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by BurritoAlPastor 1407 days ago
Ironic that this review of a memoir about bookstores starts off by linking to it on Amazon.
2 comments

Just noticed that as well :). It also looks like an affiliate link.
Yes, the “tag” parameter in an Amazon.com URL means it is an affiliate link.
Amazon is a bookstore.
Amazon is a huge e-commerce site that operates with brutal efficiency. It started out as a book seller but it is now a place you can buy pretty much anything, with zillions of third parties selling merchandise of dubious provenance through them.

As it grew from a book seller to what it is now, Amazon took a huge amount of business away from both the small booksellers that this book discussed in this article is mostly talking about, and the larger chain bookstores that were crushing a lot of those small booksellers underfoot at the time.

Hence, the irony: the first link is to buy a copy of this book about the virtues of small bookstores on Amazon, the company that ate a huge percentage of American retail stores, starting with books.

Fine, you pedant, it’s ironic that a textually sympathetic review of a memoir lionizing the virtues of secondhand brick-and-mortar bookstores, while fretting about their continuing viability as a business model, would link to the book on Amazon, a online-only store commonly considered to be the primary disruptor to that business model. Happy?
Like a catalog is a bookstore.
RIP Amazon Four Star stores (which were brick and mortar stores that sold, among much else, books)