Depends on the store. I can have Amazon deliver me Egan by January 6 (9 days from now), or I can walk down to the local sci-fi store and pick one up off the shelf today. Of course, Barns and Noble don't even stock his books.

Also, if your local bookstore doesn't have something in stock, they can order it for you, which helps support them.

I'm not a prime member, but it's just before midnight Wednesday 28 December. If I order by 2am then Amazon UK says I can have Greg Egan's "Diaspora" (paperback) on Friday. None of the local bookshops open until after New Year (rural UK).

I'm rarely that desperate but Amazon delivery beats petrol costs here and can take only a day longer (assuming goods are even on the shelf locally).

I can get it from bookshop.org on Friday too, but it is £15.50, vs Amazon's £10.50.

Assuming the one you get from Amazon isn't a Chinese knockoff Google Translated into another language and back in an effort to dodge copyright claims.

I can trust my local bookstores.

I concur. Books are one of the few things I am very particular about making sure I get the real thing. I don’t trust Amazon to do this.

> I can get it from bookshop.org on Friday too, but it is £15.50, vs Amazon's £10.50

France and a few other countries have the right idea here - the same book always costs the same, regardless if it's on Amazon, local bookstore, big chain store. There's a unique price set country-wide for the edition, and that's it, they have to compete on other things.

We used to have that in the UK (the "Net Book Agreement") for most of the 20th century, but it collapsed in the 1990s, I think under pressure from big chain bookshops like Dillons that wanted to be able to attract customers with discounts on books.

In the US, I think most (all?) retail price "fixing" got thrown out many decades ago. But new books mostly sold at list price pretty much until Amazon came along. There were exceptions. Some places had discounts on current hardcover bestsellers. And there was one place in Cambridge that was unusual for having pretty much across the board 15% or so discounts.

Ordering books not in stock also wasn't possible at a lot of stores and, when you could, it often took many weeks.

But costs are different, so that seemed like it would harm the ability of small businesses to compete? Wouldn't it be better to have a 'most favoured nation' deal where the cost of the book to a supplier (from the publisher) is fixed. That seems like it would create better competition? I can pay more for better service, for example.