I'm the anti-Amazon.

Basically, because their entire thrust has been to be cheaper than anyone else and be shop-from-home-in-your-pyjamas convenient.  They started by selling books, now they sell everything. I buy my breakfast bars from them, 3 dozen at a time. Why? Because I can, because my supermarket doesn't stock them, because they're cheaper and they come to my house on a set schedule and I don't have to do a damn thing except pay the credit card bill. Why am I book shopping where I'm grocery shopping?

They've always been in competition with Barnes & Noble, from Day 1. But I've only started resenting it since I started selling Nooks at the store. 

Amazon is anti-bookstore.  If Amazon wins, there will be no bookstores. They have already put countless bookstores out of business -- Borders is just the latest.

Time ran a story about people who come into the bookstore, get the look & feel of a book, run it through a price-finder on their phones, then go home and order it online.  

Well, here's the deal:  If you keep doing that, soon you will have no bookstores to look & feel at.  Or take your kids to.  Or browse book-covers, or look for the odd happy accident you meant to read three years ago.  Bookstores -- and libraries, which are also not immune -- convey the culture.  Seeing other people read validates your own reading habits and gives you hope for the future, that sentences can run longer than a few dozen characters... and still use capital letters & punctuation.  

(I hate to rant like a cranky bag lady... but it's also an educated person's rant.  And I don't mind seeing the language and usage change and evolve to meet the times, but have you ever actually seen Melvil Dewey's suggested changes? Not even the re-spelling of his prename caught on!)

The other day, when a woman came into the store and asked if we sold Kindles, I realized that their machine had become de-branded and was now a generic, like Kleenex or Scotch Tape.  She meant e-readers.  I demo'ed the Nook for her and she left happy, knowing she'd bought the better machine.  I now use the "we need bookstores" argument as a very persuasive selling tool:  real readers -- and they are out there -- know it's not just about price.

It seems to be the Hewlett-Packard model: sell the printer for peanuts and get you on ink cartridges & paper forever. Bezos sells books and music and movies and wants to send them to you without you having to leave your chair. Fine. Buy or rent or lease or stream the movie Wall-E  and see what happens next.  Your move.

Update: Looks like I'm not alone here.