Monday, November 05, 2012

NYT: Shunning Amazon, Booksellers Resist a Transformation

(NYT) Only a few years ago, culture was delivered in discrete doses. "The 4-Hour Chef" would have been in the chain bookstores by the stacks and in independents by the handful. You wanted a book, you went to the bookstore. Simple.

Now the technology overlords - Amazon, Google and Apple - are competing among themselves and with other players to control how the culture is consumed. Amazon's Kindle Fire was introduced last year to carve out some space from Apple's iPad; since then, Google and Microsoft have brought out their own tablets.

There is constant jockeying for position. Amazon, for instance, is at odds with Wal-Mart and Target, both of which have stopped selling the Kindle, worried that it is a Trojan horse that will lure their customers away.




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