That may be true but when dealing with book discovery nothing beats going to an actual book store and browsing. Human curated isles and shelves, people to talk to, an environment that fosters curiosity. That can't be replaced with clever algorithms designed to push whatever amazon want to push.

I agree with you that buying on Amazon is easy and frictionless but convenience comes with at a cost and sometimes price is not money. If you already know the book you want, it is dead easy to buy on Amazon. But, it is also easy to buy elsewhere online. Amazon is a bully and its business practices harm authors and publishers. It also treats their workers poorly. Is this the company you want to fund?

I don't want to be that guy and say to effect, "well, welcome to the real world". There are trade-offs involved for every side, good and bad.

Your book discovery process may be optimal for you, but I couldn't be further away from that. I don't really care to know Bob or Sally's taste at the local bookstore, don't know them, have 0 trust in them. (There's probably exceptions, insignificant ones though, in big cities like Austin with really cool book stores & a niche collector-kinda collection, but that's a different market to me)

Why would I care about human curated isles and shelves when I could go look up what Tyler Cowen's reading and recommending, or Marc Andreessen or Patrick Collison? Not to mention, Twitter's fantastic for this. There's very interesting people that post snippets as well of what they're reading, and build up a credibility that gives you insight into the book as well as knowing this person has a reading taste that aligns with your own.

And then once I evaluate the options, I can easily go on Amazon and get whatever I want to read in a timely manner (Not to mention using Amazon's reviews as an additional filter, the 2/3 star reviews for more critical analysis)

One benefit for me is that it's faster and easier to walk into my neighborhood bookstore and walk out with a good book that maybe I've already read a couple exerpts from right in the store (not some brief preview online), than doing my own legwork on book discovery and waiting for a shipment. I love my local bookstore, the people working there have great taste since they are literally professionals at this.

I see your point, but I'm more interested in folks who put theory into practice rather than folks who intimately know theory if that makes sense.

I think those can be two completely different tastes.

Fully agree. The bookstore/library browsing experience is intimately tied to adjacency/serendipity. I love browsing up and down the stacks and looking for whatever catches my eye. Typical genre or sorting lists don't even come close to the richness and density of the stack experience.

Fortunately, Powells is great for this. Whenever I need a book delivered in the US they deliver.

"In many parts of the world overgrown local busybodies have destroyed "high streets" in attempts to monetize drivers and pad their CV; driving people away. "

Not sure what you're getting at here but if you think you deserve free private car storage on public land you might try reading The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup.

You guessed what the content is from the title alone and then judged the book by your made-up content instead of actually finding out what the book might be about.

Now that is embarrassingly reductive gibberish.

I was inferring the opinion of the previous commenter. No consideration given to his comment on some book.

It's very clear you have not read the book. I highly recommend it. It is largely about the problems of parking policy and I do not recall much if any content about cycling.

At the same time I'm quite annoyed that there's plenty of things now that you can only buy on the Internet. I also find Amazon to be an horrible mess. It's hard to know if you're buying something legit or from a shaddy business.

I personally always look for a local physical shop first, then a local Internet shop, Amazon being the very last resort. Concerning books, the experience on Amazon is nowhere near as nice as browsing in a good book shop with knowledgable people being able to give advices.

I might be an exception and, of course, it depends where you live, but I definitely don't fit in the people you describe.

> It's hard to know if you're buying something legit or from a shaddy business.

Is this a US problem? In the UK I've never heard anyone ever receive a fake or dodgy product, but I see these complaints on HN in almost every thread about Amazons retail business.

A good fake is borderline undetectable. So your friends could have received fakes and not known.

It's not like many people would buy several copies of a book or DVD to do a side-by-side comparison of textures and precise colour matching. Or have the equipment to tell apart a CRI 95 LED bulb from a CRI 80 bulb in the same housing. Or tell name-brand nail polish from generic in an identical bottle, or a genuine Apple charger from a good clone.

Of course, my experience with Amazon in the UK is it's nowhere near as bad as AliExpress.

AliExpress is where people go when they want a fake.

I have, and I’m in the UK.

Plenty of fake electronics, cables, chargers, yes. Same here. But I don't think I've ever bought a fake (counterfeit) book. In that sense though I don't mind buying used books from eBay. Especially if the book I am looking for costs £100+. I can live with a £20 used one.

Personally I want to be able to travel somewhere nearby on a whim, hold a product in my hands, sometimes physically compare it to a competing product, then travel home with it on that very same day.

I think I was pretty clear about who I was representing.

People also want & need to explore physical spaces above and beyond what a recommendation algorithm suggests. People want to have the full experience of being immersed in a space. People want to smell the books. People want to try on clothes and see how they fit and compare them. People don’t want to be drawn in by the short-term convenience of the most convenient price.

> People want to try on clothes and see how they fit and compare them

Sure, but I can't find the clothes I want at the mall, and I can on Amazon. The mall bookstores that used to exist only sold bestsellers.

The "bookstore" I like to browse these days is Goodwill. I sometimes bring home a shopping bag full of books, for only a few dollars. I've also bought many "grab bags" of books from Ebay. The Bellevue Public Library has a second hand bookstore attached, where people donate books and the store sells them. I've bought a large number of books from them, and the little old ladies who run it are always charming. Highly recommended!

There are a couple "Little Free Libraries" in my neighborhood and I regularly insert scifi in them.

Some do want that. But empirically, not enough people want it enough to support a lot of these places.

Some people do. I collect antique books on natural history and science, so I very well know. But a lot of people do not. Thus the ebook.

Clothes are an entirely different thing to books

As per TFA, they sell their books online. Personally, having seen how Amazon achieves next-day delivery in markets with poor labour laws, my desire to receive products quickly has receded greatly.

Err. They took weeks to fulfill orders according to the article, and a lot of the purchases were unsustainable pity purchases.

This article shows they are just leveraging underdog marketing appeal.

I think next day is overrated. If something is important enough for you, surely most people should be willing to wait a few days e.g a week for it to arrive. It's not like you are going to finish that book the same day (usually).

That's not how human brain reward systems work though

Many people use books for tasks other than pleasure.

Then you buy the e-book :-)

> people want to order on a whim and have it arrive at their home the next day

Some people don't mind giving up convenience (price, shipping time) to help their local bookstores. From the article:

    "The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive. We will not participate in undermining that vitality."

*have it arrive the next day, realize they sold you a misprint as new, go and return the book, write an angry return text. Get the promise they will send you a new one, get another misprint, write an angry review

Seriously, Amazon really was good once. Now I'd rather order a book from any competitor that cares about their customers. Much less hassle.

Where does Amazon even get those misprints anyhow? Or how do they manage to mix "used, for re-sale" with "in a big cardboard box full of the copies of this book straight from the publisher, for first sale" in the first place?

Speak for yourself. That's not the world I want to live in.

I've got news for you: You aren't in Powell's target market. Powell's is for Portlanders, and on any other year of their existence they would be swarmed daily, busier than any food cart. In this part of the world, Powell's is not an online store, but a physical institution.

They do have a website. I would assume the problem is that nobody can compete with Amazons delivery network (and Prime) on price.

More than that, we also have the problem that many users look online on Amazon first.

For example, for online searches (in the UK), I try Amazon, Wordery, and Waterstones.com -- but usually Amazon first. If they don't have something or for some reason I feel I need to look elsewhere, I try the others.

Interestingly, for old or hard-to-find books, many people in the UK use BookDepository.com and AbeBooks -- guess what, both are owned by Amazon.

(I try to make up by visiting my local Waterstones regularly and more niche bookshops like Daunt when I can, but of course during the pandemic that's gone out of the window).

Abebooks is my primary source of buying books! Its especially good for me, since I'm not originally from the US and its the cheapest way to get publications in my native language from "foreign" sellers. I'd like to support booksellers in my country, but I go back only once or twice a year and can't make all purchases then. On the other hand, I've found sellers that are shipping from within my city or around (happened thrice in 4ish years of buying). In that case, I'll just track them down and try to contact them for a direct purchase cutting out the middleman. Its a lot of work sometimes, but in my mind worth it.

No way, I didn't know Abebooks was owned by Amazon. I always found it far easier to use than Amazon's own site for finding books.

Yeah, they were bought in around 2008. My enthusiasm for Abebooks has declined markedly since then. I still find the site better than Amazon's for a lot of things I'm interested in, but prefer to avoid both as much as possible.

> overgrown local busybodies

Unfortunately these types always seem to be the ones at the very top also.