Who? Me? Apologize to a corporate monster?

[fpb]

Yes. I distrust corporations on principle, but when you have to, you have to. Yesterday I addressed readers to an Amazon-baiting cartoon - just because I found it excruciatingly funny. Today I got the last of a lot of six rare books I had ordered from Amazon two or three weeks ago, and which I did not expect until April. All the books have been delivered in better than expected condition, well ahead of time, to my complete satisfaction. A corporation that does exactly what it was asked to do. Of course the six books cost me a small fortune, but I don't regret it in the least. So, no, I don't really believe that Amazon are the kind of people who leave horse heads in your bed.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

See, this is indeed EXACTLY why I can't curse Amazon to kingdom come. It's all very well to say you've got to protect bricks and mortar bookstores, but even when they're not the iniquitous Piccadilly Waterstone's, home to Philistines on 7 floors (this must be the only instance where I mourn a rag store that's been replaced by a bookseller; it's usually the other way around) how many find you exactly what you need, sometimes from the other end of the world?(And from actual bookstores as well?)

I have been broke, which lured me away from John Sandoe's and Heywood Hill. These days, it's more the huge hassle of ordering from them which gets me back to Amazon.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Most of these were out of print. The rarest was Aurel Kolnai's The War against the West, the unsurpassed summary of Nazi thought and intellectual life from 1938, which I used to have years ago. And that only cost me some sixty pounds including delivery - which, for a major rarity like that, is a miracle. And it was from a real bookshop, as you say - in Oklahoma City! Can you imagine doing anything like that before Amazon? Or bookstores in provincial towns hanging on to unusual books for the chance that someone from the other end of the Earth might want a copy?

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I know! Some bookshop in Australia sent me a first edition of Mary Renault's Charioteer for five quid! Minus dustjacket, but still!

I used to buy from bibliofind.com until about ten years ago, when Amazon bought the platform and network. I was majorly annoyed at the time, but I was wrong - if anything they've made it more efficient. I only go to bookfinder.com or abebooks as a last resort.


I remember when Amazon bought bibliofind.com, about ten years ag from whom I used to buy these things.