Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Future of Book Buying

Take a few minutes and check out this interview with Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books on the future of book buying. (Credit John Joseph Adams for steering folks to the interview.)

It's a very interesting article. You may agree or disagree, but if you have any interest whatsoever in the future of books, read it.

One quote: "Bookstores are confusing to people – they don't get the idea of authors, because movies are filed by title. Bookstores are intimidating. Amazon is great because they can buy books they know they want."

Libraries are confusing to people as well. Even when patrons know the author, they often don't know how to go about looking for the book they want. They get particularly frustrated with authors who write in multiple genres and can't understand why some writers like James Patterson and Robert B. Parker are in both the Mystery and general Fiction sections. I can't tell you how many times patrons come up to the desk frustrated because they're searching for a book's title as if it were in the DVD section.

More on this later. Time for work, which includes helping people find books.

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