[aworks]

I think there is still a place for filtering of physical books. Both bookstores and libraries do a reasonable job of presenting a set of potential books to read.

I'm reasonably happy with the average physical book I read. That's much less true for ebooks.

And I mostly buy books from Amazon that I've heard about elsewhere so don't depend on that filter as much.

[SilverBirch]

Physical bookstores are on the complete other end of the Signal:Noise ratio spectrum, you've got such an enormous cost of publishing that even quality isn't enough (and this is the old problem of book publishing) you won't get a physical book produced unless (a) you have a track record, (b) you publish it yourself or )c) you're a celebrity who is using their celebrity to sell books or (d) you're great and you sign a usurious deal with a book publisher.

In the same way that the noise floor is becoming too high for eBooks, the quality threshold is too high for real books - (d) basically doesn't happen because you have to be so great and sign such a bad deal. Not least because publishers have consolidated into an effective monopoly.