What do booksellers think about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos‘ purchase of The Washington Post?
Lissa Muscatine and Bradley Graham, the owners of Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington DC, wrote a letter to readers, explaining that “those of us in the bookstore business view Bezos through the lens of frontline combatants.” Even these former Washington Post staffers thought the move could be good for the paper, they had doubts. Check it out:
Perhaps because those of us in the bookstore business view Bezos through the lens of frontline combatants, we have difficulty sharing Don Graham’s confidence that the Amazon founder (a Washington outsider with no newspaper experience who plans to continue living in Seattle) will do the right thing and maintain the Post’s high journalistic standards and deep commitment to the DC area.
Nevertheless, the letter ended with an invitation to Bezos, asking him to visit the bookstore:
Now that Bezos will be a DC business owner, we’d like to extend our own welcome to him. We even hope that he might find time when in town to visit Politics & Prose and be reminded of the benefits afforded by local bookstores—the joy of browsing shelves, the help provided by expert staff, the pleasures of attending author events, and above all, the shared sense of community.
(Via Shelf Awareness)