Amazon Books

what are the prices like at these?
>are they retarded
do you think they would make this move if it wasn't in their best interest? similar to the whole foods acquisition, amazon is moving to take over what's left of brick&mortar retail, and this is only the beginning.

...

At least it's "post-classical" architecture with some structural cohesiveness, and not some ugly stone block with random curves.

Until there's a violent revolt, that is.

as an amazon stockholder i welcome our new conglomerate overlords

same

more like an amazon cockholder

what does jeff bezos' cum taste like nigga?

>are they retarded?
They're investing in real estate, you idiot.

tastes like $1500 a share, faggot

There's one of these in Seattle. There's very little for Veeky Forums to like there, mostly just popular fiction YA shit that's selling well and memey self help books. Overall the selection is small, comparing it to even an average Barnes and Noble is like comparing 711 to a grocery store.
Also it's cramped and there are WAY too many staff asking "what are you looking for" and shit. Tiny aisles.
Staff demeanor ranged from aggressive to creepy.
Lots of customers browsing, most of whom look like they're STEMfags who don't know any better.

what was so good about borders? it had a somewhat better selection than b&n and some overpriced cds and a coffee shop part that was always crowded with students.

>how to spot a seattleite
hate this city but i love this city

they have one of those at some mall by columbus circle in nyc, but why the fuck would i go all the way up there to buy a fucking book from amazon

Why shouldn't they? They believe there's an inefficiency in the market that they can fulfill and I don't think that's such a crazy notion. Barnes and Noble is terribly managed so they can't be compared and the other chains aren't big enough to compete with Amazon's economy of scale. They can't afford the smaller profit margins that Amazon can. Amazon also has a massive data advantage the other stores don't. They have this massive online market that tells them exactly what is selling and where so they can more accurately predict what books they need to have in stock. They can also special order or transfer books from their warehouse much cheaper than anyone else.

This meme that bookstores are dying off is a complete meme. The smaller specialized bookstores are thriving.

>This meme that bookstores are dying off is a complete meme

I'm a cunt for writing that btw

>that image

...

A small specialized bookstore in a nearby college town is shutting its doors. A college town bookstore, shutting down, it's right next to a coffee shop. Bookstores are dead.

They probably realized that brick and mortar book stores have actually been doing great in the last 3 years.

What do you mean?
>deckle
I don't think thats what he's talking about though I really hate deckle books.

why does everything have to be about virtue signaling and SJWs with you brainlets. you can't talk about ANYTHING without turning it into politics, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with it.

>Not wanting a library with the front looking like an Alberti pseudogreek temple and having a tholo-like area to read quietly
It sure smells like pleb in here

boarders sucked major cock, the only thing they did better was their DVD selection which is now completely irrelevant.

I think you just pick up what stuff you want and it charges your account when you leave the store

hey it was you burgerclaps who voted for an art of the deal reality tv show host meme

this is what you fuckers deserve

tastes like being able to move out and pay the bills, faggot

> tfw i still buy DVDs, a physical form of media which is 20 years old
> tfw I buy the blu-ray afterwards if I really liked it
> tfw Criterion just came to the UK

i'm nigerian and we still get movies on PSP UMD

Welcome to 2018, where even Veeky Forums is a shit board.

I get tired of it too, user. I'm a lefty and I don't mind conservatives but I wish we would stop going loggerheads over conspiratorial bullshit. The left needs to learn to stop being so sensitive and that not everything is racist, but the right need to accept that not everyone is out to get them and muh black boogie woogie man this and muh jews that.

>deliberately damaging books for hipster-cred

I just exited my Netflix membership because I realised I'd rather spend the £10 on a physical copy of a movie each month instead. DVDs still look great as long as the transfer is done by a capable company (ie Artificial Eye or Criterion).

>Netflix membership

My thoughts exactly.
Arrow, Eureka, Artificial Eye/Curzon, Criterion, Third Window Films, Second Run (and there'll be others I'm forgetting) are definitely worthwhile distributors and restorers of films.

This has nothing to do with books but it's amazing how many good deals you can get in HMV (or Fopp) if you go in on a good day. Amazon prices never seem to drop.

I wish Waterstones did something similar.

We don't have a HMV in Halifax but Leeds isn't far and I notice Arrow tend to have a good thing going at HMV where you can get 3 blu-rays for about £20 which is ace as usually they'll set you back by a little extra. Never been to a Fopp, there's just never been one in my area, but I notice through facebook that Third Window Films and Arrow have a lot of deals on there too.

>Third Window Films
What's your favorite film from them?
Fish Story and The Foreign Duck, the Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker were great.

I love Confessions and Love Exposure but their edition of Tetsuo: Iron Man is gorgeous too.

Glad they're out of financial instability, really looking forward to their releases of Cleopatra and Arabian Nights (which I believe are semi-related to Belladonna of Sadness because they're all made by two legends of Japanese animation doing extremely explicit films instead of the cutesy shit they used to do).

Welcome to a Veeky Forums world where admins refuse to delete /pol/

I do. I only but my books from the co-op book store in my city.

i want same day drone delivery NOW.

More like the idea of the University student being an intellectual has disappeared. No longer are colleges filled with students who want to learn, thus starting book clubs. They don't want to actually learn anything and hell, when philosophy is not required by some schools. They just want to get a degree and get out to a job. What we need to do is get rid of the notion that jobs require degrees. Even something like accounting or finance or investing didn't require a degree even forty years ago, it was all based on apprenticeships. Yes left universities to those who sought knowledge and were intellectuals. We need that separation between learning/knowledge/intellectualism and job training. Once we get that back things could get better.

This. We might be on the cusp of a switch back to trade schools in the US, given how outlandishly expensive even public universities have gotten, though the entire edifice of academia is going to fight against that change as much as they can.

"We must remember that in Roman times a liberal education was the mark of a free man, and training for employment was worthy of slaves only" - Thoreau.

I agree desu. Probably because I'm a salty humanities NEET though.

also Thoreau was the original neckbeard.

I'm adamant that students (maybe just people) are turning to identity politics to fill a void that would otherwise have been met with intellectual personal pursuit. I know it's mad to say politics hasn't always been a hallmark of student life but the people interested in politics don't really seem interested at all in the theory behind it; it's become a kind of hobby for them.

Education is in crisis because the people in it are idiots and basically we're fucked.

I agree, though I also believe this is a function of sending a higher proportion of young adults to university than we ever have before, because so many believe 'it's the gateway to a good job/productive life/etc.'

We've always had a significant number of idiots in society, but we never told them they had to go to university. And for students who need loans, by making student loans 100% guaranteed, we've also made it so that investors don't need to ensure that they're giving loans to smart students who won't piss away the money on bacchanalian frat parties while ignoring academic work.

If I could, I would dismantle half of the universities in the United States, they're popping up left and right to make money for the board of trustees and presidents.

it was comfy
i lived 2 min from one and would hang out all the time there

A "college bookstore" isn't exactly specialized. Think of Christian bookstores.

It may be that the professors, most of whom didn't get the chance to participate in the cultural revolution of the 60s, are now encouraging their students to attempt a second mostly for it's own sake. The students just like the sense of accomplishment as well as seeing their names in print or their faces on the screen.

Yeah user, a millionaire company like amazon is retarded, you nailed it.

>i’m a lefty
fucking leave now before i find you and hurt you. leftists are NOT human

at checkout, they put your books into unpadded mailers instead of plastic bags and then bang them against the counter so you can enjoy your "brand new" books

How is that possible? Is the PSP your go-to multimedia device? My only movie on UMD was The Brothers Grimm.

>Once something is successful, it will always make wise decisions that allow its success to continue.
Yep, the world definitely always works that way.

They can easily afford to fuck up once or twice.

...

So they are evil.
I already knew that.

You should really help the avenge the niger delta

don't mind me

That's a really comfy desktop, though.

>tfw the only co-op bookstore near me is filled with hardcore sjw trash who put identity politics above all else
I just want to support a worker owned store, why did the communist movement get taken over by intersectional feminists?

It seems like the only way to really make money as a small bookstore is to cater to a narrow interest. Bigger chains can afford to buy a variety of books in large quantities which would come at a discounted price from the publishers. Startups just can't compete with the lower prices that bigger stores can afford to offer. It's the same reason small neighborhood grocery stores have been pushed out by Walmart.

Bezos cannot be stopped.

>small neighborhood grocery stores have been pushed out by Walmart
A precise point of pain for me. My local grocer sits abandoned, a den for the homeless and drug addicts. It has been this way for over a decade now. I still remember walking to it in my youth to buy sweets during my summer vacations from middle school.

do you really not understand Amazon's monopolistic business model? It's basically undersell, destroy, absorb, rebrand. They physical stores are novelties, now, but just think for a second HOW they could even be novelties.

>Amazon's monopolistic business model?

How does Amazon differ from any other company in the free market aside from them offering their products at lower cost than their competitors?

50 years ago, Sears was as big as Amazon is today. Nothing lasts forever, user.

That too. The students I personally know who are involved in politics have way too much time on their hands. None of them have jobs and I think they're turning their own cynicism outwards in order to make themselves feel like more productive people. I'd love to see a study done that correlates mental health issues with activism in student politics.

b-but muh lord bezos is going to turn us into automatons

I don't know that that's true. Your anecdotal evidence is strictly the opposite of my own.

>wanting to support Amazon

Absolutely disgusting. Bezos should be hanged.

Americans can't handle philosophy which teaches critical thinking. They'd mass suicide after realising what a shithole they live in and just how shitty they are.

We certainly weren't that way throughout all of our history though. Part of me maintains that it was the Cold War that truly drove the last nail into the coffin but ultimately I blame the Evangelicals. Their philosophy is so pervasive throughout the country that they control it from top to bottom in many areas. All the while demanding a bleached and sterilized world, even though it is incredibly hypocritical.

Why?

Books take a little long to get delivered and they come damp, coming from the Amazon and all

>a millionaire company like amazon

What is their philosophy? Or do you mean the puritans?
Work don’t ask questions God’s will be done?
Please expand more.
To me the bootstrap meme definitely seems to come from Protestantism.

Cheeky bastard.

Dumping, where a company sells a product in a competitive market at a loss. Though the company loses money for each sale, the company hopes to force other competitors out of the market, after which the company would be free to raise prices for a greater profit.

Sears never had the level of cross-market penetration that Amazon has, nor the technological infrastructure. I doubt they have comparable exchange volume, even considering differences in population etc at peak. Sears also never had an r&d division dedicated to developing new (high) tech that both feeds back into its operations and opens new markets.
Barring global catastrophe, the 'internet' isn't going to disappear or become obsolete. Neither is Amazon.
In a broad sense, no, it does not behave any differently than any growth-oriented enterprise. But yes, it has had and continues to have a fairly, if not quite unique, but unusual strategy.
Remember, their profit rates were extremely marginal for DECADES while they quietly undercut their competition, reinvested the vast majority of their revenue in development and acquisition, and built their brand. This is very long-term stealthing with huge ambition, and demands deft wrangling of a complex of elements. It's been very impressive, abe it's obviously paying off now. Look at stock prices even 5 years ago. I had 10k on hand then for literally whatever and I kicking myself in the head for lacking the foresight.

They are way past that, they've already gutted their major competitors. This is reimaging.

why is this allowed

People became complacent and didn't favor small businesses.

Don't you understand? If you delete /pol/ where will its userbase go?

Well, Amazon was originally an online book store so Bezos was probably just feeling nostalgic

>Sears also never had an r&d division dedicated to developing new (high) tech that both feeds back into its operations and opens new markets.

Sears *literally* sold mail-order homes, and then a line of tools that you could buy to use to assemble the homes, and furniture and furnishings you could use for the homes. Their products created massive markets for other goods that they then helped satisfy with... more of their products.

Amazon is a behemoth right now and will be for the foreseeable future, but it won't be one forever. Nothing lasts forever.

>t. chinua achebe

Borders sucked. I'm glad chain bookstores went out of business since it led me to explore independently owned bookstores. Used books are a godsend and the employees there actually give a shit.

This thread and all the LBS stuff really makes me crave my book barn.