Let’s get it over with.

Colour: amber, apple juice. On the nose: Classic Islay stuff. Briny, gentle wafts of peat. Sea breeze. Sweetness and vanilla in the distance. Nothing is overpowering – nicely balanced so far, but then it all goes wrong. In the mouth: lifeless. A thick peat monster, but what’s beyond typical Islay fire? The promise of strong malt flavours and then… metallic, mind-numblingly dull. Nothing more. Nothing on the finish. This was immensely disappointing. It’s a bad dram, the worst one I have had in a long while, and certainly not worth the price tag of over £60.

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As well as selling the Kindle device, Waterstones will allow Kindle users to digitally browse books and take advantage of Waterstones’ special offers.

In a statement, James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, said: “The best digital readers, the Kindle family, will be married to the singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop.”

It seems only yesterday, James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, said this about his digital strategy:

“We’ll be different from Amazon,” he says, with characteristic ebullience, “and we’ll be better.”

Actually, it was yesterday. Make of that u-turn what you will.

I’m not quite sure what to think of this just yet. The merging of corporate power is always worrying, especially since publishers will be the ones to suffer: they’ll have to stump up even more for promotions and they’ll be made to offer even more discount to this monopoly-to-be. It’s amazing just how much Amazon charges to send out promotional emails. This also means consumers suffer through a lack of choice.

On another level, this could nudge-out self-published authors and smaller presses from a crowded marketplace. Such smaller presses had free reign for a while, but if customers significantly enter Waterstones to browse for books, then they’ll be under the influence of what publishers have paid for in terms of positioning (you think those books just get put in visible places for no reason?), before downloading onto their devices. This means those publishers who pay the most money will probably get what they want; but then again, that’s how the industry has always worked.

All ifs and buts and contradictions, of course, but I do wonder what Mr Daunt is up to. He’s clearly a clever chap, so why the epic u-turn? Is there some unbelievable footnote that we’ve all missed? Are Amazon funding some of the refurbishment and so on? Is it short-termism or a clever long-term strategy? Are Amazon using this as a way to get into physical stores and sell books from their own publishing imprints? Will we see a rebranding as Kindlestones?

Personally, I’d actually quite like to be able to browse and download to my iPad (not Kindle) – but whether that’s possible or not, whether other formats are supported or not, I don’t know. Let’s hope this doesn’t mean DRM is flavour of the month again. I’m still bamboozled as to how Amazon’s shit device can possess such a large share of the market.

Speaking of small presses and self-published authors: this is the perfect example of how a writer should not go about publicising their own books:

I hate to further bring attention to what has since been called: “Mathias’s Meltdown”, but I think his aggressive advertising tactics and willingness to bring negative attention to himself warrant discussion.

It’s worth following. Chuck Norris has nothing on this guy.

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