That Amazon Meme ...

[hrj]

You know that amazon.com meme that's going around? The one where you look up what the first two things were that you ever bought from the site? I have only ever bought one book from amazon.com. I bought it this past Christmas. The only reason I used amazon.com was because I'd left all my Christmas shopping until the 24th and I was in a small town in Maine and I was desperate. If I want to order a book on-line, I'll track down the publisher's site, or find a topic-specific distributor, or ... or pretty much anything else that I can think of before I'll decide that I need the book badly enough and soon enough that I have to stoop to Amazon.

Not everything that's cheap and easy is in your long-term self-interest.

Comments

[lapioggia.livejournal.com]

amazon is local for me so using them at least contributes a bit to my local economy (though I mostly don't get books through them anyway but electronics & household items) but while I prefer to buy my books in local independant shops whenever possible, I do use Amazon for some of the stuff I can't find here.
Somewhat inconsistantly, I won't set foot in a Barnes & Noble or a Borders because of similar agressive policies that drive small bookstores out of business(and pathetically limited stock)

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

My first amazon.com purchases date back to well before the publishers had much online presence themselves. The only other choices we *had* within a 20 mile radius were Borders, and Barnes&Noble. So if we were going to get screwed anyway, we might as well go for cheap. Also, more than half of what we wanted, the brick+mortar stores would have to order anyway (see above comment about pathetically limited stock).