What is 'earth's biggest book store'? It's American like every other biggest thing. But, nonsensically, a court case, settled on 21 October concluded that two book-retailers can legally trademark the 'earth's biggest' claim. One is the Barnes and Noble octopus, with 25,000 employees, franchised outlets in every mall in North America and a $3 billion annual turnover. The other, Amazon.com ('Amazon-dot-com'), is a bookless high-tech office in Seattle, with a mere five hundred employees, and yet to make a cent's profit for its shareholders. They can both call themselves 'biggest' because they operate in different dimensions: one is a 'physical' or 'walk-in' bookshop; the other a 'virtual' or 'web-front' bookshop. The latter is growing very fast and the former is very worried.

LRB 27 November 1997 | PDF Download