Everyone in New Zealand should get a Kindle

Yes, yes, I know, you could get a Kobo from Whitcoulis, but, you see, Whitcoulis are the problem. You pay far too much for books in New Zealand. So much, in fact, that in living here for two and a half years I've only purchased one full price book, and that was a present for someone. It's not that I don't read, back in a sensible country I'd spend the cost of a New Zealand book every couple of weeks, but I'd get three or four books for that. I just feel that by buying a book here I'm being screwed. No longer, though, a Kindle, or another foreign e-reader, lets me get something worth reading, right now, for less.

With this in mind, I make the following prediction: all middlemen in New Zealand selling something I could just as easily download, should get themselves a new job. Bookshops, music shops, DVD shops, computer games shops: you're all doomed. Second hand bookshops, second hand CD sellers, second hand DVD and second hand computer games shops: you're even more doomed. Convert your premises to sell fluffy sheep keyrings to tourists, set up something better than the 4-D trout experience, or morph into a coffee shop and you might just have a livelihood. Continue to sell things in a cold shop with no natural light and surly attitude that I can get more cheaply without even getting out of bed, and you're doomed.

And don't even get me started on supermarkets and the price of cheese.

(Update: 2011-02-18: NZ Herald - Whitcoulls in Administration)