The New Yorker sent one of its writers to the new Amazon Books store in Columbus Circle in Manhattan, and she was not impressed, concluding that the books that it sells feel like they have been "assembled according to algorithm ... They exist far less to serve the desires of the reader than to serve the needs of Amazon, a company whose twenty-year campaign to 'disrupt' bookstores has now killed off much of the competition, usurped nearly half of the U.S. book market, and brought it back, full circle, to books on shelves."
You can read the entire critique here.
You can read the entire critique here.
- KC's View:
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I love The New Yorker, but it may well be that the things it finds distressing are the very things that appeal to many Amazon customers. And, it may be that an Amazon Books store simply is not meant for an Upper West Side of Manhattan customer ... or at least, not an Upper West Side of Manhattan customer who also happens to be a New Yorker writer.
I think that's fine.
I also think, though, that Jeff Bezos is right when he says that it wasn't Amazon that disrupted the bookstore industry. It is the future that continues to disrupt it.
