The Nation just published a long article about what Amazon means for the publishing industry and consumer choice.

The accumulated effect of Amazon's pricing policy, its massive volume and its metric-based recommendations system is, in fact, to diminish real choice for the consumer. Though the overall number of titles published each year has risen sharply, the under-resourcing of mid-list books is producing a pattern that joins an enormously attenuated tail (a tiny number of customers buying from a huge range of titles) to a Brobdingnagian head (an increasing number of purchasers buying the same few lead titles), with less and less in between. Responding to the effects of price wars last fall the American Booksellers Association warned, "If left unchecked...predatory pricing policies will devastate not only the book industry, but our collective ability to maintain a society where the widest range of ideas are always made available to the public."

There's not a lot there that's new—I've linked to a lot of this stuff on Slog over the last couple of years—but it's good to see it all in one place. And, as always, it's interesting to read the comments (although The Nation clearly needs a new spam filter—about a third of the comments are ridiculous sales spams that talk about free shipping and low prices, making them almost feel like some sort of commenter performance art).

God forbid we let the little people to choose what THEY want to read! Oh, heavens to Betsy, we can’t allow that! People should read what white, middle-class, college-educated, pointy-headed intellectuals TELL them to read! Otherwise they'll just read junk, because regular people are not smart enough to understand what they SHOULD be reading so THEY can sound like stuffy, pointy-headed intellecutals!

The above comment misses the point of the article—it's not about the fear that readers are going to only read junk, it's that readers are all going to be reading the exact same stuff. This much, even hardcore Amazon fans should be prepared to admit: If Amazon is ultimately going to replace independent bookstores as they claim, Amazon needs to figure out some way to replicate accidental discovery, the way it's possible to run into and fall in love with something unexpected in a bookstore. If you only get exactly what you want every time—or if you only discover what Amazon's marketing wants you to find—Amazon's actual selection becomes very shallow, no matter how many books they claim to carry.