Amazon Gets Blow-Back Over Plan To Sell Kindles At Small Bookshops

Rambo Tribble writes "No sooner had Amazon revealed their plan to offer independent book shops the Kindle for re-sale, along with a kick-back on e-book purchases, than the fur began to fly. It appears the shops view the plan as Amazon-assisted suicide. Given the apparent terms of the deal, it looks like they may have a point. Amazon may well have done themselves more harm than good with this ploy. One storeowner wrote, 'Hmmm, let's see. We sell Kindles for essentially no profit, the new Kindle customer is in our store where they can browse and discover books, the new Kindle customer can then check the price on Amazon and order the e-book. We make a little on their e-book purchases, but then lose them as a customer completely after two years. Doesn't sound like such a great partnership to me.'"

Comments

No duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Warehouse Book stores kill the independent book stores. Amazon killed the Big Book stores. But the silver lining is that the death of the Big Warehouse Book stores gave new life to the independents. So now Amazon tries to kill the independents, but they are not morons.

The independents were saved by Amazon, but that doesn't mean they are stupid enough to let Amazon kill them next.

Re:How is this worse?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm kind of interested in the bookstores I know of that are not going under because of Amazon. At least here in Chicago, the independent booksellers I frequent appear to be doing very well, especially now that the Borders and B&N and other chain bookstores have all but disappeared.

I don't see that they've changed their business model much with the rise of e-books, yet they are still busy, filled with customers, and in once case, even expanding.

If you treat customers right, I think there's still room for booksellers to succeed. Don't compete on price - compete on service.