Terminalcoffee discussion

a)What do you think of Amazon's new scan-something-in-a-store-to-see-that-we'll-give0it-to-you-cheaper scheme?

b) If you were an author would you sign with their rewards program if it meant not being able to sell your books anywhere else?

c) This article made steam come out of my ears: http://www.slate.com/articles/technol...

there are people who come to the library book sales (where they sell off surplus books) and use some kind of scanner to see how valuable a book is on the secondary market. it burns me up. they sell the flippin' books for like $.50 or $1 ea or something. they crowd in and elbow their way through running their scanner looking for something to resell. i wish the library would black out the bar codes before putting them out for resell

I've seen people scanning items at our local used book sidewalk sales, which get their books from donations. It doesn't bother me. Before the books go on sale, the charity has a book appraiser come in and look at things that might be truly valuable, and those things get a different price tag from everything else. Also, the book dealers arrive at the sale first thing in the morning and grab whatever they think they can markup and resell. So a random citizen trying to do the same thing doesn't bother me. I don't want to buy a book with a blacked out barcode. I want the book to be in as pristine condition as possible, with as few markings as possible.

Most of the books I buy at these sales are pre-barcode era, anyway.

As for Amazon, I generally dislike whatever they do. I don't know if I'd feel differently if I were an author. I'm still outraged at them for the way they treat their plant workers at Breinigsville, PA.

c) This article made steam come out of my ears

Slate loves being contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. It's what they do. Their brand. It's a big reason I hardly ever read Slate anymore.

Kevin "El Liso Grande" wrote: "there are people who come to the library book sales (where they sell off surplus books) and use some kind of scanner to see how valuable a book is on the secondary market. it burns me up. they sell..."

I feel the same way about the resellers who infest Bookmooch. And I'm extremely anti-Amazon, so I wouldn't buy from them even if they were selling books at 10% of the cost at B&N.

I don't care for the scanning thing. I am, currently, a bit tied to Amazon as I have a Kindle. But once I get some decent use out of it (as I bought it before their giant price cuts) I think I will switch to a Nook.

This is the first I've heard of this scanning, and I have to say it’s appalling. Amazon is already a big successful conglomerate. It's rude to walk all over the little people.

Daring to Cut Off Amazon

A small publisher gets fed up with Amazon and parts ways. For now at least, it isn't hurting them financially.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/bus...