Brick-and-mortar bookshops look better than ever in the Amazon age

Welcome to the first Fast Company’s Plugged In of 2026, and Happy New Year to you.

More than 18 years ago, as the internet was transforming how we consume everything from news to music, someone called books “the last bastion of analog.” That someone happened to be Jeff Bezos. And he made the observation in a Steven Levy Newsweek article about Amazon’s original Kindle e-reader, a device designed to drag books into the digital age.

Bezos’s comment resurfaced in my consciousness last week...