> A criticism of online bookshops like Amazon is that they destroy serendipity by encouraging you to look at related books. For example, someone who usually buys engineering textbooks and SF may never see a travelogue.
That's a dumb criticism, since the merchandising of a brick-and-mortar bookstore typically does the same thing as that of an online retailer: presents whatever the store is trying to get rid of to everyone up-front, and otherwise presents people with things related to what they are searching for specifically, avoiding exposing them to the rest.
You can actively choose to browse (wander through a physical bookstore, click different categories for an online one) for the purpose of providing yourself opportunities for serendipity, but no bookstore is designed to encourage serendipity, because anything that does that is a terrible UX for most customers and leads to confusion, frustration, and not buying, and the store going out of business.
That's a dumb criticism, since the merchandising of a brick-and-mortar bookstore typically does the same thing as that of an online retailer: presents whatever the store is trying to get rid of to everyone up-front, and otherwise presents people with things related to what they are searching for specifically, avoiding exposing them to the rest.
You can actively choose to browse (wander through a physical bookstore, click different categories for an online one) for the purpose of providing yourself opportunities for serendipity, but no bookstore is designed to encourage serendipity, because anything that does that is a terrible UX for most customers and leads to confusion, frustration, and not buying, and the store going out of business.