Bookshop owners have hit back at an initiative by Amazon to
sell its Kindle e-book reader in independent shops.
But reaction has been hostile - one US bookseller described
it as "inviting hungry foxes into the henhouse".
Amazon said bookshops "should be striving to offer
customers what they want".
Announcing the initiative earlier this week the company
said: "With Amazon Source, customers don't have to choose between e-books
and their favourite neighbourhood bookstore - they can have both."
However, it appeared bookshop owners were not convinced. New
York-based publisher Melville House gathered opinions, and posted the frosty
responses on its website.
"Hmmm, let's see," wrote Carole Horne from Harvard
Book Store in Massachusetts.
"We sell Kindles for essentially no profit, the new
Kindle customer is in our store where they can browse and discover books, the
new Kindle customer can then check the price on Amazon and order the e-book.
"We make a little on their e-book purchases, but then
lose them as a customer completely after two years. Doesn't sound like such a
great partnership to me."
Staff at Skylight Books in California said it was "a
Trojan Horse-style attempt to gain access to our customers".
Anger
Amazon has not yet announced whether it has plans to extend
the scheme to the UK.
However, retailer Waterstones began selling the Kindle
device in its stores earlier this year, despite managing director James Daunt
previously describing Amazon as a "ruthless, money-making devil".
Mr Daunt admitted that readers were migrating to digital
platforms, but that it was beyond the company's capabilities to develop and
manufacture its own device.
But whether independent bookshops will welcome the same
logic is as yet unclear.
The resentment stateside was welcomed by Patrick Neale,
president of the Booksellers Association and co-owner of Jaffe & Neale
bookshop and cafe in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
"I was really pleased to see that American independent
bookshops were saying no thanks, he says.
"We've stopped and thought about it because we're
business people. But you've got to draw a line in the sand somewhere - they are
destroying the high street.
"To do anything in collaboration would be wrong to our
customers - it would be a very confusing message."
He added that a more favourable e-book deal for bookshops
would be directly with publishers, with various discussions of that nature
currently taking place.
Mr Neale's view was shared by Fran Crumpton, company manager
at the Book Partnership, a group that helps independent bookshops set up online
operations.
She too believed most bookshops would be opposed to the
deal.
"Why should they be selling Amazon's products? That
will then stop people using their bookshops - and we are losing so many. That's
what many bookshops are thinking."
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