[edwest2]

Oh well. First, a little history. My company, based in the U.S., did a lot of global business. We could deliver many pounds of books to Australia, for example, for not much money. In 2007, the U.S. Postal Surface ended their Surface Mail category. And it was no coincidence that the so-called E-book Readers began to appear in greater numbers. In 2005, a local bookstore closed. Computer games were becoming better from a graphics standpoint.

We lost 98% of our foreign book sales almost overnight. To this day, I get calls from people in Canada who are amazed by the high postal charges. But this is beyond our control.

As far as other outlets, it may be possible for people to place a special order through their local bookstore, or to continue to use other outlets regardless of who owns them.

Amazon looked at the way books were distributed prior to 1990. It was a highly inefficient system. They followed with convincing people that they deserved a discount, as opposed to using any other source to buy books. Many forget that Amazon began by selling only books. Once they got enough people hooked on discounts, they added everything else, including the kitchen sink.