That has already happened with amazon, b&n, alibris and others. Local bookstores can use these services to sell their books online. Alibris.com is a consortium of booksellers around the world, for example.
Free software has a strong following - you are using it right now if you are on the internet. Most services like Yahoo and Google use OpenBSD or FreeBSD as their underlying OS and Apache is used on nearly all of the servers out their. The future is now. As has been said before, the internet is the biggest anarchist experiment ever attempted - and seems to be a tentative success. I think co-operative forms of business may be a better form of bookstore because of the general clientele of these stores are often more sympathetic and willing to "share the joy" for lack of a better term. Also, I think Hungry Mind would have survived if their shares were more reasonably priced. If I remember they were selling shares for like $200-$250. Mississippi Market sells shares for like $100. How great will it be when we have a community bookstore with strong roots in Saint Paul? How great will it be when we all hold a stake in this store to keep it alive and make the big guys irrelevant? Forgive me for rambling, but I could speak on this forever. I'll let you go. Chris Rybisky Cathedral Hill --- Bob Treumann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dennis Tester pointed out in an earlier email that > outfits like Amazon are > bound to gobble up the small brick and mortar > stores. However, I think > this is only the current phase of the Internet > revolution. > > The next phase may very well see lots more > decentralization than we had > before the net. If Coop book stores around the > country were tied together > with an Amazon like interface, it would be just as > powerful as Amazon as a > purchase point, and also make a local presence > possible. > > With E-democracy, we are seeing the internet change > the Town Meeting, but > we have only begun to see it change the Town Market. > Free software is > coming, and the proprietary marketeers are very > worried about its effects. > > At 03:36 PM 4/28/2005, you wrote: > >The area does need (and can support) another > general > >bookstore, but let's build it from the ground up - > and > >keep in mind that books aren't about turning a > profit. > >I would like to see a co-op based bookstore sprout > up. > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------- JOIN the St. Paul Issues Forum TODAY: http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/ ------------------------------------------------- POST MESSAGES HERE: [email protected] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
