Commentary: Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller

Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you. The independent bookstore is not the last stronghold of literary culture you think it is Jupiterimages/Thinkstock. Amazon just did a boneheaded thing, and it deserves all the scorn you want to heap on it. Last week, the company offered people cash in exchange for going into retail stores and scanning items using the company’s Price Check smartphone app. If you scanned a product and then purchased it from Amazon rather than the shop you were standing in, Amazon would give you a 5