Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller: This guy calls BS on the whole “let’s save the independent bookstore” lament and instead praises Amazon. In the process, he slaughters quite a few sacred cows.
As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books. […]
What rankles me, though, is the hectoring attitude of bookstore cultists like Russo, especially when they argue that readers who spurn indies are abandoning some kind of “local” literary culture. There is little that’s “local” about most local bookstores. Unlike a farmers’ market, which connects you with the people who are seasonally and sustainably tending crops within driving distance of your house, an independent bookstore’s shelves don’t have much to do with your community.
Why do I feel so bad for agreeing with him?
On Reddit some time ago, someone asked “I want to open a bookstore. How should I do this?” (I tried to find the post, but failed). The answers were snarky as hell, and went along the lines of “First, gather up all the requisite bankruptcy forms to save time later…”