Originally posted on The Scribble Bug:
Source: The New Republic, Dustin Kurtz Time Magazine might have thought it popped up by surprise, but in reality Amazon’s first physical bookstore has been a long time coming. Yes, you read that right. Amazon’s first physical bookstore. To be exact, they’ve opened a 5,500-square-foot bookstore, carrying a not-that-impressive 5,000 to 6,000 titles with 15 employees under the direction of Amazon Books Vice President Jennifer Cast. It’s also in Seattle (so most of us don’t have to worry too much just yet). However, if you’ve paid any attention to the larger book world of late, you’ll realise those usually soft susurrations of discontent are more like a cacophony of squawk boxes (and far more rancorous). Because bookstore owners loathe Amazon. Everyone knows that. They undercut the cost of books through ecommerce, drove more bricks-and-mortar shops out of business than can be counted, and upended the bookselling industry. That’s before they branched out into publishing, whereupon they pissed off the rest of the book industry as well. With this in…