Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Showrooming 'Is Really Just a Genteel Form of Shoplifting'

Shelf Awareness

"For all the ease and convenience of online shopping or the digital download, I still feel a town without a bookshop is missing something.... For much of the early nineties I worked in bookshops myself, running the children's section in Waterstones Notting Hill with a rod of iron and believing, like all booksellers, that books are somehow special, that the expertise and enthusiasm of booksellers is vital, that if you love bookshops you should spend money there, and that to discover a book on display in a well-staffed, lovingly-maintained shop, to hold it in your hand then to sneak off and buy the same book online is really just a genteel form of shoplifting."

--Author David Nicholls,  speaking at the London Book Fair Digital Minds Conference this morning (via the Bookseller

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