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but for earlier this Fall Amazon started a year long pilot with the University of California – Davis bookstore. UC Davis Stores has a dedicated portal page on Amazon.com (davis.amazon.com). The portal launched in mid-September and offers a selection of Amazon’s stock similar to what the bookstore would stock (in other words what a student is inclined to buy). This portal is functionally a part of Amazon (and not UC Davis Stores’s servers or stock system), and any order placed there is filled by Amazon via their network of warehouses and partners. The school collects an affiliate fee on any sale

Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie. You know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. Amazon is not happening to book selling; the future is happening to book selling.

But Wohlsen remains skeptical of Amazon’s chances of success with their strategic reach to indies. “They’re attempting to acquire independent bookstores’ customers for two years of commission,” says Steve Bercu, co-owner of BookPeople in Austin, Texas, and current president of the ABA. “This is simply in general not aligned with the interests of most independents.” And as you might expect, the ABA has rejected the idea outright

Once a customer is on the Kindle platform, odds are they’re going to buy fewer physical books, thus killing the Indie bookstore. In essence, Amazon is telling these companies to onboard customers to a digital platform that will destroy their business.