy and one that didn’t cost you more than a little download time.

If you are passing unopened copies of Anna Karenina and Sense and Sensibility already on your shelf, why the hell would you download it? You can just pluck it off your self and read the damn thing. I feel plenty of guilt that I haven’t yet read Vanity Fair, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Perelandra and Swann’s Way as they sit unread on my bookshelves, but I’m not about to download them to my Kindle in hopes that having them in a slim electronic is going to get me around to reading them any faster! This is fantasy. This is like buying a gym membership and running on the treadmill twice. This is a New Year’s Resolution band aid that is merely easing your guilty mind. If you already have the hardcopy there is no reason to get a digital copy (unless your traveling and it’s an old favorite and you don’t want to bring a bunch of books on an airplane with you or backpacking around Europe or hitchhiking across the Pacific Northwest).

Ok, last peeve about an otherwise very well written and articulated, if not asinine, article: Alexander cites some well known, well read, largely downloaded “classic” authors and he adds:

Charles Dickens (who just celebrated his 200th birthday,)

Charles Dickens has been worm food for the past one hundred forty two years: he didn’t celebrate shit. People who lurve Dickens celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth on 2.7.12. But that’s really just a pet peeve on my part.

The Classics are going to survive every reading fad humans can develop (that’s why they’re called Classics). But it is possible that the slightly lesser works may have a wider audience because of E-readers. Tolstoy and Hugo and Austen and Eliot and James and Wharton and Dumas and Dante and Ronsard and Voltaire and Emerson and Stevenson aren’t going anywhere and don’t need E-readers to keep people interested in them. If Tumblr has proved anything to me this past year its that Readers Are Everywhere. We are no Dying Breed. We are going to pass along our love for the written word no matter what Amazon and B&N do or don’t develop to “make it easier”. Writers, readers, educators, parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow are going to get new readers interested in reading, not gadgets and devices. People are going to continue to read books new and old alike and they are going to do it however their odd, quirky brains see fit.

Posted 1 year ago

Tags: Jeff Alexander, Can the Kindle Save Anna Karenina?, Time Magazine, Time Ideas, Wordpress, Tumblr, books, reading, classic literature, Kindle, Nook, E-Readers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas, Haruki Murakami, IQ84, Twitter, Sue Grafton, Leo Tolstoy, Thackeray, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Mary Shelley, iPad, iBooks, Robert Louis Stevenson, free books,

E-Readers: The Scourge of the Literary World

I’ve been saying for a while now that I will get around to giving my thoughts on the e-reader/Kindle/Nook/Kobo and now I’m annoyed with them so here goes: E-Readers are helpful, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a little stupid.

I absolutely think e-readers are kind of dumb, but they’re not the doomsday device jackwads like Jonathan Franzen think they are. These devices have many good qualities. They’re small; lightweight. E-readers can store hundreds of really big books that one would otherwise have to lug around and books, believe me, get heavy. E-readers can be large print books or small print books. My mother searches the Large Print section of the library for books for her mother and she can’t always find good reads. But with an e-reader someone who needs larger print would be able to make any book their heart desired into a large print book. Many novellas have been digitized. Stories that are otherwise lost because publishers don’t want to waste money on print editions of them are resurfacing through electronic books. I read a very lovely little story by Frances Hodgson Burnett (the woman responsible for The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy) that I had never heard of. It wasn’t one of her major novels and it’s a little weird and probably wouldn’t generate much revenue for a publisher – even with name recognition – but I got to read it because Amazon thought to digitize it. They have library books. A reader can still support their local library with an e-reader. It works the same as taking a physical book out of the library but it’s done through the Internet.

But, like with everything, there is a downside. The downside of an e-reader, however, is not a lack of connection with the words on the page (that argument is dumb), and it’s not a lack of connection with the story. There can be something lost without having physical pages to turn; there is something lost with not being able to flip through the pages until you can find the passage you are looking for: that does make it a little harder and I know I always find it disconcerting when I’m trying to find a bit that made me laugh and I want to share it with someone else. Having to take all these extra steps to go through the menu and go to the ‘Notes and Highlights’ option and then scroll through them to find the right one, is just so tedious and takes a lot longer than sharing a passage with the person next to you ever should. But while this is irritating, it’s also not the downside to the e-reader. ’Damage’ is the downside to the e-reader.

These devices cost the reader (or gift-giver) anywhere from fifty to two hundred dollars; the reader is going to spend anywhere from zero to twenty dollars per book and can have dozens, hundreds of books stored on their e-reader: this could add up to around $2000. One drop, one spill, one accident and all that money goes down the drain. If you’re not under warranty anymore, it’s going to cost you again from fifty to two hundred dollars to replace the device. I am assuming that if you are to get a new device you would still retain the books you bought, considering it’s all digital and you can read them on other devices (like your iPad, Kindle Cloud, Smartphone, etc.) which is nice, but it’s a little bullshit that you must spend upwards of $50 to get a new device. The worst that can happen to an actual book is, well, fire.

The only downsides to actual paper books are their weight and susceptibility to water and flame. But there is no glare on the page with regular paper books, the reader can turn the pages, can flip through them; when an actual paper book is dropped the damage will be to whatever the book hits, instead of the book itself. Actual paper books are generally cheaper. Two bucks at a used bookstore! It’s amazing. There is little I love more than used bookstores. I visit The Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA and I go immediately downstairs. I hardly ever roam around the ground floor. Lorem Ipsum in Inman Square has an amazing selection of used books. The Brattle Book Shop in Boston, MA is awe inspiring. Tim’s Used Books in both Provincetown and Hyannis, MA are chock full of books. The Annie’s Book Stop in Marlborough has exactly what I’m looking for generally (lots of mystery/crime novels in that one – and Romance, if that’s what you’re into – and sci fi “by” William Shattner, oddly enough). And, if you’re not into hoarding books like I am, you can generally sell the books back when you’re done. You can lend out actual paper books without your friends having to have their own e-reading device, or lending them yours. My sisters were forever trying to get me to read The Help last year, but they both bought it on their Kindle’s and, for whatever reason, they couldn’t “lend” it to me. I could have used their actual device but they were always reading a book on it and I didn’t want to take that away from them (these are my two “non-reader” sisters; anything to encourage them to read I will do). I didn’t read The Help until one of them bought it for our grandmother; after she reads books (even when you buy them for her) she always gives them back. Because we had the physical book I was able to take it on the train with me when I was travelling from Massachusetts to Connecticut to Rhode Island last spring.

Printed, paper books aren’t going anywhere and neither are e-readers. But the most important thing to remember is that an e-reader is not a book: it is a computer. It needs to be taken care of as you would your computer, cell phone, iPad, iPod, PDA, Blackberry, Smartphone, and tablet. You drop it, it’s going to break. You step on it, it’s going to break. Drop it in the tub, it’s going to electrocute you. When the screen looks like the picture above: shaking it like an Etch-A-Sketch isn’t going to do shit. When it’s broken, it’s broken. If you’re going to break your Kindle/Kobo/Nook/E-reader, do it while it’s still under warranty, spring for the two-year warranty so you have more time to decide when you are going to break it. Otherwise a very nice person from Amazon support named Rahul or Preeta is going to tell you they can offer you a discount, but that’s about it: it’ll still cost you between fifty and two hundred dollars to replace the device.

There are as many benefits to e-readers as there are to actual books. Neither is “better” than the other. Society needs to shut up about one being the downfall of humanity and the other being it’s savior and learn how to accept that both are here to stay, just like good news, global warming, and the Cardashiens… god help us all.

Posted 6 months ago

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Tags: Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, E-Readers, Kardashians, Kindle, Kobo, My Kindle is broken., Nook, books, cost, damage, digital books, downside, glare, global warming, good news, helpful, how we read, large print, lending books, library, light weight, money, paper books, reading, stupid, Brattle Book Shop, Lorem Ipsum, Annie's Book Stop, The Harvard Bookstore,

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton
Finished 2.12.13

Holy… For the record I did not purchase this book, it’s not a gag gift, and I didn’t get it to be ironic. It was given to me by a friend who read it and thought it was good enough to share. While the first two hundred and thirty pages are somewhat poorly written chick lit it’s the final seventy pages (seventy pages!) that you probably shouldn’t read in public, on the train, with family, or with anyone around at all — except for maybe the person you like to do sexy times with.

Ok, non-embarrassing stuff first. This story, while a better love story than Twilight (Amy), is still a bit tough to swallow. The likelihood that three best friends are going to find their “perfect match” amongst three best friends is absurd. Absurd. I can’t stress just how absurd. Fucking absurd. Stupid absurd. It’s like the storyline in which the teenage girl and her single mom fall for a son and father or nephew and uncle. (Only “Gossip Girl” did that right when Blake Lively tells Kelly Rutherford that if she’s 100% for sure in love with the crazy psycho murderer from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer then to run away with him, but if she wasn’t sure then not to because it would be totally weird for her boyfriend to suddenly become her step-brother.) Absurd. Unlikely and absurd.

Also: It’s one thing to have a couple try to set up their single friends, but to go about it in the sneaky, devious, Much-Ado-About-Nothing sort of way that Jillian and Benjamin employ is almost rude. I’m a little disappointed in that bit of the story. People in couples, and people who want to be in couples, have this ridiculous notion that all single people also want to luxuriate in Coupledom, they just need a little push. Not that Caroline and Simon don’t do all the work to bring about a relationship, but I would argue that it would have happened just as easily if they’d met at the party like normal people instead of placing Caroline adjacent to Simon. Left to their own devices Simon would have eventually become tired of his lifestyle and eventually would have met Caroline and they could have cultivated a relationship on their own terms, instead of having the other person forced upon them. Throwing Caroline in Simon’s way reinforces an article I read in college that said Marriage, as in institution, helps quell men; curbs their wild ways — something they cannot do on their own? It took meeting Caroline (seeing her mostly naked and angry in the hallway) for Simon to realize his lifestyle was exhausting and he might be happier with only one woman — the right woman. Wink, wink. I feel like men ought to be insulted by this.

The first 230 pages of this novel, like I said, are solidly mediocre chick lit. The author/narrator points out the crude and dirty jokes like a Bertolt Brecht or Tennessee Williams play reinforces salient points — the prose equivalent of laughing at ones own joke — I found that unnecessary and distracting. Otherwise we have our protagonist, a little confusingly sometimes, outlining her life and how it all operates: home, work, friends, her very sexually active neighbor, initial confrontation of said neighbor, initial insult, shocking discovery of friends in common (and his very sexy pals), and the rising sexual tension between the two characters. Standard. The two of them, once they start spending time together, cultivate a When Harry Met Sally sort of friendship in which they cook for each other, watch movies, make dirty jokes, and he plays her music through the wall while she’s falling asleep. And it’s all very “Eh”. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s “Eh”.

The quality of the writing of the book (Brecht and Williamsness aside), during this first part, isn’t bad enough to be insulting like some Romance novels; it’s just bad enough to be comical — more like it could have used another set of eyes before publication. There are plenty of redundant sentences that could have been cut to streamline information; and, honestly, it’s interesting where Clayton really could have developed more. The strange, entirely forgettable, reappearance of the shitty lawyer ex-boyfriend could have been better developed in order to play up the tension between Caroline and Simon. Instead it’s just sort of there. As it is it barely works as a mode for her to be sure she is truly over James and ready for a new committed relationship: Caroline is exactly the same after James reappears as she is beforehand. I really would have loved for there to be more done with that storyline. Have Caroline go out on a few more dates with him, have James get a little more attached, have him be romantic-slash-creepy during meetings to discuss the redesign of his condo, something; something more than the nothing Clayton gives us.

I don’t know if the quality of the writing gets better once Caroline and Simon are in Europe, or if I suddenly stopped caring? I read a report once that said because our brains are wired to respond to anything sexy that we accept the poor quality of writing in these novels because our carnal side takes over and our analytical side is diminished. Most of the time this is true, but there are exceptions where the writing is so horrible that even the sexy times are just god-awful. (Ask me about the Wakefield Book Club some time.) Not so with Wallbanger. Once Clayton gets down and dirty, the book really takes off… and doesn’t stop. The final chapters of the books are also riddled with cheesy, lovey-dovey, coupley conversations that don’t do it for me, but the sexy times? Holy… I’m not a prude but my eyebrows were jumping off my face and I was wishing for a cold glass of water and a cigarette.

Do I recommend this novel? I don’t know. It isn’t awesome, but it isn’t terrible. I would recommend it before I would recommend Autumn Angel or Innocent Secretary… Accidentally Pregnant — or any of the other ones where the man is teaching the woman about sex or berating himself for taking her virginity like the bastard rapscallion he is (shakes fist in the air dramatically). In that context, yes, I do recommend Wallbanger. Just make sure to savor the last five to seven chapters and be careful where you read them.