On Wednesday, Aug 25th 2004 at 22:51 -0400, quoth Jon maddog Hall: =>and the "I will browse your books but buy online" syndrome. The store is =>not as large as it used to be. They do not have the "coffee area" that they =>had, but the rent is $10,000. per month cheaper. As the manager said, =>you have to sell a lot of books to cover that $10K. => =>I read an article by Tim O'Reilly on SoftPRO's web site that talked =>about going to a bookstore for use as a library, then buying =>online.....he (of course) condemned it. I feel much the same way.....so =>when I thought about Asterisk some more, instead of buying it from =>Amazon I called up SoftPRO and had them mail me the book. => =>If I see it online, read the review online, then I buy it online.....but =>if I see it in the store (especially a specialty store like SoftPRO), then =>I buy it there.
I try to buy locally whenever possible, but there has to be some sort of accounting for competition. Buying online generally has the added cost of shipping and you lose the ability to browse hands on. But Amazon (and others) provide that whole huge machine for getting reader feedback. Buying books for list locally vs. buying at 45% off from bookpool.com turns out to be less of a hard decision when you spend $600-$1000/year. There are a few times when it would have been nice to walk into Softpro here in Marlboro and check something out, but now that they're gone it's less trouble to click something than it is to drive to Waltham or Burlington etc., figure out traffic, parking, etc. I really wish that SoftPro would have excersized a bit more entrepeneurial spirit and thought to augment their business by also running an online operation. If they had done that they might still be in their lost locations. -- Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have .0. happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0 Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000 individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
