Amazon's Bookstores Should Be Celebrated, Not Feared

The view of Amazon from the wider literary world has become increasingly poisonous, to the extent that people have responded with grave concern because the Evil Empire is now … opening bookstores! Is this what we’ve come to, that the opening of new bookstores is something to be feared?

Yes – because apparently Amazon will use that retail power to shut down other stores and to force crippling terms on other publishers. So, like the supermarkets then? Supermarkets have done more to threaten dedicated bookstores even than the rise of Amazon, and they’ve done so with the complicity of publishers. It’s hard to see how supermarket book sales can be seen as a vital channel for publishers, but dedicated bookstores opened by Amazon are the death knell of the industry.