Not particularly news, though - they never have stocked Amazon books. I haven't noticed them in Waterstone's either. I haven't read the piece at the link but one claim booksellers make is that Amazon don't use the industry standard ISBN so this makes ordering/stock control impossible given that's how booksellers' supply chains work.
- Maxine
Really? How odd. I always heard that Amazon loved ISBNs because books were the only goods you could sell that came with cross-company standardized inventory numbers. Or maybe i dreamed that.
- barbara fister
Barbara you weren't dreaming, Bezos did indeed choose books as his first product mainly because of the consistency of the ISBN which made books different to music or movies which were his other options - but Amazon never took to barcodes as a means of product control and so created the 10 digit ASIN. Originally Amazon's ASIN was equivalent to the ISBN of a book - back when Amazon only...
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- Bernadette
Yes, that's correct though I did not know the academic history which I for one find fascinating! Amazon used the ISBN when it first started and sold only books, then as Bernadette says it realised it needed a system for other items too and being bent on global domination of all online selling of all objects, they introduced their own. They still list print books with the ISBN and AISN...
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- Maxine
I do think these kinds of issues are important for readers as well...as someone who is already frustrated by things like geo-restrictions I don't want even more exclusivity in my future reading content
- Bernadette
And the stupid thing is that they will probably tempt thousands of new writers into it - writers whose books won´t be borrowed anyway. I think it is so important to have Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Diesel etc to make sure there is some level of competition.
- Dorte Jakobsen
thanks, I was waiting to see the answer as I knew I'd read it!
- Maxine
I know you had; I bought the first two in the series because I had read your recommendation - I´m looking forward to more books by her, but try not to buy any right now :)
- Dorte Jakobsen
Me too. (Maybe it's the wrong continent for you, Karen? ;-) )
- Maxine
Could be! When I get a window I'm going to read Crooked Letter, honest.
- Karen Meek
Sorry, Dorte - My brain is not working! I love this game, though!!
- Margot Kinberg
Margot, I think I got it right using my re-wired brain. ;-)
- Norman
Maxine has guessed the continent - and reviewed the book ;) - José and Norman have left some very helpful clues.
- Dorte Jakobsen
It's Looking Likely that I know the author thanks to the hints/google, I've read some books by this author. I enjoyed the standalone I read more than the series books.
- Karen Meek
I can see you do, Karen. Don´t know what they´ve done to Margot down under though ;)
- Dorte Jakobsen
Ah, thanks to all the clues, I get it now. Luckily I reviewed the book fairly recently otherwise I probably would still have no idea!
- Maxine
OT and fairly long but thought some of you might want to see this article about traditional publishers benefiting from sale of ebooks.
- Dorte Jakobsen
from Bookmarklet
Must try this series some day - I get it muddled with that other one I quite enjoyed, T Jefferson Parker's Merci Raybourn books. (Have not read any others by him so far as I recall).
- Maxine