“Amazon just convinced us to divorce our wife then married her.”
Ah, the '90s, a simpler time. Phones were dumb, oil was cheap, and bookstores thrived.
I mean, small indies still had to compete with national chains, but it was a bricks-and-mortar war.
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Then the internet happened.
Publishers and bookstores were slow to jump on the whole dotcom thing, preferring to sell books face to face.
Warner Bros.
In 1995, a little startup named Amazon came along, using its lack of physical overheads to sell books at a big discount.
It worked, and today the company is worth $295 billion.
Amazon
Bookstores closed. Some were national chains, like Borders. Many hundreds were small independent shops that couldn't afford to operate at a loss.
In the UK, 33% of independent bookstores have closed in the past decade, while in the US there has been an increase in independent bookshops in recent years but hundreds of Borders and Barnes & Noble locations have shut down.
Warner Bros.
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