Posted on 04/06/2023 4:02:05 AM PDT by EBH
The Book Depository is closing down after almost two decades in business.
The company, which is owned by Amazon, confirmed the move on social media
The decision was confirmed on 4 April when the company used Twitter to announce their closure.
It comes after parent company Amazon announced major changes and cost cutting exercises in their book selling department.
Amazon chief executive, Andy Jassy, said in a January blog post that more than 18,000 roles would be cut across the company, and discussed “the hard decision to eliminate a number of positions across our devices and books businesses”.
“We are working to support those who are affected and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support,” Mr Jassy added in the blog.
In March, a further 9,000 job cuts were announced.
The Book Depository Twitter account read: “We are sorry to let you know that Book Depository will be closing on 26 April 2023. You can still place orders until midday (12pm BST) on 26 April and we will continue to deliver your purchases and provide support for any order issues until 23 June 2023.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
But there’s still Barnes & Noble.
I don’t even know what The Book Depository is. A little help?
Go here instead: https://www.thriftbooks.com/
I use Bookbub meself.
Alibris.com is good. Use them often
I thought that was the place that Oswald shot Kennedy from.
Thanks.
Many peeples hadn’t heard of HalfBay.com, but there were many others (including me) that were upset when eBay (the owner) shut it down. HalfBay was an excellent place for cheap, used music, books and movies. A lot of that business probably eventually migrated over to eBay, but by then, the thrill had gone.
Just don’t drive past it in a convertible.
They named the company Book Depository”.
I thought Amazon started out as an online bookstore. Why would they need a bookstore?
That book suppository building, sir?
With all those trees they’re cutting down for wind/solar farms there should be millions of tons of paper
#$*!%$#!!!
Not because it’s closing — although I’m sorry to see it go — but because I never knew The Book Depository was Amazon. Maybe I overlooked something obvious, but neither the landing page nor the “about us” page mentions this. I’ve not bought a lot from them, but it’s a great source for high quality editions of books I want to keep permanently, as references for myself and in the forlorn hope that they may interest my kids someday. I think my last purchase was a high quality edition of The History of Middle Earth.
(An essential book for understanding the cosmological implications of such things as the fact that Beren was an elf in the earliest versons of the Beren-Luthien story. Don’t even start to think about what that would have done to the geneologies. The evolution of the legendarium is an acquired taste. But I digress.)
Was The Book Depository an independent company that got bought up by the Borg? When?
I’ve noted before on the movie threads that of the various streamers to which we’ve had subscriptions over the years, Amazon’s algorithms consistently make the best movie recommendations to me. Not that I very often follow up on them; I tend to find movies via other routes. I identify a film I want to see and then figure out where I can watch it, not the other way around. I will buy things from the Borg when I must, but I refuse to be spoonfed by the Borg.
But anyhow, this used to puzzle me until I realized that I’ve bought books and movies from Amazon for many years. I’ve always tried to prioritize independent, books and mortar bookstores, but we lost my longtime neighborhood favorite some time back. And I’ll go to Barnes and Noble, almost always to the physical store and ordering only as a last resort.
But Amazon still has had enough orders over the years to have a pretty good consumer profile on me, and its movie algorithms obviously use the data.
Maybe one way to strengthen consumers against the Borg would be to require that all of us have access to the companies’ data files on us upon request, along with the interest profiles and predictive models into which the data is fed. IOW, make the big data harvesters transparent.
I’m sure all the big data harvesters would set up a wail that this would put them out of business.
I like this idea more all the time.
It could be like the Starbucks purchase of Teavana. Bought it to kill it.
Maybe. I don’t know. Amazon got its start as an online bookstore. Back then, we worried now and again about Amazon running bricks and mortar bookstores out of business, but that was a long time ago and long before we worried about Amazon joining the Borg.
For me, Amazon becoming a streamer and moving into movies and tv was a big red flag. It used to be a logistics company. It’s a very different critter today.
McDonald's started as a hamburger company, now they are a Real Estate Company.
Not because it’s closing — although I’m sorry to see it go — but because I never knew The Book Depository was AmazonExactly. It's awful to find out that some service you thought was independent is actually owned by a conglomerate.
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