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In the UK many years ago, there was the Net Book Agreement, which was price fixing and Amazon, BooksOnline/StreetsOnline comprehensively broke that. Unfortunately, book shops didn't really learn, and we are where we are.

Back to the title. I still buy books. I've stopped buying them from Amazon, and just buy them from my LBS.

Though one thing still makes me irrationally angry - "SciFi + Fantasy" as "a genre" in bookshops. No. It. Isn't. It's two separate. Two loved-up vampires, isn't sci-fi. At least on Amazon I can filter that. Browse on Amazon, buy in the LBS. Which is the reverse of what I did a decade ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Book_Agreement




The Wikipedia article suggests that it was not Amazon and online bookselling that broke the Net Book Agreement, but big high street chain bookstores like Dillons. One of the references links to a newspaper article from December 1994 saying the agreement is "on its last legs", and Amazon was only founded in July 1994, so seems unlikely to have been very influential in its demise.




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