Kindle, Anyone? Wicked Witch of Publishing Predicts End of the Era of “Used & New Books” Online.
Sunday, January 27th, 2008I have seen the future and it is the end of “Used & New” purchases on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
I feel it. I sense it. I know it.
All it took was for me to activate my new Kindle and download Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle for $7.99 and have it delivered digitally in 60 seconds, count ‘em, from Amazon for me to hear the death knell for all those subterranean, bottom feeder, entrepreneurial booksellers online who have been making money by reselling advanced reader copies, tag sale finds, and entire inventories passed to them out the back door of warehouses. And I say this as a book purchaser who always prefers to pluck books from the “Used & New” option online.
So if you visualize me now, après Christmas and my Capricorn birthday, see me in your mind’s eye as sitting in front of the computer, cute new wool socks on (thank you!); wearing a new red beret and red leather gloves (thank you!); resting a coffee cup on a stack of “wish list” new books that includes Thomas McGuane’s Gallatin Canyon, Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, William Trevor’s Cheating at Canasta (thank you, thank you, thank you), about to switch on my birthday Kindle and place another order (THANK YOU!).
