Barnes & Noble opened their Audiobook store this weekend. As a promo they are offering nine titles as free MP3 downloads. I noticed that each title is listed at a penny a piece, but when I clicked through, the total was zero dollars at the checkout stage. You do still have to enter a valid credit card to get your free audiobook, though.
These nine title will be available until 3 a.m. on May 16th.
I used to think that days like today were nothing more than some marketing gimmick conjured up by various trade associations, but today is different. “Buying local” seems to be the savior we’ve been looking for all this time. Which financial institutions are surviving the financial crisis the best? Local ones. Where is the best place to buy food, ensuring no crazy chemicals or pests have been involved? Locally. You want to support your community and keep your neighbors employed? Buy local.
It’s amazing isn’t it?
There is an official IndieBound.org Buy Indie FaceBook page and even a “local indie store finder” page. So get out, buy a book, have some fun and buy local.
I just read over on Gasp! that Mountain Brook bookseller Jonathan Benton’s is going out of business. March 31st will be the last day the doors are open. The owners and operators blamed all the online book sites and such. The Jonathan Benton site has been down for months, but this is such a shame. It’ll be sad to see that empty space in the Mountain Brook Village shopping Center.
The number of non-mega-chain stores is dwindling here in Birmingham…
There is a great post over at Rich Rennicks’ blog The Word Hoarder, where he posits ideas and questions about how publishers and bookstores operate. I’ve read through it twice and have yet to comment. There’s just so much there. I’ll keep checing on it and hope to comment soon.
But I wanted to post the link because this is a discussion that many in the publishing industry should be having.