The terrible thing about the Internet and Amazon is that they take the magic and happy chaos out of book shopping. The Internet might give you what you want, but it won't give you what you need.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As I've often said, you can shop online and find whatever you're looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren't looking for.
To many book professionals, Amazon is a ruthless predator. The company claims to want a more literate world - and it came along when the book world was in distress, offering a vital new source of sales.
Amazon is a marvelous conglomeration and delivery system for products of every imaginable function. But the book 'business' is really not the same as the sale of lawn rakes or adapters for telephones.
I priced my books at what I would want to spend on an electronic book.
I got my iPad, and I'm trying to buy books on that, but I kind of like a book. At the end of my life, when I'm old, I want to have all these shelves full of books. So I'm just gonna do the book thing.
I use Amazon for books. I use Amazon for loads of other things. I regard Amazon as a source, as I think a lot of other people do.
Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books.
I get up in the morning, do my e-mail, I check my e-mails all day. I'll go online and I'll buy my books at Amazon.com, but I don't want to buy all of them because I want to go to Duttons and I want to buy books from another human being.
Books are not like albums, where you can simply download and enjoy your favorite chapter and ignore the rest.
Together, Amazon and I are giving readers what they want - inexpensive, professional ebooks.