Booksellers React to Amazon Books

Shelf Awareness

"With only 5,000 titles in a space in which Waterstones would put over 10 times that number, it appears to be a tentative dip of the toe into physical bookselling waters. Clearly, however, a skim of the bestsellers away from true bookshops would be very damaging: we very much hope that it falls flat on its face."

--James Daunt, managing director of U.K. bookshop chain Waterstones, in the Bookseller

"Seattle has some of the most concentrated competition for booksellers in the country, both with other independents and with Amazon. The University Book Store has already carved out a significant niche for itself within the local community. We're as close to being a nonprofit organization as you can get without being one; dollars spent at our store support not only the University of Washington community through scholarships and various educational programs but also greater Seattle. We are a cultural hub that hosts more than 500 events a year, brings more than 60 book fairs into Puget Sound schools, and supports a number of literacy programs. People are smart--they know who their real community partners are. We will continue to find new ways to serve our community. It's in our DNA."

--Pam Cady, manager of general books, University Book Store, Seattle

"We can do some things Amazon can't, like serve our local customer base--since Burien and U-Village are a long ways apart, that's one reason why this isn't a huge threat. We do work with some authors on national and even international sales, but we do a lot of work on hosting local and first-time authors who would get lost and unnoticed on Amazon. We're also heavily involved with local schools and in community events, all as part of our own strategy to build a loyal and local core of customers."

--Bill Virgin, co-owner, Page 2 Books, Burien, Wash., in GeekWire

"Bookstores are about the exchange of ideas, and when you get people into an industry like that who don't necessarily need to make money doing it--this is part of the problem with Amazon in the book industry in the first place--then you can kind of have a bloated presence… Certainly if a store that carries only 5,000 titles all of a sudden extinguishes a store that carries possibly 50,000 titles or more, I don't think that's good for the book-buying culture."

--Robert Sindelar, managing partner, Third Place Books, Seattle, in GeekWire