Shaking the Doubts

I admit that there are occasions when I wonder if my business associates and I are delusional about opening a bookstore. Fortunately, those doubts are often put to rest when I read stories like this one: “Indie Booksellers: ‘Indispensible Players in Community Life.’” There are so many great quotes in this article that remind me … Read more

Where Have All The Indies Gone, and B. Dalton’s and Brentano’s and Waldonbooks, and Borders and Even, EEK! B&N?

There is no place to buy new books anywhere within my radius, and I don’t live in Timbuktu. I live right outside a major city, suburbs with millions of people, and there are practically no bookstores. Three B&N’s are hanging on, but who knows if they will disappear the way the huge double decker one … Read more

Like You and Me, an eBook Can Also Have a Sudden Demise

death of a borders ebook

Borders has closed.  This is a shame and a travesty.  In an era when there is more being published and more of the population is literate than ever before, why is a bookstore closing?  One issue that has risen out of this is something that I alluded to in an earlier article on eBooks.  Namely: what happens to your content when the content provider closes up shop?  Thankfully, in this case, Borders had been transitioning its eBook clients from their servers to Kobos, so they weren’t left high and dry with no access to their purchases.  Will all eBook providers be this kind when they, as with the vast majority of businesses, either close up shop or give up on one technology and move to a new one?

Several events in recent years, some directly related to eBooks, others only tangentially related via technology, have made me wary of relying on a third party to give me ongoing access to material I have paid for.  One is, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, the time that Amazon reached into the Kindle accounts of any North American user who had purchased a copy of (ironically) 1984 by George Orwell and plucked it out of their account.  They did this because it turned out they did not have permission to be selling this particular edition as an eBook.  This draconian measure only serves to highlight the impermanent and transitional state of the eBook, of digital files in generally, really.

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Booksellers: "A Very Special Class Of Condescending Nerd"

  “Book stores employ a very special class of condescending nerd…  “If bookstores fall, America will be inundated with a  wandering snarky underclass of unemployable mock purveyors of useless and arcane esoterica.” The Daily Show on Comedy Central usually targets politicians, pop culture, movie stars, and finds hilarious behaviors to out and bring to the forefront. Either by Jon Stewart, or by one of his many ‘correspondents’, a point will be made about something highly ridiculous and whatever the subject be, it gets … Read more