I'm happy W.H. Smith and Kobo are taking a stand against BBAs, but -- I had no idea D2D was that important in other venues as well. Shame on the authors who brought this about.
Love the "a lot of national chains in places you haven't heard of and where Amazon has very little footprint, like Sweden" bit ... :) I actually wonder what makes Scandinavia such an unattractive corner of the world for Aunt Ammy?
A bit of pre-amazon history really: Before the ebook revolution, those little packages of real books and cd's with the amazon branding all over would get you stung for customs duty EVERY damn time, which made them no cheaper than buying local for most things.
And by the time the e-book industry was getting big, local chains like adlibris and bokia were well into it, and selling epubs - and everyone here has a mobile phone or three, and/or a tablet, so e-readers don't sell too well (and the ones that do, are native epub readers, not kindles). So, no history of customer loyalty here, and my kindle (US bought and ANCIENT) is literally the only one I've ever seen.
Interesting. I still wonder why they didn't come up with an Amazon.se (like they did in plenty of other European countries), which presumably would have taken care of the shipping & customs costs -- Sweden still has its own currency, but it IS part of the EU, so even if a book is shipped from a warehouse in, say, England or France (as sometimes occurs), it should not be subject to import taxes and customs any more than when it is shipped to Germany, as long as you order through your local Amazon site ...
Love the "a lot of national chains in places you haven't heard of and where Amazon has very little footprint, like Sweden" bit ... :) I actually wonder what makes Scandinavia such an unattractive corner of the world for Aunt Ammy?
And by the time the e-book industry was getting big, local chains like adlibris and bokia were well into it, and selling epubs - and everyone here has a mobile phone or three, and/or a tablet, so e-readers don't sell too well (and the ones that do, are native epub readers, not kindles). So, no history of customer loyalty here, and my kindle (US bought and ANCIENT) is literally the only one I've ever seen.