Slashdot Mirror
The End Of The Amazon Era
What do all these diverse products have in common? If you guessed nothing, you win a free Pokemon Pileup, Amazon.Toys.com's "cunning critter" of the day on Tuesday, a day on which Amazon gave a perfunctory nod to Alice Hoffman's new novel "Local Girls" but was much more excited about (and gave more space to) what it called "Aural Fixation: Superb audio performance and fine-quality construction put the Harman Kardon FL8550 five-disc CD changer on the shortlist of stellar CD players under $1,000!"
Doesn't the hipper-than-life-itself Jeff Bezos know that books, toasters and Disney marketing tie-ins don't really work together? That they are distinctly different businesses, with different identities catering to different audiences? Bezos has tossed away his biggest advantage, the sense right or wrong that he was creating a different kind of company with something resembling an ethical sensibility.
He was only kidding. (Don't forget to link to drugstore.com on Amazon's home page for some aspirin, in case this column or those CDs give you a headache, in which case your geek buddies can send you a "Friendship" or "Love" E-card from Amazon's "E-Card" section).
Amazon was always as much mythical as real, as much hype as numbers. It always said more about the inadequate way we perceive and report on technologies like the Net than about books. Few companies have ever attracted more interest and publicity and made less money. Amazon's whiz-bang software - with its recommendation programs and one-click shopping - made Net book-buying a pleasure to thousands of people for the first time. And Bezos's public relations skills were as good as anyone's on the Web. He persuaded investors, business journalists and users that Amazon was a quasi-hip, rebellious alternative to the big bad chain stores.
Guess what? Amazon is now a lot worse than they are.
But that's over. Its distinct identity squandered, Amazon is truly a millenial corporation now. It does at least five things other companies and sites - eBay, MP3, Toys R Us, Fatbrain.com, BN.com - have done first or do better, and it's doing all of them at a loss. What a formula. And a cautionary tale. When it comes to doing digital business, hype is not only obnoxious, but nobody can really afford it anymore.
Your pun about Amazon's being a "millenial corporation" had me just dying. I was in complete stitches. However, I'm afraid that many of your undereducated readers will miss your sublime humour of employing MILLENIAL (mille=thousand + anus=arsehole) rather than MILLENNIAL (mille=thousand + annum=year).
The damn site is just to busy and throws to much BUY ME!!! in thou's face. Who cares??? I don't want to buy a babie, I wanted to see if they had any StarBlazer stuff =) I had a impression after my 1st time to amazon. What it's been up since 1995?? Well i guess i don't get out much.
Amazon's bookstore remains unchanged, you can still order books from there, and the quality of the service remains excellent. If you want toys, click the toys tab, it doesn't interfere with book shopping. If you want kaopectate for your nasty case of oral diarrhea, hit the link to drugstore.com.
Never buy tech books at Amazon. They almost never discount them. I'm not talking about "windows for Dummies". I'm talking about real tech books.
Powell's -- also sells used books; the online component of a physical store out in Washington
Waterstone's -- based in Britain (also physical; used to have a store in Boston that closed a few weeks ago)
Books.com -- internet only; very lage
Wordsworth -- a wonderful Cambridge, MA bookstore; buy books online
Schoenhof's -- extensive foreign bookseller
I don't know how recently you've ordered from amazon, but they have been consistantly bad about things recently. A friend and I were both in the same class, and ordered the textbook online. He ordered his from fatbrain.com, and I ordered from amazon. What a mistake!
The book, which was supposed to ship overnight, was not mailed for 6 weeks. When amazon finally did ship it, IT WAS THE WRONG BOOK!!! I sent it back to them. I should have asked for a refund on the spot, but I was assured that it was in stock and would be mailed immediatly. Another mistake. It's been 4 weeks and I have not heard a thing.
All that Amazon has been able to deliver to me are excuses and apologies. Which I guess is something- at least they aren't arrogant about their incompetance.
Of course you can't extrapolate on Amazon as a whole based on my experience. But to me, it seems they have taken a turn for the worse.
Correction- Harmon-Kardon made some fine gear. My Harmon-Kardon Award Series A400 integrated amplifier is a fine piece of equipment (and it was only $15 at a thrift store a decade or so ago!). It still has Harmon-Kardon brand vaccum tubes in the final output stages (I think one of the preamp tubes (12AU7) is an RCA replacement)
I dunno about the Japanese garbage (real H-K gear is made in the USA) they are slapping a H-K label on today...
However, just about every time I've checked, buy.com has better prices on books than amazon or B&N.
Geez, Jon, you can't tell me this was unexpected from a company that spams anyone who ever buys anything from them, and then conveniently ignores the remove requests?
I've never bought anything from Spamazon. Never have, never will. I find Powell's Books online version to be much friendlier, and they've never spammed anyone that I know of.
Life goes on. If it's books you're after, seek elsewhere.
If you want a real deal on books, bookpool.com has fatbrain.com beat.
Think of it as another Katz controversy troll.
Amazon will succeed like WalMart will. Nobody likes to pay more than they have to, no matter what the internet wanna-be kiddies 'think' want others to think...
I don't like that fatbrain's site doesn't allow me to fill in the form properly, since I want to pay by mail order. That Amazon has been really good about this has been really cool. Maybe that's a key to their success.
What, Amazon's book selection all of the sudden
sucks because they've expanded out into other
areas? Get real. It's the same as it always was.
I know people that work at Amazon, and the groups that handle each of these areas on the site are different people. They're hiring like crazy to keep expanding and to keep the quality up.
Sorry this didn't meet with your approval, but then again, they don't need it either.
-AC
I also agree. I think Jon is just looking at it from a stock price perspective. I mean, if they offer the best price on books and other items, why not buy from them instead of someone else? Who cares if they make money or loose money on each purchase, as long as I, the end consumer, gets a good deal.
If I can find the same book on BN, Amazon, Fatbrain, and Chapters (the Canadian one) I'm just going to buy from whoever gives me the best price and cost of shipping.
Powell's is actually in Portland, Oregon, and is the biggest and best book store in the country. You wont see the hated word "bestseller". Instead you'll find awesome modern, old, and rare books.
I am not affiliated, but I simply love it.
-- Anton
I'm not certain, but I think I saw an item recently to the effect that were Amazon able to become the vendor for all the books currently being sold in the world, they still would not be able to justify their present market valuation.
Just as a counter-opinion, fatbrain doesn't offer "science and technical" books. It offers computer books. Your selection in other departments is a joke. I do molecular / population genetics, for example. Of the 20 or so standard books that everyone in my field needs on their book shelf, you carry exactly one.
Amazon, on the other hand, has about 15.
Look at Microsoft. Investors love them. They love Walmart too.
If it makes money, investors love it.
IIRC, Microsoft is a large stakeholder in Fatbrain. Or maybe they own them outright?
Very well said. I'll add one question: Why do some people feel the need to tear down successful people?
What kind of logic is this? Amazon is only allowed to be successful in one line of merchandise?
What a load of bull. Anyone who has a problem with this is simply jealous.
You want books, books, and only books? Look
no further than Powells. The biggest bookstore
in meatspace by far.
http://www.powells.com/
p.s. Not affiliated with them. But love the fact
I live near them and can actually caress the paper.
Add bookpool.com , They are a technical bookstore and Oreilly books are heavily discounted.
I am Inventory Control Jedi at fatbrain's distribution center. Thanks for the plug. Even before I ventured down the path of fatbrain, I was seeing Amazon go the digital K-Mart way. I hope your article helps people see the light and realize that if you want the goods on computing and business in general, fatbrain is the best source. What we don't carry we can get for you. And quickly. Our FindItNow program for businesses is probably the best idea I have come across in a long time for delivering the latest tech literature and software for business use.
Thanks again for the plug. Because great minds think alot!
The reason pasting the Amazon URL doesn't work is that it encode session information into it, not just page info. The URL you used is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195019199/ o/qid=932050409/sr=2-2/002-6569728-27010 . Everything from "qid" on is part of your session; you should trim the url to be: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos /ASIN/0195019199.
So they sell other stuff too? How is that a problem? How does that destroy your view on Amazon. If the selling of other stuff hurts the acquisition or raises the prices of book sales, I might agree with you. I don't see that happening, though. I buy a lot of DVDs and anime through Amazon as well as books. It's one of the few web stores that actually gives you tracking numbers so you can know where your package is. And they're usually pretty close in their estimates of when you'll get your stuff. I say more power to 'em.
Now if only they'd expand their catalog to include video games (both domestic AND IMPORT) as well as import DVDs (non-region 1 stuff), I'd be in paradise!
...and I didn't see the word "geek" once.
Cpt_Kirks, wishing he could remember his password...
Amazons music store isn't that great, and the prices are just pathetic I'd rather go to Duffelbag.com or even CDNow any day. Besides, Amazon is all hype anyway. They were the first, they're doing a good job. But for chrissake, they're losing money and don't expect to be in the black for years! That's insane with the volume of sales they are doing.
I like browsing books. Flip through the book, and see if I want to buy it. Amazon didn't give me that, but my local bookstores do.
So I boycotted Amazon from the start, and even (politely) told off a fellow alumni trying to recruit me to work for Amazon.
Yes, mail-order is cheap, but you can't browse. If you do mail-order, the local stores can't survive.
Good riddance to Amazon.
When you forget your password and can't log in. You don't get your Katz block and then you're exposed to this.
Amazon is a store, stores make money by selling stuff. Amazon doesn't make money so they need to sell more stuff. Do the math.
Amazon may be the darling of the internet but I don't think their strategy of Branding and loss leader will work for too long. Most of the stuff they sell are commodity items where price is the main concern. With tools like mysimon.com and pricewatch.com, people can look for the lowest cost items on the internet. Unlike physical stores, loss leaders won't work because it is easy to go from one store to another and "cherry pick" the low cost stuff. If they can't make profit now where there are relatively few competitors, how will they when the market gets crowded?
If only it were always true....
I ordered Martin Fowler's Refactoring from Fatbrain. It didn't ship that day, it didn't ship the next week. I sent email to Fatbrain asking what's up and their service drone said it was out of stock and I'd have to wait. So I popped over to Amazon, saw they had it at a 30% discount ordered and received it in two days. I saved $5 over Fatbrain and actually received the book.
The moral is that no one of these on-line stores is going to be the best each time you go to them. But the ease of comparing prices and what's in stock means you don't have to have some emotional tie to the vendor to get what you want. So Amazon sells Pokemon? Big deal. If they can save me $$$ on a book I'll buy it there.
Er, successful at increasing sales and building marketshare. Amazon could be profitable anytime they want, but that's not how you win the game in the short term.
> Bezos has tossed away his biggest advantage,
> the sense right or wrong that he was creating a
> different kind of company with something > resembling an ethical sensibility.
Has there ever been such a sense in a significant
number of people?
I seriously doubt that, given that Amazon failed
to even try to protect their retail range against
censorship, but instead gave in all-too-easy.
This is the internet, and people are very
sensitive to censorship or its toleration by
distribution channels.
I think you ought to back up your notion that
amazon has been perceived as a company with
"ethical sensibility", because there is absolutely
no evidence to suggest this, and you simply
state it as a fact. Introspection is not a
suitable method of research most of the time.
I too got spammed and told them to take a hike. They sent me a gift certificate via email. So for those willing to give it a whirl, here is that certificate: (Follow up this post and tell me if it worked!)
Here's your gift certificate:
Amount: $10.00
Claim code (YOU'LL NEED THIS WHEN ORDERING!): DUFG-DRKB3F-QJFW6A
Expiration date: December 31st, 1999
Using your gift certificate is easy. Just follow these steps:
1.Visit our Web site at http://www.amazon.com
2.Select the items you want. Please use our Shopping Cart
rather than our 1-Click ordering to pay for your order
with a gift certificate.
3.When you have selected the items you want, hit the
PROCEED TO CHECKOUT button and continue through the order form.
4.At Step #2 on the order form ("Select a payment method"),
you *must* select the "Gift Certificate" payment method.
5.When you reach Step #6 on the order form ("Gift Certificate Claim
Form"), redeem your gift certificate by entering its claim code.
Please note that you must enter the code in order to use this
gift certificate.
6.Please note that if your order exceeds the amount of your
gift certificate, you must pay for the balance with a
credit card.
What bizarre fantasy world were you living in? Amazon is a typical retail business, and always has been. No big deal, and nobody cares.
well, I was ready to listen to what Katz had to say on this pretty interesting thought, and then he just stopped writing.
Come on, Jon. Not even a few more throwaway paragraphs that you write just to up your 'geek' count?
Feeling short-changed, but then again not really, know what I mean?
In the area I live about three independent book stores have gone under in the last few years. My attitude is tough. They had crappy selection compared to the local Barnes and Noble and charged higher prices. I see no reason whatsoever to feel sentimental about them.
As for Amazon, I must have spent over a thousand dollars on books there and have yet to have a single problem of any sort. Their user interface is far better than any other book site I've tried, likewise for their auctions. Their servers are fast and don't crash. If they want to deliver superior quality in other fields like toys and electronics more power to them. I don't think I especially care about those, but I'm always on the side of people who deliver a good, consistent user interface and Amazon do so more than any other site I know.
I have bought from fatbrain.com, but there were at least two problems. One was that the UI sucked compared to Amazon, the other was that I had to pay CA sales tax which I didn't have to do for Amazon.
Maynard
>>>>
. Well, one day I hit a page and discovered that I now had to scroll to get to those, because there was a big old honkin' section of stuff for auction that I might be interested in. Excuse me? What kind of engine decided that, since I was looking at Dan Simmons' Hyperion, that I might also be interested in some Power Rangers childrens pajamas? It got all the worse when he assimilated pharmacy.com, so now I can only wonder what sort of book I have to search for in order to get it to recommend some Viagra.
In the past this has not been very smart. I'm guessing they were trying to follow who bought what on auctions and find clusters, but with auctions all being one-offs, not like books, it's not clear that's going to work.
However have you tried to auction something recently? If you do so, when you auction a book you can enter the ISBN of the book. Then when someone wants to buy the book, they will be shown that the book is also available via auctions (and presumably at a cheaper price). I have used this and it works great. It's not perfect yet---in particular when you see the book via auctions, you can't click on a link that will take you to the Amazon:Books page so you can see reviews and so on---but I expect that will come.
My experience with Amazon has been that they are continually refining the algorithms and UI, only subtly so things just keep working better but one doesn't really notice it day to day.
Maynard
Two reasons why I'll never shop at Fatbrain.com:
* The name sounds like nerd bait
* They advertise on Slashdot
I read this article with some incomprehension. They want to sell someting other than books, what's wrong with that? Hey, I buy books there, as long as they carry them, what do I care about what else they offer? So I thought and then I noticed who wrote this piece... All right, all snapped right back into place. After all, however 'unhip' this Bezos guy is, he ain't making a living by scribbling junk on the internet. It's been quiet in here lately, so I let my Katz shield down .
Our country is sustained on advertising. You may not WANT to be reduced to a demographic statistic, but I'm sorry, that's the most efficient way to achieve what the business world -- and the structure of our society -- needs to survive.
If you're currently working to subvert capitalism (by situationistic tactics or plotting violent revolution), please disregard this message.
When ethics take precident over profit, it's really no longer capitalism. The motivation to "do good" as it were, is a profit incentive. If you're nice to people, they'll reward you with their business. If you don't dump waste in the local resivoir, people will still buy your gas. And in perfect markets, this works pretty darn well.
But markets are rarely perfect.
Your referencing the greater "womens'" industry is a particularly astute example. If they wern't instilling images of subservience and inferiority, the industry would collapse. The best method to push cosmetics is to tell someone they're not good enough, and then wrap it up in empowering language ("You're in charge! Take control over your (inadaquate) appearance!") Sure, some companies are going to say (and many have) "We at blah co. refuse to use anorexic models as we find these images demeaning, etc." This is a PR move to establish brand recgonition, and "anti-advertising" has been very hip and effective over the last couple decades. But the companies (usually) find themselves quickly ostricized and return to their previous tactics, albiet under a different names (i.e. the new charlie, etc.)
Truth in advertising and enviornmental issues went unregulated (by gov't) for a long time, but the market didn't correct them, even though it theoretically should have. Some blame technology, some say the unregulated system would have fixed everything, and just wasn't given enough time to function properly.
But regardless, you can vote with your dollars. Your vote may count for very little, but at least it's doing something. And I agree, the utilization of the net to bring these issues to attention rivals or surpasses that of the printing press, radio or television. All of which started out rather anarchistic and free, eventually coming under the thumb of the corporations. The same issues that caused old media to lose it's autonomy threaten the new media.
Or maybe I'm just ranting because I'm a convience store worker.
I'm generally buying smaller press books on esoteric topics (just put in an order to prometheus books, for example), and buying direct from the publisher (though it IS a few bucks more) is really the way to go.
For people outside the industry, smaller book publishers make very, very little money (profit) on each unit. Ordering direct is like writing a letter to your senator instead of just voting.
And if enough folks start doing this for them to hold back a significant part of the run for direct sales, the prices WILL drop below retail.
it probably does. Books are a small ticket item compared to what they're trying to push now. Say a hundred people get pissed and don't order their $10 book from amazon. If two people order the spiffy 1k entertainment center deal because of past positive association with amazon (your mindshare deal), amazon wins. They don't need to make a "serious" impact on previously dominated markets, they just need to scratch it.
Though serious impact would of course be preferable in their eyes.
but why have we deluded ourselves to thinking that corporations are anything but institutions trying to make money?
Because corporations attempt to portray themselves (and often succeed) as something other than machines hungry for profit.
It makes good advertising fodder, and people gobble up advertising fodder!
I'd never heard of Fatbrain (I've had plenty of luck with Amazon, but I go to the site on my Cox@Home cable modem and see this message:
"For better performance, we have moved our site to a new IP block.
If you are seeing this page, your ISP has cached our old IP addresses.
Please contact your ISP and request a DNS cache refresh."
Gee, Amazon never told me to call up Cox and ask them to refresh their DNS cache...actually, no site ever has. Apparently, these people have SO MUCH fat in their brains tht they can't even get this right.
I thought the whole point of the Internet was so that I didn't have to go calling people when they moved. Hmph.
And, no, I don't use Cox's proxy server.
Kubrick shot everything after Clockwork Orange at 1.37 but sent instructions to matte them down to 1.66 or 1.85, depending on the film and the country in which it was to be shown. Eyes Wide Shut will be shown at 2.35. My information is from IMDB and personal experience. I now wonder if WB was tampering with Kubrick's aspect ratios. What is the source of your information?
The reader reviews are what makes amazon valuable, no matter what it's selling. I was glad to read reviews of DVD players that said, "This unit shipped broken" and "I found the remote confusing" alongside "Overall it's really good."
This feedback is just as valuable for consumer goods as it is for books. Maybe you haven't learned the precious lesson you feel slashdot has to teach about interactivity: sites that have it are more useful.
Fatbrain doesn't offer reader feedback. Doesn't that make them dinosaurs in your buzzword-laden world?
While I agree that Amazon is not adding much value
with their new options, they're not taking much
(if any) away either. I can still easily find the
books I'm looking for and the selection is excellent. Recommending fatbrain.com instead of amazon is a joke. I went there (on your recommendation) and searched for a few of my favorite authors plus Stephen King for a "popular" author and the selection was terrible. Amazon had 3 times more than fatbrain on average. I'd say that amazon is still on top of the game.
There are much better places to get tech books anyway.
bookpool has all the O'Reilly books heavily discounted. A far better deal than Amazon, and minus any of the hype.
I object to the way Amazon.com keeps an active database of my credit card info anyway. They should throw that stuff away when they're done processing an order. I made the mistake of ordering from them once, and now they have my credit info in a database online somewhere that it could probably be snatched. A few weeks ago I asked them to remove the info in an email message and they turned it into a quiz game (asking me to detail what I ordered on my last order). It should be as easy as possible to remove that info from their online database. However, it's probably in their interests to play games with the customer.
I find www.digitalguru.com to be a better deal on computer books than www.fatbrain.com or www.amazon.com.
for books go to:
/.'er created the site
http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~bgannon/booksearch
a fellow
great results!!
The big problem with FatBrain and the others is that their delivery takes such a long time and they are so expensive. With Amazon it usually arrives next day, and its cheaper than anywhere else.
;-)
Oh, did I forget to mention I don't live in the USA.
Geography, what a bitch
Sorry, sorry. If an MTV person had commented with anything but "remember when they didn't suck," I'd have held my tongue. Hey, moderate away.
As an AC, I obviously didn't moderate the post down. Nor would I moderate it down had I the power to do so. But I can understand why someone might take such an action, had they been given the authority.
Katz isn't just saying "blah blah amazon turned poopie, i'm superior blah blah," he's making a social critique of our consumer culture as a whole, and the ongoing reshaping of the internet as just another forum to BUY BUY BUY, much akin to the fate of those other fantastically shiny and new mediums, television and radio.
His point can certainly be argued and debated until the cows come home. But that wasn't done here -- we quickly degraded into sandbox-esque name calling.
I don't think the original post was flamebait. Pointless and self-apparent, perhaps, but the vast majority of the Linux Uber Alles and Libertarian rants I see here fall into the same catagory. But certainly no need for me to personally insult the author.
Alternatively, if you hate Katz that much, do what everyone else does and filter his ass out.
All commerce sites expand until they offer online auctions. Those that cannot are absorbed by the ones that can
Hmm. I guess I don't understand where Katz is coming from with these complaints. Perhaps it's because I never worshipped Amazon as some sort of latter-day ecommerce God.
/. I hope you're not going to be paying Katz for these little opinion pieces.
It's a way to buy stuff. Period. Not hip. Never cool. I give them money, they send me the stuff I want -- only difference between Amazon and WalMart is, I don't have to walk further than the mailbox to get the stuff.
So Amazon has expanded the definition of the "stuff" they sell? Um... so? I buy books from Amazon because they get the books to me faster than barnesandnoble.com. I buy music from Amazon because they get the CDs to me faster than cdnow. I buy videos from Amazon because they get the VHS/DVD to me faster than reel.com (unless it's out of print; then reel.com is the way to go). It's about getting stuff to me quickly, not how the bloody web page looks.
If anything "broke" Amazon's previous business model, it's when they added the auctions -- because now you're not buying things from Amazon, you're buying things from other people *via* Amazon, which is different. I prefer eBay's auction to Amazon's, so I don't use Amazon for that. Simple. Nothing to preach about.
Rob, with all the new bucks rolling into
Powell's http://www.powells.com/ -- also sells used books; the online component of a physical store out in Washington
Waterstone's http://www.waterstones.co.uk/ -- based in Britain (also physical; used to have a store in Boston that closed a few weeks ago)
Books.com http://www.books.com/scripts/default.exe -- internet only; very lage
Wordsworth http://www.wordsworth.com/ -- a wonderful Cambridge, MA bookstore; buy books online
Schoenhof's http://www.schoenhofs.com/ -- extensive foreign bookseller
The more I read of Jon Katz's work the more I can guess he's one of those blithering "neterati" who read their mail from AOL but still put :
jonkatz@well.com
at the end of al their emails. Blinded by their own hypocrisy sometimes.
Skip
--------------------
flifson@csdotuctdotacdotza
Skip
--------------------
"To create an apple pie from scratch,
you first must create the universe."
Why does a successful e-commerce site have to be anything other than targeted? Why must they become all-things-to-all-people?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Fatbrain has reviews, not only by readers, but also by the staff. Just happened to pick up the softcover of "applied crypto" after reading the "our review" and some reader reviews.
I wrote three books that wound up on Amazon. For each of the three, I cliked on the "I'm the author" button and wrote in a summary with a pointer to my web site and a way to contact me. Amazon never published this. So I tried again a few weeks later (this was about last summer), again, no comments from me were posted. However, a lot of the critical comments from readers somehow made it to the comments section.
I did submit comments to other online booksellers and they were posted within 24 hours. I'll take my business to fatbrain from now on.
Yes! Support brick & mortar, independent bookstores!
Powell's in Portland, U-Bookstore and Elliott Bay in Seattle.
Sorry, but way back before (or maybe it was right whe) they added CD's I remember an interview w/ Bezos where he stated that his eventual goal was TO BE an online Wal-Mart, just that books was the best place to start out
I normaly support you Jon, but you missed the make this time
I go to Powell's Technical Books for all my geek reading needs. I prefer going to a physical store, so I can actually pick up and look at the merchandise.
--
I think he was referring to "capitalism sucking" rather than "Amazon sucking."
:)
I think; that's just my perception of his clauses
--Matthew
I disagree with your view vehemenently, Jon.
Amazon has given me some of the best customer service I've received *anywhere*. Fatbrain/computer-literacy have screwed up my orders before, have had poor turn-around times, and in general weren't very receptive to me as a customer.
On amazon, I've gotten turn-arounds in a matter of hours, I've never had a screw up, and any order modifications I've made were done with a simple request. I've gotten my regular post packages bumped up to UPS countless times, I've received thank you gifts from them, I can make money from them as an associate, and now I can buy CD's, toys and games from them.
Amazon's only screw up, imho, was their entry into the auction's market. I don't see the benefit in getting in here, given eBay's dominance. Perhaps Jeff Bezos will prove me wrong on this. I'm not holding my breath.
Their electronics section seems fine, though I think they're going to run into problems with providing detailed specs.. a quick search through the site reveals that some products don't come with complete specs, which is something I know I want to see.
In the end, Amazon is not an internet company. They're not a technology company either. They're a retailer. Their business model revolves around *ONE CONCEPT*: customer service.
Early investors in Amazon spotted this key element to Bezos' business plan, and jumped on it. Bezos has repeated the mantra in business magazines across the country: "We are not an internet company. We are in the business of making customer's lives easier. We are a customer service company."
If you don't buy the customer-service-as-business-model line, then you shouldn't invest in Amazon.
-Stu
Yahoo is dying?
That's a new one.
-Stu
yeah, your perfectly right. Trying to be an idol was great to get a big marketshare, but Amazon was financed only by selling more and more stocks when the bills got to high. Apparently for Amazon the moment has come where the rules of normal business and market have to be applied on internet-business, too.
Well if you don't like Amazon then try http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk.
Old addage - if you don't like the shop then go somewhere else...vote with your feet.
Martin
Fatbrain.com (formerly Computer Literacy) has always been a great online bookstore. I prefer them to Amazon.com whenever I'm getting technical books. Their shipping is usually a bit faster, too, and they actually do have real life stores if you're in California (great browsing!)
BookPool has the best prices on technical books I've found anywhere, typically 20 to 40 percent off. And they don't tack on bogus "handling" charges. The only book I've seen cheaper at Amazon was the Gang of Four book ("Design Patterns").
They don't have absolutely everything like Amazon, but they've had 95% of every technical book I've looked for.
The only other negative is that they don't usually have as many books in stock, usually around 50%. But they always seem to get them within about week.
I've ordered over a couple thousand dollars worth of books from them and have never had a problem. In the past, I would always go to Amazon to read the reviews and then order from BookPool. However, BookPool has just recently added the same kind of review mechanism that Amazon has.
After a serious plug like this I should probably tell you that I have no affiliation with BookPool and know absolutely nothing about them other than what I've seen on their website.
If somebody knows of a better place to get technical books, please tell me about it.
- Michael Zauzig
They've been on the net since BEFORE the web. I first ordered from them using a telnet client!
They have everything, and they don't give me a bunch of grief like crapazon.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Maybe you should try to order at amazon.co.uk: you will probably pay less for shipping, and you wont have to pay for customs when ordering from EU countries.
I have to disagree, why is that other book stores have been making money off their websites and Amazon.com can't seem to make a dime. Simple, they have been to busy trying to undercut everyone that they now have to sell other products. Is there a discount to those products - considering some the electronics I've seen I can get cheaper at DOW, or Good Guys, etc.
Amazon has been always about hype and I wouldn't be surprised that if they don't make money within another 2 years there will be no Amazon.com. And I think the lesson is less about the company practices and more about the initial hype and how the company sold it's hippness - now they have to try and recoup via other products (which are now the hype not the books).
Personally, it doesn't matter what they do but I can't stand to get on their site because of all the other products. It's easier to just walk into Barnes and Noble find the book I want - check BarnesandNoble.com to see if it's priced cheaper than the store and order it there.
At least I can then get a decent latte to go and it only took 15 minutes. Not the 35 minutes on Amazon.com!
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
And, by the way, let me take this opportunity to rail against people who take snipes at stores that are considered "common." Exactly what the !@#$% do you have against K-Mart? Oh, no, a store that sells inexpensive goods. Oh, no, a store where the working class goes to spend money. I can feel the property values dropping already.
In my case, it has nothing to do with classism. It has everything to do with the fact that big business (K-Mart, Walmart, etc) are large, monolithic, oppressive machines which destroy communities and dissolve American culture.
--
Michael Chisari
dominion@beyondtheweb.com
The point of being a consumer is finding the best price for the goods you want to consume.
I am not a consumer.
I am not a market segment.
I am a human being, thank you very much.
--
Michael Chisari
dominion@beyondtheweb.com
One point that hasn't been discussed is the difference between books and other commodities. I put books in a different category because they have an impact on the intellectual discourse of our culture. I think that it is important that midlist authors receive support and exposure. The old Amazon seemed like it would support that.
The early Amazon felt like a revolt against the cheesy mass-market booksellers because it was focused on tools for readers and an unlimited selection. It felt more like an small independant bookstore with a large catalog and powerful search and recommendation features. Now it seems that the original focus is lost and I am concerned that Amazon will sacrific editorial integrity and user experience for short term gain.
They have demonstrated this loss several times, first by accepting payment from publishers then by polluting the user experience with inline auction ads and now with electronic equipement noise.
It doesn't surprise me that Amazon is changing because there is little reward for having style and class on the Internet. It takes integrity to turn down all the offers to put up a little button here or there to plug some vertical service.
For the most part net users just want to find a product for the lowest cost, and why shouldn't they? There is no personal touch. The store isn't in your home town... such concepts mean nothing on the Internet.
If your local bookstore started to put up neon signs all over their building advertising other products, you would think it tacky. It is also tacky for a web site, but because we have no sense of patronage on the net it is the last resort for net businesses.
Sad, but true. Blame amazon if you wish. Yeah, they are a sellout, but so are all the people who will purchase a product anywhere because the most important thing is how many dollars they retain in their wallet.
I suspect I'm among a few who try to purchase my books directly from the publisher. It is more expensive, but the publisher is very cogniscent of their image and they do one thing: sell and produce books.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
I liked 'em better when they were computer literacy. Fatbrain is just a stupid name.
Just seems a little strange to plug 'em in the first couple of lines of the article.
I guess I never looked at Amazon with the same idealistic zeal that Jon Katz does. It's just
another online store, one that for the most part has treated me pretty well.
If and when their service starts to suck, then it's time to start buying elsewhere. Not because
they start selling toys. Personally, I like the idea....if I can get the same service from them on my Legos that I get on books, all the better for me!
Amazon has always treated me well.
Then why look for a different bookstore? Because Jon Katz says they aren't cool anymore? Puhlease!
As many folks have already mentioned, Amazon is a business, not a religion. If they take care of you and serve you well, then stick with 'em.
of course, it's all just advertising, but i don't like their cockiness.
I happen to know who their Marketing Director is, he used to work where I work, and he was/is a cocky bastard, so it's not surprising that their marketing comes off that way.
I can still get a good price on books there, and thier selection is still good - so why should I care if they sell other products too? Especialy since I might, on some rare occasion, buy one of thier other products as a present for a friend or relative. Heck, I already buy a Lot of music from amazon - stuff that I cant find in local stores. Same with books... Selection + price = good deal. nuff said. I'm not giving a place money based upon its attitude, I'm giving it money in exchange for goods.
man is machine
For me, it has nothing to do with if Amazon is trying to be an online mart or not. It is the availability on books, how cheap it is and how fast you can get the books. Actually, I coulnd't care less about the coolness of online stores. They should provide me with something I can't go out in the nearest store and buy.
In March something I ordered Programming with Qt and Samba: Integrating Unix and Windows. I was in no hurry to get the book so I took something called surface mail (= the banana boat).
Failure 1: Samba: The book Integrating Unix and Windows was out of stock and was never reprinted.
Failure 2: April 20 - July 15 is way too long for me. (I actually ordered the book in March but it was out of stock then)
Failure 3: The swedish custom wanted to have more than half the price of the book.
So from now I will buy my books from bokus.com in Sweden. They are more expensive but you get it fast at least. And bokus don't have nearly as much titles of course.
So much for global economy.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
I bought the WHOLE Kubrick Collection! 7 of his finest films on DVD: Lolita, Strangelove, 2001, Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket. (Oddly missing is "Spartacus", available elsewhere on DVD. His early film noir features "The Killing" and "Killer's Kiss" and army drama "Paths of Glory" are also recently available from the same distributor.)
2001 and Strangelove are blatant copies of the DVD titles previously available. (All but those two have a consistent title design, which would have been the collection's only production plus.)
While the director-intended formats are preserved (Kubrick shot full-frame and mono for everything after Clockwork Orange), the video quality is poor (The Shining looks like a worn VHS copy--I am not exaggerating) and there are few features worthy of note, and _no_ original features whatsoever.
Buying the collection as a whole affords no monetary savings or any other benefits. Pick and choose your favorite films if you must, but preferably just WAIT for a well-produced re-release. Warner Bros. raped our asses with this one, and they should be taught a boycott lesson.
--
#19845
I don't know where the hell this attack on Amazon is coming from. I've ordered dozens of books and DVD from them and have only once had a problem (*)--which was corrected with great courtesy and efficiency.
(* An extra copy of Ghostbusters rather than a Kubrick Collection, and now I wish I'd kept the extra and saved myself the agony of the shameful treatment given Kubrick's work in that over-priced under-produced set.)
Amazon has great prices, ships quickly and cheaply, and their user comments are usually (*) a valuable smart-buying tool. I look forward to using them to purchase a home theatre system and other non-media items.
(* The 5-star THiS iS thE MOST AWeSOmE MOVie EVER!!!! comments get annoying, especially when someone hasn't even seen the title for sale yet, but they're easily ignored. I browse comments and ignore the `average' rating.)
Amazon is an online merchant I've grown to trust through overwhelmingly good experiences, and I look forward to their expanded inventory.
--
#19845
Personally I lean towards Books&Bytes (www.bytes.com) for my technical books. It was better back in their brick and mortar days when you could page through books, but I'd doubt they'd spam people or do other annoying things. They've never been flashy or a hot market property or anything, just a book retailer that only sells computer books and has been doing so for about 12 years.
Maybe you should consider two things.
A. Amazon hasn't had a profitable quarter. YET.
B. Why do you keep expecting the best when all you are going to get is the worst in online retailing?
I don't really mean to sound so critical, but I just don't understand the problem.
Amazon.com was not making a lot of money while it was a "hip" and "trendy" place to buy books. So it's trying to expand to make more money.
But guess what? YOU CAN STILL BUY BOOKS THERE.
Honestly. Why do you expect Amazon.com to stay a books-only store when they're not making money from it? Does that make any sense at all from any kind of perspective? By expanding without killing off their books area, you can still get what you want (books) and they have the opportunity to bring more people in.
And, by the way, let me take this opportunity to rail against people who take snipes at stores that are considered "common." Exactly what the !@#$% do you have against K-Mart? Oh, no, a store that sells inexpensive goods. Oh, no, a store where the working class goes to spend money. I can feel the property values dropping already.
There is entirely too much elitism on the internet.
(Moderators, feel free to knock me down. I know I'm ranting.)
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Response object error 'ASP 0158 : 80004005' Missing URL /goto.cl, line 33 A URL is required. At least Amazon works.
Agreed.
Spamazon has sucked for at least as long as spamming has been their m.o. I almost choked when I read Katz's remark about Spamazon being "ethical". But fatbrain.com and (barnesandnoble|bn).com are also spammers, so they suck mightily too.
For online book-buying, I hear good things about Powell's.
Lumber Cartel(TINLC) #487
Welcome to Fatbrain.com!
The Internet's most comprehensive professional bookstore.
You're not going to find much Stephen King there, but it is a rockin' place for tech books.
Halfway into a rant about how Jon was wrong and it's okay to sell more than one thing at a site, I got spam from Jeff Bezos.
DEATH TO AMAZON.COM!!!!!
I WILL KILL HIM!!!
Okay, that may be premature, we'll see if they play nice and remove me.
Okay, there is supposed to be a "voice=sting" tag around "I will kill him!"
They showed up in the preview!
<like this>
Gahhhh! Clicking on preview converts & lt;'s into
the actual char in the comment editor!!
Grrrr. Not my day.
I must admit my disappointment at both this article and the responses to it. All of the respondents who tout pure economics as a justification for amazon's schizophrenia would do well to remember that the economics of capitalism also justify every one of Microsoft's practices, including not fixing bugs (people buy new versions anyway, so why bother investing valuable hours into fixing broken programs?) and trying to make every kind of software product known to man and drive it down the throats of every user (pretty much 'leveraging' the microsoft name, same as Amazon)
To me, the wonderful thing about the internet is that it creates/encourages a philosophy that looks beyond pure ruthless economics. Hello, Open Source/Free Software? Hello, Slashdot? What do we love slashdot for except for the relative narrowness of its focus?
That's the same thing I used to love amazon for, because when I wanted books I could go and buy/browse books, and not be constantly implored to go buy a CD, someone's old crap they found in the attic, the newest star wars toy, whatever.
I always thought the brilliance of electronic retailing was in it's specificity, not it's diversity. I HATE walmart, not just because they are demonstrably evil, but because going in to one is like wondering around in the capitalist wonderland on acid. Buy our shit, we don't care if you want it or not, we have it.
This is a serious problem with the recent interleaving of traditional corporate capitalism and the new philosophy engendered by the exponential explosion of communication and the consequent/consonant destruction of traditional geographic boundaries. It deserves serious discussion; neither Katz's too-short rant nor knee-jerk capitalist defense does it justice.
"Images are incapable of repose." - Bachelard
When things are in stock, they can't be beat.
gurrrrrr....... :-/
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Finally, that double major in Econ and Computer Science is worth the money! :)
Amazon's "generalization" of goods and services provided make sense from an economic perspective.
Consider if you will the perfect utopia of "Perfect Competition." In this nonexistent utopia all the firms would sell everything, and an equal amount of the population would go to each of these stores. In other words, if there were 5 firms, then 1/5 of the population would go to each. There would be no differences in price or quality, because each firm would be operating in perfect competition. There would be no premium for location, because travel overhead would be nil. And the products would be the same because information on said product would be free to all (think free speech and free beer.)
Because production overhead would be matched by marginal profits, and because various other costs (information, travel, etc) do not exist in this frictionless world, it would benefit each store to sell everything that can be sold, so that the other stores would not usurp the customer base. If I sold only Linux, FreeBSD and Windows NT CD's, my competitor can sell Linux, FreeBSD, Windows NT, *and* BeOS CD's, and thus usurp my market base (while keeping his). The increased customers from my store will make up for the cost of stocking extra copies of Linux, Windows and FreeBSD.
Of course this is never going to happen in the real world, because we do have travel expenses, and information is not perfect and free. Generalization has usually been restricted to areas which have a need of it, e.g, inner city corner stores where mobility within the block is free (walking) but mobility outside is not, or spread-out midwestern towns with a Wal-mart, but the next town or mall is 20 miles away.
On the Internet, however, the travel restrictions go down exponentially (although bandwidth is a concern, you can theoretically roar through on a text-only connection), and information becomes cheaper to produce (although quality assurance is another story entirely). Slopping up a web page takes no paper, you don't have to pay for a print ad, etc etc.
By this logic (which has gaps, because I don't think I have time to quote my books nor does anyone have time to read them, myself included =P ), it is befitting for Amazon or other on-line firms to generalize.
What would happen if Amazon only sold books and E-bay decided to sell books too? What would stop E-bay from stealing Amazon's customers? E-bay could as easily stock the books that Amazon stocks from the increased ex-Amazon revenue alone. And the cost of developing a front-end is negligible: same on-line engine, it's a sunk cost and it's nearly free to run a search-and-replace function to replace "Auctioning Stupid Computer Parts" to "Selling Stupid Books".
The Internet is the closest thing to Perfect Competition that anyone has seen, and the only thing holding it back is a Quality Assurance system (it's easier to lie over the net).
Perhaps we get the Internet ISO 9000 certified? heh.
me
mxfara@not^a^chance^spam^breath.wm.edu
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
An online store that only sells one kind of things is the norm these days, and it's patently silly.
Who wants to set up login accounts and billing profiles with different vendors for each type of product they buy? Who wants to use different interfaces for buying books, music, toys, shampoo and pizza?
No, all of this is going away, this whole silly "web browser" concept first and foremost. Along with the notion of "going to a web store".
I have a Palm VII. I have MySimon's comparison pricing applet for the Palm VII. I can stand in a bookstore and look up the best 25 prices on any book any time I want. And by this fall, I'm sure I'll also be able to order that book, or CD, or camera, or shoe, from any of those vendors.
This is all going to settle out into not just aggregation of pricing and catalog info as comparison-shopping services like MySimon already do. The next step will be aggregation of the buy process, so the buying will be done in a brandless environment through a higher-level aggregated shopping app. You won't know you bought that book from Amazon until the box arrives in the mail.
In the next few years, online shopping is going to assimilate into one large reverse auction experience, with companies like Amazon turning into little more than warehouse operations that participate in the bid process, unless they can offer value-adds like recommendations and promos for repeat buying. And the shopper won't even know it. From the shopper's point of view, they just know they're buying their book for a good price from one great big store.
Given this, expanding a lean pick-and-pack operation like Amazon's fulfillment center to do pick-and-pack of more goods in hopes of achieving economies of scale may be the only way to go.
Who's the dull, "unwired" guy now?
I'm *sure* (* denotes heavy sarcasm) all the /. peeps just *love* Fatbrain for their partnership with Microsoft...
You TOTALLY miss the coolest thing Amazon offers which is their excellent Advantage program for independent musicians and authors and publishers and now even for independent film and video makers
That a total unknown artist (who doesn't have a prayer of getting her product in a book, music, or video store without a serious distribution relationship) can sell their art on Amazon in my eyes makes Amazon one of the best ecommerce companies out there!
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
>> what is Amazon's core strength now
/. since it doesn't actually sell anything, although I use the comments here to decide on things to purchase or use)
for me, what has always set amazon apart [from all online retailers] were the reader comments. I spend hundreds of dollars per month on books, and those readers' comments have steered me away from some books that would've proven useless to me after all, and toward books I'd never have considered.
For example, I almost bought a title on XML which had 5 stars, excellent reader comments, and great reviews all around -- until I read one little comment toward the end that complained about the book's focus on IE5's implementation of XML. (of course, I haven't totally written the book off, but I'm going to eyeball it first at a physical bookstore before plopping down the $35 on it).
I think it'll be great to see user comments on particular toys (ie, "it broke after the first use"), and possibly electronics, although I suspect that you'll see less useful reviews on the big-ticket items -- more like "holy wars" trolls... think "PalmPilot vs Jordana".
AFAIK amazon owns the market [right now] on "shoppers' reviews", and that's its edge. (I'll exclude
Speaking of Applied Crypto, I recently bought the revised edition of that myself, and was postively floored by the number of reviews [at amazon], as well as the quality of those reviews. There are a few "Great!" comments, but many of them focus on what's lacking from this tome... in detail.
Contrast that with the one user-review at Fatbrain which states simply that the book is pretty amazing.
Get a life and grow up.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Now, why didn't B & N bother to contact my friend and inform him of the problem? When he berated them for this "excellent service", he was promised "free shipping" on a future order. Terrific. Why would he want to use them ever again?
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
These posts are called "flamebait." Big Whoop. The Entire Article by Katz is Flamebait. Practically anything the man submits here is flamebait (witness his use of feeble stereotypes and appeals to techno-elitism).
Why, in response to a flaming Katz article are these two posts considered "flamebait"? Why is the original article allowed to flame but responses to it are not?
Hmmmmm???
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
This article demonstrates why many Slashdot readers feel Katz misses the mark in his articles. He misses two things in this epitaph for Amazon's hipness: what they did right -- & what they did wrong.
What they did right was a simple thing: combining a forum with a sales site. It allowed customers to talk to each other, to help to select the best product. That Amazon offered lower prices than the average corner store was just an added benefit.
Some of the more Net-savvy observers thought that Amazon had a clue about how the Internet worked: it's about communication, & building a community by sharing information. People who use the Internet aren't eyeballs -- to quote the Cluetrain Manefesto -- they are talking to each other: & if you aren't listening as well as talking, people will stop listening to you.
Then Amazon decided to spam people on the Internet, which was the wrong thing to do. Anyone with an email address will tell you that they don't like spam, & this is a surefire way to break up the exchange of information.
This proved that Bezos believed that he only had a gizmo, a single cheap trick that garned him attention. Since that moment, every step Amazon has taken only shows that they don't understand the Internet: they've rolled over when the ``Church" of Scientology complained about listing _A Piece of Blue Sky_ in their catalog, they've deleted comments from their forums to appease publishers. And Amazon has yet to show how it will ever make a profit.
Instead of making his points by detailing these actions -- as well as others -- Katz is content to make generalizations on Slashdot better saved for people less informed.
I hope Jon will consider this when he writes his next article.
A last thought concerning Amazon: had Sanford Wallace taken Cyberpromo thru an IPO, I wonder if its shares would have reached a couple of hundreds of dollars apiece, too? From what I could tell, Wallace at least made money at some points from that company.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I've been ordering from Amazon.com since '95, when they included hand written notes thanking you for ordering from them.. now they're just another huge faceless corporation, no more exciting than going to your local Border's or Barnes & Noble. The addition of other junk just makes their site seem like buy.com, or onsale, or any of those other blue-light special sites.
It's really sad...
-s
---- noi non potemo aver perfetta vita senza amici -- Dante
the good news: A Katz article with only 442 words!
Chuck
I have a very short attenti....
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Personally, I would never, ever order a book from fatbrain.com or barnesandnoble.com - they use Windows servers, and I refuse to support companies that use Windows when there are alternatives. Amazon, of course, uses Digital Unix.
What a bizarre comment.
Did it ever occur to you that they use windows because it happened to be the best option for them? Even if you accept that a Unix solution would be better, there are a whole load of very good reasons why they might have NT. For instance: imagine that when they started up, they only had a few guys on board and the server guy happened to know NT best. Naturally, they would then choose NT. Now, given that it would be a pain for them to change over to a different system, why should they? especially if the systems they have at present does the job anyway.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
In general, companies don't tend to be religious about what operating system they use - they have their own best interests at heart and will do whatever they feel works best for them. It's not some weird conspiracy or anything...
I am very pleased with the service Amazon has given me. They've had good prices and delivered my books on time. I'm going to order a new one today - O'rielly's web navigation book, and I'll be getting it from Amazon.
/. would otherwise never see.
I really think Katz is off the mark here. Amazon is a business, not a shiney toy-like net thing to be oooo'ed and awwwed over. I wonder why he's trying to hurt Amazon's image here. I don't think it will work. Amazon does help out websites such a Slashdot, giving them a few hundred bucks when you click through. Its free money for Slashdot, money
...when I said a few hundred bucks for click-through money from Amazon to /., I mean web sites can may a few hundred bucks a month or a quarter depending on how much traffic a site gets and how many people order through the click-through.
It amazes me the level of unthought that goes into some of JK's media knee jerk articles.
Big Biz is always the Bad Guy, Money is the Wages OF Sin, Winning=Loosing....
With amazon I think the jk trend is once again clearly shown. Let something grow big enough, then smash it down with an 3l3tist underdog punchout.
Now lets set aside the rhetoric of the "opressed masses being down trodden by the evil captialist" and look to see what is being said here.
JK loved amazon, had lurid dreams of mass market geeky splendor over the IDEA of buying books over the net. It is a great idea to be sure, but as with all blowhards and windbags for hire JK was predestined to turn on that which he loved so well.
JK i think would be quick to throw his verbal support behind most anything that Looks like a geek and Talks like a Geek and , thanks to the current mass market mangling of the word, is as far from Geek as Starbucks is from JD's Corner Cafe and Cigar Emporium
He is not alone in this. How many things do you support that have the out apperance of this thing called "geek" but are in fact simple old trype in new terms?
Amazon is out to make a bigger growing bizness. Wow..what an evil thought. Im sure JK would continue to bow at thier feet ifthey had at least kept thier "small net industry" image another year or two, even though as has been pointed out here Amazon is one of the forces in destroying something called Local Booksellers.
Now some may say this destruction is bad, some may say it is merely the consolidation of forces under one marketable net image (insert SF ad created logo and qt file here). Some would argue that it is the diversity of an indusrty that keeps it growing,not in the every grwoing unisource approach.
For myself, I spend my money (which is how consumers VOTE for a thing to stay in existence) at a local book sellers named Powells Tech. In Portland Powells is the biggest little bookseller:)- Also in Portland there are great little local SF shops, Record stores and specialty shops.
It is a city, in short, whos economy supports the idea of capitalistic diversity in the face of mass market monarchy.
Think Global, act local is a phrase often used but rarely understood.
I would suggest JK look beyond the press releases and obvious children of the so called geek movement and judge on a value system, rather than a system of rhetoric.
--No animals were harmed in this adventure in misspelling--
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Yes, I remember books.com too, from the time they were accessible via telnet only and then their move to the WWW. I made my first online shopping there. They had a very nice service. Their interfaces where never as good as those of Amazon, but I still continued to buy some books to them.
They offered ebooks too... It was a pleasure to return there.
Until one day... they were bought (by Cendant, I believe). Suddenly, the spirit was gone. Only the name remained. They moved to Windows servers. Their interfaces were horribly broken, their uptime a disaster. Marketing at its worst was there to ruin it all.
The BookStacks we knew and love, the BookStacks that should be praised in any history of the bold online commerce pioneers, had died.
For some of those who had been on the Internet since before the WWW big bang, it was a very, very sad day.
The way I always order from Amazon is simple: I find about $ 100-200 worth of books that I want to buy, get a 30% discount on them, punch the order button and walk away a happy man. For ordering expensive or hard-to-find books, like Christopher Alexander's stuff, it's perfect.
But I gotta tell you, a 10-12% discount just doesn't thrill me compared to the fun of wandering into a consumer electronics store, looking at the pretty products in their boxes, and grabbing the one I want right then and there.
I will admit that there's something unsettling about suddenly seeing books shoved into second place. This is probably even more true if you're a published author like Jon, and even more so if you've been on the Amazon bestseller list.
Still, this is one Jon Katz piece that I think should have been longer. I'd like to see more of his reasoning behind why this is so unsettling to him. But it doesn't strike me as a truly seminal shift; the books are still there on their virtual shelves, the customer reviews are still there. As far as I can tell, all is well. I'd like to hear a more detailed reason for his turning on Jeff Bezos and pals.
Personally, I would never, ever order a book from fatbrain.com or barnesandnoble.com - they use Windows servers, and I refuse to support companies that use Windows when there are alternatives. Amazon, of course, uses Digital Unix.
D
PS But maybe something did change. I copied and pasted that URL into my review twice and both times it didn't work. Bizarre! I wonder what's going on.
----
I just needed to go to amazon.com to look up the reviews on a book, and what do you think I saw?
--
We'll be right back!
We're sorry, but our Books, Music, Video, Toys, and Electronics stores are closed temporarily.
We expect to be back soon.
--
Oops.
Maybe Jon Katz is right?
:-(
D
----
The sad truth is that the massive bookstores bring us more choice and selection than ever. The main reason I don't buy something when I venture into a bookstore is that it doesn't have something I feel in the mood for. The bigger the bookstore, the more likely they are to have something I want at the time.
It doesn't have anything to do with price; it has to do with selection. And this, of course, is also why "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" is so successful.
I can certainly be made to feel sad about the decline of independents, even though the bookstore mentioned in the LA Reader as the epitome of these problems is still in business. It happens that bookstore, Midnight Special in Santa Monica, was able to retain its niche of leftist books, especially since leftists feel like they are Doing the Right Thing by supporting it.
I think one of the biggest things B&N, Borders and Amazon have done is to increase the number of readers, and increase the number of times I and others can go to a bookstore and find an interesting book we haven't read before. In my view, that's a great service, and that's why I love the big stores.
D
----
Why is Amazon going to suck just by selling something more than books? What's wrong with they selling toys and other stuff?
Why does Jon Katz tell me where to buy? What makes him believe I care about his opinion on Amazon?
Katz speaks as if he was the biggest leader after Jesus. It's even worse than ESR.
Alejo.
As someone who happens to own a large number of shares in Amazon, and has since almost-day-one, I enjoy the fact that Bezos is actually trying to make money. Most people fail to realize that even though Amazon loses more every month than it did in the prior month, they will eventually make money. Most marketting students should recognize the stage Amazon is currently in. They shouldn't be expected to make money from day one.
I do, however, believe that they are completely overvalued, and that they're in for an 'adjustment' (hate that term... i say crash). Since I was one of the fortunate enough to have bought my stake early... I'm cheering them on.
You must remember, the day Amazon finally makes a profit my AMZN will SOAR. At least, that's what I'm hoping will happen.
Since Amazon is a public company, it should report to it's shareholders, and only it's shareholders...
I would recommend that anyone who has a problem with the path that Amazon has chosen, who also happens to own stock in the company, send them a letter, as a concerned stock holder, telling them how you feel.
Toot
-Chad K
Are you posting AC again, Jon? Thanks for parsing the article. You're a great writer after all.
When I click on the "Books" tab, it looks about the same to me. Didn't the "Amazaon Era" end when they added music? Or did it end when Jon noticed that it ended? I think the latter.
the new Amazon sucks profoundly.
Why would they change such a great company?
Few companies have ever attracted more interest and publicity and made less money.
I think you answered this question, Jon.
It may not be as hip as you want it to be, but the "hipper-than-life" Jeff Bezos has to make a company that makes money one day.
At least you're not bitter about it.
Thanks for the info.
Jon,
:)
Frankly, let's leave youthful idealism to those that haven't figured out that it's about the money.
As for Amazon.com, more power to them. Dell has been selling computers the way Amazon sells books, for some time now. It works great.
Let's look at it from Bezos's point of view. If things other than books can be sold the same way, why should WE do it before someone else does?
And now I can get more shopping done in fewer clicks.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
What Jeff Bezos would like you to do is associate Amazon.com with all of your shopping needs. He wants consumers to be able to go there and buy everything they need on one convenient site. Yes, this is similar to the K-Mart approach, but do consider that it takes advantage of a completely different medium.
That type of advertising irks the hell out of me.
"Had a high GPA in college but still not adept enough to see through transparent advertising techniques? Come to Fatbrain so we can get your money!".
I'm lucky enough to live in Manhatten where I can go to McGraw-Hill bookstore and find most computing books sensibly organized. They're tax deductible so I won't sweat that I could've gone to Amazon and saved $6. It's more fun browsing that way anyhow...
AC
They also have two stores in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
... the Seminary Co-op. I remember it well. Too bad there's nothing in Minneapolis that compares.
Ahhh
JFB
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Or if you're in the New York City area, you could try Strands, a store on (I think) 17th and West end.
Mark Prindle, the most underappreciated genius on the web.
It's funny. When AMD competes with Intel, or anyone competes with Microsoft, we cheer them on, praising the virtues of capitalism and competition and blasting Intel and Microsoft as monopolistic. However, when Amazon competes with eBay, we feel vaguely uneasy, start to like the company less, and generally think to ourselves "couldn't they have done something they weren't already doing?".
I'll admit that I feel the same way in both cases. Apparently, the public will tolerate and even protect a single supplier they like, but do everything to attack a single supplier they dislike. And for whatever reasons, we like eBay and eToys but we don't like Intel and Microsoft.
I might be projecting too much here, but this is why I don't have as many warm fuzzies for Amazon any more, and I think maybe it's the root of the general sense of disgruntlement that led to Katz' article -- not Amazon's diversification per se, but entering into head-to-head competition with popular, well-liked sites without even giving them a nod for having pioneered the space.
> I don't like it very much, but it typically gets the job done.
Then why don't you make the effort to vote with your dollar? If you don't like the way something is done in any way, then find an alternative. It is actually quite easy to pick and choose as a consumer. If everyone continues to slip into the lowest common denominator, then that is all companies will service.
Gabe
I used to think Barnes and Noble was the Devil, until I went to visit my relatives in Nebraska after the Lincoln B&N opened and realized that for the first time I could remember Lincoln had a decent bookstore and a decent cafe. (Before B&N opened, "cafe" in Nebraska meant "diner", and "bookstore" meant "Cornhusker football souvenir store". Or Walden's.)
So I no longer think B&N is the Devil... yet.
But: Once upon a time, Microsoft wasn't the Devil either. Windows 3.x and DOS 3.3, like Barnes & Noble, were serious improvements over what was available before. The fact that they weren't a Mac and weren't UNIX was totally irrelvant in 1989 to those of us with PC/ATs and no money to spend on new hardware, just as the fact that B&N isn't Powell's or City Lights isn't relevant to those of us with nothing better available than Walden's.
Ten years later it's a different story -- what started out as a tool for empowering users has become a set of shackles (and it's still not as easy to use as MacOS or as powerful as UNIX). We're damned lucky to have Linus and the Internet and the Free Software movement to give (some of us) reasonable alternatives.
Here's a scenario: It's 2009. B&N and Borders together hold 90% of the bookstore market. Amazon, never quite profitable, and unable to raise more capital after the 2001 market crash (which put a serious dent in investor's enthusiasm for vaporware tech stocks), is long since out of business.
Without competition from the independent bookstore, do you think the chains will continue to carry those independent publishers? I'm afraid they'll be more like SuperCrown -- the NYT bestseller list, the Oprah list, a selection of media tie-in children's and coffee- table books, and a few Penguin Classics as loss leaders.
(If you think two vendors in an industry is enough competition, have a look at the US auto industry before the advent of Japanese competition, or the US computer industry before the advent of the PC.)
If we're lucky, new technologies like electronic distribution and just-in-time publishing will save the publishing industry the way the Internet and open source are saving the OS industry. But can we count on that? Should we trust to luck?
I'm not worried about Barnes & Noble now, but I'm worried about what they have the potential to become.
(P.S. If you have both a Border's and a Barnes & Noble in your town, compare them. Border's is usually better. Why is that?)
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Head over to this onion article for a truely excellent explanation of why the majority of net people will probably love this.
Or even if you don't care about the amazon thing (in which case you're probably not reading this post) head over anyway, because it is an awesome article.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I knew something didn't feel right when they started having online auctions. Now I know they are more focused on selling whatever crap they can push than on selling books.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
Indeed it was a wise man who once said, "times are a changing".
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
I've spent many hours browsing through amazon, reading reviews, getting linked to suggested authors, and reading through the recommended lists. the experience i get by using amazon is similar to how i feel when i go through a used bookstore. you really don't have to go in knowing what you want, but can just peruse the site at your own liking. though amazon isn't as an authentic experience, it does provide a very intelligent and sophisticated place to go if you're interested in books. i wouldn't want to draw conclusions, but fatbrain.com seems to be a place geared towards the computer-oriented individual. though i enjoy reading computer related text, i do also enjoy literature. and fatbrain doesn't work in that case. another thing is that i really don't buy much from amazon, probably 1/2 of the books i purchase (esp computer books) i get from asces.com (which is similar to http://www.pricewatch.com for books). usually amazon doesn't have the best deals, though sometimes it is very convenient place to go buy that next book for you library. a side note: music on amazon is bad? i'm sorry, but music on amazon is very similar to the books. i've spent time searching through there, getting cross-referenced to other musicians and reading reviews. the way they've included music in their site leaves little to be pissed off at.
Amazon has always said that books were just the start. I like what they're doing. Who cares what shows up on the default page? All you ever do is click on the tab for the category you want and then enter something in the search box.
More is better.
Go to http://www.nominalia.com and register fuckamazon.com.
;)
I agree with many of the negative comments about this piece. I have ordered from Amazon many times, and none of my orders were submitted because Amazon was cool . I order from Amazon for a number of reasons: they have the books that I want, the books that I want are easy to find, I can judge a book's quality by the user comments, and they process my order quickly.
However, Jon does make at least one valid point. In many ways, Amazon functions as a guide to books. There are thousands of technical books available, and it is difficult to know which books are worth their price. Amazon's recommendations help narrow this selection process. However, in order for this "expert" advice to be valid, the customer needs to trust whoever is doing the recommending. Having links to useless crap from nearly every page (not to mention the fact that they sell prime viewing space) gives the impression that Amazon is more interested in making a quick buck than in providing useful and accurate recommendations -- even if there is no real effect of one on the other.
I haven't been in the market for technical books recently, so I just picked the first 5 that I could think of from work:
:^)
1. "Winning Ways, Vol. 2" by John Conway et al.
2. "How to Solve It" by George Pólya
3. "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter
4. "Artificial Minds" by Stan Franklin
5. "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell
Amazon had 1, 4, 85, 4, and 43 reviews of each book, respectively.
Fatbrain had 0, 0, 0, 0, and 4.
What can we conclude? Not much.
1. Amazon has more traffic than Fatbrain. Therefore, more reviews. Not very insightful.
2. I shouldn't have moderated the original post in this thread to +2. This should fix that.
3. I don't know enough technical books to do an extensive survey; maybe they've got more depth in other fields besides math and theoretical comp-sci.
--K
--
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
If not, then I'd suggest revoking Mr. Katz's posting privileges.
OTOH, perhaps it's just the "American Way" (TM) to seek ego gratification in such mundane activity as shopping. Perhaps Mr. Katz thought that somehow by clicking around (what a "Hip" (TM) activity - buying books!) on the Amazon in his underwear he becomes a part of the "elite" - an information age equivalent of wearing tuxedo to a theater.
Amazon is not a social community - it's just another intermediary between authors and readers. And as price comparison shows, it's not a particularly efficient intermediary.
And as far as readers' comments go, IMNSHO it's much better to stop by your local "evil chain" store, pay for a beverage (optional) and familiarize yourself with the book/CD/whatever.
A store is a store is a store!
Electronic bookstores a dime a dozen these days when everybody and his dog can buy e-commerce packages and support. Just to name a few:
www.a1books
www.booksamillion.com
www.buybooks.com
www.shopping.com
And then of course, there's the "equalizer" that compares prices in many stores:
www.bottomdollar.com
What is the point of all this vitriolic rambling?
You accuse Amazon of becoming a 'tacky online K-Mart'. The point of being a consumer is finding the best price for the goods you want to consume. If that means shopping at K-Mart instead of Eddie Bauer, then shop at K-Mart.
From a programmers perspective I will agree that an expanded Amazon is a bit confusing. I would never extend my bookstore object with a buyToy() method. It isn't object oriented. But Amazon exists in the business world, where being a bookstore does not preclued you from selling other things too. If Amazon is able to expand their market and include toys and electronics, more power too them.
I have also found their service incredibly friendly, helpful and *gasp* generous when it comes to replacing an order which got lost while upgrading the shipment at the same time.
I just wish they could ship via regular airmail which might be a little cheaper for me than worldmail. However, I am not complaining. Shri - A happy Amazon customer.
I have been an investor in Amazon.com since mid '98. To investors, and to those journalists that would listen, Jeff Bezos has firmly stated that he NEVER wanted Amazon.com to be "just an Internet book store". Bezos always wanted to have the best Internet shopping experience. He believes that an e-commerce business is vastly more efficient than a "brick and mortar" business. This means that inventory can be sold at lower prices, and lower profit margins, while still turning over fast enough to be profitable. In order for this to work you need to have a LOT sales. This means building a strong brand FAST. Books just turned out to be the fastest way to start a very large e-commerce operation for amazon.com. Now that have many customers and many return buyers (67%), they are in a perfect position to expand into more difficult markets. Also notice that the same infrastructure makes their book sales so efficient works equally well for their other endeavors. Their customers do not have to re-learn a new interface, enter in their personal information for the 10000th time, or figure out how to contact the company. It's all the same.
Many stock analysts insulted Amazon investors for running up the price of an "internet bookstore" that wasn't making any money, and in fact publicly stated that they were going to spend MORE. Now it should be clear why.
My humble opinion..
Aramis
Nah... Yahoo's not dying. But it is (IMHO) suffering. Too much trying to be all things to all people. Sure people will continue to use it, but not because they like it. More like it's the path of least resistance.
The same is true of Amazon and Microsoft.
Yeah I know I can filter him out...
But why does CmdrTaco keep posting this crap?
Amazon.com is an online store, out to make money.
Always has been. They have a slick interface,
great service, low prices, and great selection.
They applied these same things to some new
categories of items. HINT JON: You don't have
to go to the toys section if you don't want to
buy toys! I know, it's weird. You can actually
stay in the books area if you want.
Personally, I think it's f**king cool to be able
to order a book, a DVD, a CD, and an electronic
gadget from one online store -- especially from
Amazon (for all the benefits listed above). This
is way beyond KMart or WalMart. Amazon.com is a
great site and a great store. I wish I had bought
stock in them when they first came out...
I bet Jon still thinks R.E.M. is a bunch of
sell-outs! Grow up...
-WW
--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
Amazon was never in the book business. Since the beginning, Amazon has been in the business of selling convenience and a great shopping experience. (Bezos chose books first because they are the ultimate commodity. They are well categorized and indexed with ISBN numbers. There is a large body of existing product information in the form of reviews, blurbs, and publisher information. And the existing book supply chain infrastructure was reliable enough to fill orders on demand.)
Bezos always had expansion in mind. He realizes that what is more important than the commodities themselves is the value that the Internet adds. The intangibles are important, not the hard goods themselves.
Amazon has always lost money. The argument that they are expanding into more industries and still losing money indicates two things:
Good point. I was really surprised when you mentioned A1Books.com -- they are located in my (small) apartment complex (15 units, plus two commerical spaces), located in a NJ suburb about 30 miles from Manhattan. I never knew that anyone else had even heard of them.
I guess I should try ordering from them some time, as long as they don't make me pay for shipping.
Amazon was handy for relatives sending gifts and the like, but they may now suffer for what is killing Yahoo -- too much added junk, not enough attention on what made them worth visiting in the first place.
Oh, and nice article Jon. :)
-- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
Jon,
You really miss the mark here, methinks. You seem to think that Amazon.com is evil because they are trying to provide their already great service to a wider audience of people. What a crock.
What is Amazon.com known for? I'd say the following: Great selection (still lacking in the toys and electronics, but you can't just stock 8,000,000 toys and gizmos overnight), Great service (they STILL have the best service by far of any online store), and a fast site (I can't stand waiting for pages to display). They still provide those qualities in spades, but now I don't have to deal with some idiot just out of Junior High at Best Buy when I'm looking at DVD players.
You really need to get off your high horse on this one, man. Amazon.com is just trying to expand their immensely good site and service to a wider audience, in an attempt to not get blown out of business by the Sonys and Barnes & Nobles of the world.
see ya,
-nate
Wow, you really got me going on this one, Jon.
I seem to notice a trend with your critiques of other people's work on the net. We (I count myself as one of the workers since I build commerce sites for a living) spend our time building these great portals (Amazon.com IS a great portal, and they happen to sell books, etc, too) only to have people like you say things like "yeah, it's nice, but I wish you hadn't done X or Y" and we just say "well, don't look at X or Y if you don't like them"
Go away. If you want to buy books, the books chunk of Amazon.com is still a great site. If you want music and DVDs, they are also a great site. Their toys and electronics are still in need of some work (it's been live for what, 4 days? Give it a little time).
I don't know where you get off pissing on Amazon.com because you think they used to be some super-shiny nice place where everyone was happy, and now simply because they sell PokeMon toys they are the personification of evil. What a freak you are.
bah,
-nate
You're quite right. Amazon is doing what it always planned to do--becoming THE place to buy things on the web. It has been Bezos' plan from the beginning, and he has never tried to pretend it wasn't his plan.
If you're looking for a KMart of the web, then Buy.com is as far as you need to go. But if you want great customer service, Amazon is a better choice. I will continue to shop at Amazon because they have, quite simply, given me the best customer service I have received from any store, online or offline. I appreciate that and I reward that with loyalty. Plus, their store kicks ass, to be blunt. I still find their book store to be better than real world stores when it comes to finding a good book you weren't looking for. And they always give good recommendation for music and videos as well.
And Jon, instead of saddling us with bitching about the good old days, why don't you just change your bookmark from www.amazon.com to www.amazon.com/books. Takes you straight to the books front page, where nary a Pokemon is to be found. And the same applies to their other stores! Yes, www.amazon.com/music and www.amazon.com/video take you to the music and video stores, respectively. It's not too complicated, really.
I never saw Amazon as just a bookstore. I saw it as a great shopping experience because it, honestly, always has been for me. So whenever I decide I can afford that Diamond Rio, I'll be heading straight to amazon.com/electronics. And next Christmas, when I need to pick up some presents for my nieces and nephews, guess where I'll be clicking to?
That's right. www.amazon.com/toys. Pokemon or no Pokemon.
Joel Caris
The reality is that Amazon is unprofitable mainly because they don't want to be profitable. For starters, their book business was profitable in the fourth quarter of last year. And it may also have been for the first couple quarters of this year, though I don't know for sure. So it is quite possible to be profitable just from selling books and Amazon has done that. It was their other sections (the new-at-that-time music and video sections) that caused them to lose money.
Second of all, Amazon has publicly stated that they have no intention of being profitable at this point. That, in fact, they consider it a mistake. May sound ridiculous, but Amazon's ultimate goal is to rule ecommerce. Every section of it. As it has been stated numerous times, they want to be the Wal Mart of the web--a multi-billion dollar ecommerce hub.
Which means expansion. Book to music to videos to electronics and toys. Then on to software (which will probably be next), then maybe flowers or jewelry or travel or cars or whatever the hell they think will sell on the site. Expansion takes money. Advertising--building brand awareness--takes money. And they plan to spend more money than they take in for at least another year or two.
Amazon loses money because they want to. Because that is the plan. Not because they are incapable of being profitable. And Amazon has said that to their investors many times.
When Bezos started Amazon, he was not thinking of selling books. He was simply think of selling--on the internet. He researched 20 product groups and settled on books because of the huge selection and other factors. It was a good product to sell on the web, as he has since proven. But he never intended to sell only books. Why do you think he called the company Amazon instead of something with "book" in the title, or relating to books? He wanted to dominate from the very beginning.
When Bezos decides Amazon should start being profitable, he will make it profitable. In the mean time, his plan is to dominate the world of ecommerce. And he will carry out that plan by eventually selling anything and everything.
Joel Caris
I agree that the best sites are ones that offer a focused set of features, and do it well. Some people seem to think the only way to make money is through a ponzi scheme of constantly expanding product offerings. Buy books at Amazon! Buy your underware at Amazon! Try our Amazon frozen pizza! Don't forget our Amazon suppositories from our new Amazon drug store, and pick up a few ferrets at Amazon's amazing new pet section while you're at it!
Take a look at what's really making money - Porn. You don't see them branching out into toy stores, do you? Well, not Furbies at least. Or, at least, not that I want to know about. Ok, bad point.
Amazon used to be useful when they had focus. Now they are slipping - sure the book store looks the same. But the price difference is slipping, and the quality seems to be degrading. For those that think Amazon is still fine - do you really buy as much as you used to from Amazon? Isn't it true that in many cases now, alternatives like BookPool, Fatbrain, and 800.com (for CD's and especially DVD's) offer you a better price?
The only thing Amazon really has going for them still are reader comments (which I love, and don't understand fully why someone hasn't been able to do a similar thing in a way that does not get them sued).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think there is anything wrong with them trying to leverage the brand into something more, but I think they have lost focus, and are hurting the very brand they seek to leverage.
I used to love Amazon - I would shop there exclusively for books. I even liked it when the opened the music store, I could at last buy my CD's and books at the same time - so what if a few of the books cracked some of the CD's in a shipment?
Then they went wild... over time, I grew also to think of them more of a K-mart that a cool bookstore. The prices seemed to creep up a little (that may well be an unfounded statement, but remember we are talking appearances here). I tried out the Auction site - keyword searches seem to return almost random results (i.e. entries that do not even contain the keyword I typed).
So, the last CD/DVD order I placed was from 800.com - free shipping, and 800.com actually had a CD Amazon didn't. Fatbrain is now the first place I look for a book.
By trying to grab everything, they have lost a sense of quality and focus that made them unique.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Or my new personal favorite, Daedalus Books:
http://www.daedalusbooks.com/
I've been shopping out of their classic remainders catalog since I was just a wee little thing, and their website is a perfect, perfect extension of it.
One thing they got right, that I think Katz correctly identified, is that atmosphere and aesthetics have a lot to do with a good book-buying experience.
Yes. Employees get a regular salary. Management certainly has an interest in growth and change. But it's the investors that drive these wild changes and leaps into new industries. It's the CEO and the Board of Directors (populated by the largest shareholders, usually) that insist on constant, continuous growth into new realms, even when those changes don't at all match the current trend of the company. The investors, I'm sure, are tickled pink with the changes. They, of all people, are not interested in being cool, hip, or revolutionary unless that translates directly into profits.
Right now big profits don't go to bakeries, magazine stands, or fruit booths. They go to grocery stores and "super stores" that contain them all in one roof. Unfortunately convenience often wins over "coolness" and probably always will. And you think the investors are unhappy about that?
There are more bookstore choices now, absolutely. But I'm still using Amazon for a couple of key reasons:
I don't like that he's branching all over the place, especially when it makes it harder for me to get the information I want. But the fact is, I still can get the information I want. Until he changes that, I'm not likely to switch providers.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Several comments here have cited the need to make a profit as the reason that Amazon should expand. The salient point here is that expanding the way they have into markets that are already dominated by others - having IMHO, no real chance to make a serious impact - will drive them further away from profitability than they ever have been. I think this drives them from a questionable position (sacrificing profits for "mindshare") into a positively bad one. If I had the cash to take an 18 month short position on them, I would.
The irony is that amazon still isn't making money, and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever can.
I was attempting to browse amazon.com last night -- emphasis on attempting because it was so slow I couldn't actually browse anything, much less buy something. If the sluggishness I experienced at that time was due to amazon.com and not my ISP, I don't see how they could have sold a single item at all, and whether this was an isolated incident or not, this should scare anybody trying to make a buck in e-commerce.
If the parking lot at Wal-Mart gets full, they'll lose some overflow business, but they can live with that because when it happens they've got a store full of shoppers. When a web site gets too much traffic and their servers get slashdotted, business suffers. So there must be a fine line between underutilization and overutilization, and unless a commerce site can walk that fine line, they're either spending too much money on their infrastructure or losing too much business due to frustrated users.
It seems that the ridiculous valuations of internent stocks must be because people see huge opportunities for growth, but too much growth could be a site killer, and enterprise hardware and the admin talent to keep it running ain't cheap, so overbuilding could also be a business killer.
Am I making any sense?
Sorry, Jon, but your article misses the mark with me. I never idolized Amazon as anything other than a more convenient bookstore, but apparently you did. Stores can't make money with books anymore; Amazon is selling the NYT Best Sellers list at a loss, and as a whole their book business hasn't turned a profit yet, either. They have to branch out to other markets where there is still profit to be made. And, because the Amazon name has great market recognition, they're leveraging it. Simple business, not moral decay and a fall from grace.
Jon, if you just can't bear the sight of consumer electronics when you go to Amazon, then just change your bookmark from
to and everything will be as it once was.Anyone who has followed Amazon from a business/investor perspective, rather than as a customer, has known for a long time now that Amazon's ambition extends well beyond the bookseller's market; that's why they used a non-descriptive name like "Amazon", rather than something with "Book" in the title. Their real intended competition is Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Dayton Hudson (Target); if anything, that's more revolutionary than taking on small-fry like Borders or B&N.
I can see being upset with Amazon for pulling controversial books, videos, or albums (which they have done). I can see being upset if their expansion into new product lines caused their bookselling service to suffer; but that doesn't seem to be the case.
But throwing a fit just because they have started offering a new line of merchandise is just downright silly.
(BTW, I normally by technical books from Bookpool; they usually have the best prices, and I haven't had any problems with them yet.)
Well, AFAIK, Amazon is still unrepentant about
their spamming...
But I've also gotten crap from FatBrain.
James
What would be the difference if amazon registered another domain name and sold electronics and toys from there? Would you still like amazon because they are true to books?
Why not add it into their site? I have ordered many books from amazon and I trust them, so I might just check out the electronics next time I am in the market for a DVD player. It seems smart to me for them to leverage the amazon name.
. . . your comments on Amazon are pure horse puckey. Bezos managed to get an unfathomable amount of mindshare with the Amazon name, and it would be sheer folly for him not to leverage it to the hilt.
Let me ask you one question: Does Amazon still provide the same high-quality (IMHO) service with respect to books? Has the bookselling actually suffered?
No? Then stop sounding like such a nostalgic old fogey. Besides, what's wrong with K-mart, you big snob? Face it, this posting is just like your earlier piece on the end of the Wired era. All you're doing is bitching that the hoi polloi have invaded your sandbox. Boo hoo.
whuppy enjoys smelling like diesel fuel
I've always had excellent experiences buying (books) from Amazon. They have a good web, site, excellent selection, good prices, and excellent service. I've often had shipping upgrades for free, as well as a few free $5 gift certificates by e-mail. If Amazon can keep up these qualities as they branch out into other areas, then more power to them. I'd certainly consider buying other stuff from them based on my experiences to date.
However, the thing I question is how competetive their prices are going to be in the brutal consumer electronics area. While I like Amazon, I'm only going to buy from them if they can beat prices from other on-line vendors like onsale.com.
I use amazon.com a lot, and I am very satisfied. There are usually more comments on the books from readers than other web sites. Sure, they may sometimes be a little more expensive, but it's well worth the convenience, and the quick shipping. 2-3 day shipping sometimes reaches me overnight. I haven't used amazon.com for anything other than books, but even though they do have different sections (books, videos, cds, toys, electronics, e-cards, auctions, etc.) they are in completely separate sections, and they are not all intertwined with each other, so when i'm in the books section, it feels like i'm only in a book store, when i'm in the auction store, it feels like i'm only in an auction site, and the rest of their sections. Of course, sometimes I just search for my books there, read reviews, and decide which ones to buy, then I go comparison shopping and buy the cheapest one. In any event, I don't know what the big deal to get upset about that they opened up these two new sections?
Just my 2 cents...
P.S. Are you in any way affiliated with fatbrain.com?
I think what we need to remember folks is that Amazon is just a store. And it's there to sell us stuff. We don't become smarter or hipper because we buy the next piece of crap for our collection from Amazon or fatbrain or the local Walmart. We just, if everything goes right, get what we buy. If we expect more, well perhaps we should stop worshipping at the altar of consumption for a minute and start thinking about why that is.
I am a book lover, and for those who love books, there are still alternatives to Amazon's bookstore... BarnesAndNoble.Com, and my personal favorite, Borders.Com which is a nice site with a great passion for books, that cares about its fellow book lovers. On the Frontpage it advertises books only, because books are what people want when they come to the site. Sure you can go to the Video and Music sections, but these come second, and Borders knows it and cares!
And Powell's is union now. The folks who work there make more than $7.50 an hour or whatever the poor schmucks who work at Borders make...
I'm not saying that the Net won't change the world -- it already has in many ways, and it will continue to do so. And I'm all for it remaining socioethically distinct from most of our society. But one of the basic tenets of the Net always has been, and always should be, freedom. Not unmitigated freedom (spam and malicious cracking are great examples of unmitigated freedom gone bad), but freedom to explore and try new things that don't harm your neighbor. This includes running a company in such a way as you believe will make a profit.
Capitalism has progressed to the point where heavy-handed treatment of customers or completely despicable business ethics are (eventually) borne out. Microsoft, Nike, and numerous manufacturing concerns are all examples of this. But widening your business model so that you become a "one-stop shop" instead of a specialized destination doesn't violate anybody else's freedom or any ethical principle that I can think of.
Now if Amazon were selling user information to widen their business model, or erasing user comments that reflected unfavorably upon them, then that would be a problem. Then we could vote with our feet in the latter case, or pursue other avenues for redress in the former. Personally, I use Amazon when they have the lowest price on what I'm looking for (usually books or DVD's), just as I comparison shop for other hardware. The fact that they sell toys doesn't change that -- in fact, it's just one more alternative to consider when I want to buy my little sister a present.
If a sufficiently large number of people really dislike this current model of super-mall e-commerce, then eventually that desire will be reflected. That's how the Net will change business and much of the world as we know it: it's much easier to start to compete with the big boys (ref: Linux). I personally prefer small local shops or specialized websites (well-designed!) myself, but I'm not going to do so at large additional expense. That's what the new capitalism should be about.
Really, I think we're mostly on the same page. I just think some individuals (and Katz is one of those) take their own personal preferences too far, claiming that anyone who has different preferences or wants to do something in a way that they don't approve of is a "sell-out" or some other denigrating name. Slashdot starting to sell preferential editorial treatment would be a sell-out. A store (online or otherwise) expanding its offerings is not.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Evidently, if it's not "new media" and "trendy digital lifestyle", then it's a "sell-out" and "tacky". Frankly, this general anti-capitalist attitude and "old = bad" is driving me crazy. Bezos is not beholden to anyone except his shareholders and customers. Amazon is not a religious movement, nor a non-profit organization. Let's face it, Amazon is there to make money. Like most successful businesses, they realize that the best way to do that is to make customers feel good about the entire experience, from service to aesthetics to pricing.
Katz' articles regularly annoy and frustrate me, since he tends to espouse the outlook of "the Net will change the world completely, and it should follow my ethical outlook". It's a tool, not a religion.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
...now that I can no longer think of Amazon as a book store. It's important for simple minds like mine to tie an outlet to a product, service, or a particularly advantageous way of doing business. Some places offer good prices -- important to consider on items that are easy to find. Others offer a wide choice -- good when you're not an expert on a category and want to do some comparisons. Some are *never* out of what's important and are open anytime you're awake -- my friendly Publix supermarket. And, of course, I can rely on slashdot to give me the news that's interesting...
So, that brings up the question: what is Amazon's core strength now and how will the public file that information in their busy minds?
Geeky modern art T-shirts
that's what i do, too. i wish that books.com would bring back their user commentary section; that's the only reason that i go to amazon.com. books.com is guaranteed to have cheaper pricing. they will go check amazon's price real-time and undercut them! how great! :)
I am from Argentina, South America, and I shop at Amazon.com and at Steve Jackson Games (for my GURPS books). Both stores give an excellent service, get the books down here on a reasonable time and at a reasonable fee. I was just checking Fatbrain and they are charging way too expensive shipping fees for South America.
Besides, Amazon has always treated me well. Last month I made an order and had to pay an extra $75 to DHL Argentina. As I didn't expected it, I complained to Amazon and I received a *refund*!
It also happened some other times that a book was missing or something like that, and Amazon has always corrected the situation.
Is there any other bookstore online that is "politically correct" and as efficient as Amazon?
I would also like to read a Jon Katz reply to all this comments... I think Amazon is a *business*... you can't expect anything else from 'em...
Bye
Mondongo
simply because of the fact that they seem to imply that their clientele are somehow smarter than myself, or that, by shopping there, i will become vastly more intelligent than my current self.
...fuck you.
"because great brains think a lot!"
the only people i can really see this appealing to are honor roll kids from back in high school (i wish i could drop names, but it's not as though anyone here would know).
of course, it's all just advertising, but i don't like their cockiness.
"if you IQ is larger than your body weight, check out FatBrain.com!"
Jon isn't even elite, he merely wishes he was, hence his annoying and incessant whining. I take it he wishes to ingraciate himself, but he's still just their puppet.
Face it Katz, you're the shoeshine boy of the ruling elite. I hope you enjoy toiling in the dirt like a mindless thrall, because your yellow journalism and mindless ranting don't seem to be winning you many fans among us poor dumb workin' class folk.
PS> I'm "Gen-X" myself, whatever the hell that means, and I have to say, while I know some pessimistic and egotistic people, none of them could ever hope to hold a candle to Katz and his banal little rantings over banal little subjects. I'm continually impressed by his ability to be _outraged_ by nothing at all. Combine this bizarre predisposition towards unfettered hatred with a misplaced sense of superiority and questionable logical reasoning skills, and *presto*, instant doofus. This latest epic is really no different. A truly pathetic display from a truly pathetic individual.
I couldn't agree more (except for maybe MS having a neat culture - I have it on good authority that they're all impotent from stress). Corporations don't give a good goddamn about people, aside from their wallets. If Katz thinks Amazon was ever interested in anything but the big mamoo, then he's even more deluded than I'd thought (no small feat). If he thinks the utterly pedestrian act of spending money at one bookstore over another is going to accomplish some intrinsic moral or ethical good, then he need to go back and take Econ 101/102. True, there are a couple of very small privately help companies that do actually pursue a more enlightened agenda, but these are few and far between. And once you have shareholders, forget about it, that party's over. The bottom line is all that matters. The notion that online vendors could possibly have some sort of tangible rayonnement, or that any retailer adheres to some sort of philosophical code is empirically dubious at best, and Katz is a total rube for believing otherwise. All Amazon or any other store provides is a place to buy merchandise. If they sell it cheaply and conveniently, who cares whether they also move TVs on the side?
I dunno. I didn't admire them for selling books, or only selling books, or whatever Katz seems to have a problem with this week. What I always admired Amazon for is being the pioneer into e-commerce that they are. Not only were they the first large-scale site to be completely e-commerce based, but they did it extrememly well. I'm still amazed every time I go there what kind of options you have. You can get practically any book there, and if it's out of print, they'll even try to find it for you. You can enable one-touch ordering. Order it gift wrapped (and pick out the paper). When you order a book, it makes recommendations for you the next time you get on. Not to mention how smoothly the ordering process goes. That's something I can't say about buy.com. I mean, people are so paranoid about ordering off the internet, that if the process doesn't go exactly right, they'll never be back. Just as I will never be back to Buy.com. How many places have you tried to order off of only to find out that you get an ASP or SQL Server error when you hit the "Order" button? Nothing ticks me off more on an e-commerce site. That just says to me that they bought a copy of IIS and SQL sever, and set the site up in a weekend. Never have I had that problem with Amazon.
So, each of you may groan everytime Amazon adds another product line, but I know I'll be excited and happy for them. It's a great site, and I think they deserve to turn a profit (which books alone weren't doing). I hope they stay online for many years to come.
+--
Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
When did people start thinking that corporations had philosophical leanings? Sure, they may have neat corporate culture (as I hesitate to say, Microsoft does), and they may put together some cool sites; but why have we deluded ourselves to thinking that corporations are anything but institutions trying to make money?
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
I've gone to Amazon to get book information and reviews, but I've always bought from books.com. They've been around almost before there was a web, when you had to telnet in to order your books.
I'll probably keep doing the same thing now, ignoring what I don't want/need.
People, Art, Music, and Literature are hip. Business's trying to appear hip just to get my money are phoney. I just want to spend less of my hard earned money.
Give me K-Mart/Wal-Mart anytime. Let me take that 25% savings and use it for somehting important like uh... uh oh, I was gonna say PCs, but my wife just reminded me about fixing the garage door.:)
If you're going to recommend an online bookseller, at least recommend one that hasn't repeatedly spammed domain contacts. As the technical contact for several domains, I got repeated unsolicited offers from fatbrain.com to come visit their online wares. They're permanently in my "do not visit or recommend" list.
I think Jon is expecting too much of Amazon. Jeff Bezos DOES want to become the K-Mart (or WalMart) of the web, and why shouldn't he? WalMart combined IT with reach to create a very profitable company that brings low-cost consumer goods to everyone. Not that bad a model (except for that whole driving small businesses out of business thing) to be following.
Ultimately, Amazon wants to be your single source for buying stuff on the web. What is wrong with that? Did anyone go postal when Yahoo! started including banner ads and corporate sites in its index. Did anyone say "Oh, Yahoo! has lost it's coolness, sold out, and become less than it should be." Maybe people did, but Yahoo! is the most powerful pure-play Internet company there is, and more power to it!
That's the thing about the market, if there's demand it will be fed. Amazon's competency is in user interface and product delivery, not in Books qua Books. Bezos said in an interview a few years ago it could have been any product, books just seemed best at the time because the people on the web were literate/intelligent and books are easy to distribute. Now that Amazon has learned how to do the good online store interface and how to efficiently distribute its goods, it's applying that to toys, and electronics, and everything else.
Where Yahoo! is the ultimate portal, Amazon seeks to be the ultimate store. The one-stop online shop. And it SHOULD because WalMart comes online in the next six months, B&N is breathing down its book-centric neck, and eBay is the king of the auction houses. Amazon must expand to grow.
So I say more power to it. Amazon means I don't have to reinput all my user info to buy a different good at a different site. Amazon means I KNOW the kind of service and guarantees I'm going to get when buying my music or electronic because they're the guarantees I got when buying my books.
Amazon is about the customer's perception of buying and selling online.
It's not just about books.
IMHO.
It's a tool, not a religion.
True.
But what Jon is getting at (or perhaps not, but what I feel anyways) is that capitalism these days, while based on sound principles, has led to an unfortunate exploitation of the consumer that can only be checked when the entrepreneur/business in question has a sound set of ethics.
Examples of exploitation that would be at least partially cured by ethics that take precedence over or modulate profit concerns are:
- spam
- truth in advertising issues
- perpetuating the use of anorexic models
- destruction/degradation of the environment
These are not small issues. CEOs don't have to be saints, but they shouldn't be inhuman either.
Katz' articles regularly annoy and frustrate me, since he tends to espouse the outlook of "the Net will change the world completely, and it should follow my ethical outlook".
There was an article linked off of HNN a couple weeks ago talking about how the net was founded as a place of mutual trust, hence its inherent lack of security structures. I don't think Jon is wrong for fighting for it to stay a place of socioethical purity, at least to a greater extent than the physical world. Acceptance of the world in all its toolishness is part of what's wrong with the world today.
And yes, I do believe the Net will change the world someday. It possesses enormous potential and a way for one individual to reach thousands in ways that they were never before empowered to. And if it is destined to be that important, then it becomes especially vital to fight for its purity -- privacy issues, free speech, and ethics included. Don't give in to the cynical temptation to let it degrade itself to the level of our present everyday affairs. The Net is wasted as such a place.
The principle of aggrandizement is the fundamental law of every government. - Frederick the Great
OK, I'll say these things up front:
- I used to work for Barnes and Noble (not in over a year, though)
- I also used to work for Waldenbooks (incidentally, owned by the same company that owns Borders and K-Mart)
Publishing has never been an industry that it is easy to make money in. Books, because of the intelligence generally required to read them, reek of elitism, boredom, and effort to too many people. Publishing houses often struggle just to keep out of the red every year. Ever wonder why it's so hard for new writers to break in to the market? Well, if you were a publishing house thinking about investing scads of money in book design/production/marketing, wouldn't you want a sure bet too?
Amazon is no different. And neither is Barnes and Noble. The Waldenbooks I used to work for was small, shabby, neglected by the corporation because of its comparatively rural location. Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, was spacious, had the most comfortable chairs I have ever sat in (I used to spend my breaks in them), and has tons of variety.
I saw an article while working at B&N that summed up the reasons why I support B&N (unfortunately, I don't have it anymore): It allows for diversity. The one I worked in had entire subsections on linguistics, anthropology. That would have been undreamed of at Waldens. The point is, while Barnes and Noble may not support diversity of vendor (i.e., other bookstores), it does support diversity of supplier (i.e., publishers). It carries thousands of publishers, from small university or religious presses to your well-known East Coast publishers like Random House, etc. That's really not such a bad thing.
The other thing I like about Barnes and Noble is that it at least curries an air of intelligence and literacy. The decor is classical, the musical selections don't tend to be your typical top40, the offerings, once you get out of the bestsellers section, are eclectic and tolerant of many ideologies. In short: It doesn't dumb itself down to the customer. It makes the customer feel all that more literate and intelligent for being there.
Barnes and Noble is not the evil empire. It's trying to make money, just like Amazon. Quite frankly, if people go to Amazon to buy a pikachu, happen to wander in to the books section, and buy a paperback while they're at it, then Amazon's "sellout" has been justified. Of all the industries trying to make money in America today, the publishing and book industries are among the most severely handicapped by modernday illiteracy, apathy, and lack of interest in anything remotely intellectual. Don't begrudge Amazon or B&N of the steps they have to take to keep people supplied with what they need to keep their minds alive.
In the end, Barnes and Noble is a reading mecca for me. If my old Waldenbooks location closes down (which it is threatened with annually), then the only bookstore in that area will be the Christian bookstore. Don't knock it if you have a bookstore near you, regardless of what you think of its commercialism. Amazon and other online book retailers have the unique ability of being anywhere there is an Internet connection. And that, for the people that shop my old Waldenbooks store, may someday be the only place they can go for a diversity of books that are selected free of religious concerns.
The principle of aggrandizement is the fundamental law of every government. - Frederick the Great
I looked up Perl Cookbook on Fatbrain and Amazon. Amazon's discount is 40%, fatbrain is same as O'Reilly (20%). Yes amazon's now requires one additional click. Yes it is getting irritating. BTW, books.com after some negotiation (ie. lotsa clicks) said they'd do 41%...
I have heard the same story about out-of-order books at fatbrain - they got to fix their inventory problems...
i'm not sure what the big deal is. they still sell lots of books. if you can still get books cheaper than at the local bookstore, with decent service, what difference does it make if they sell all kinds of other garbage too?
www.gazoom.com
It seems this is the future of the internet. As long as sites I value, such as Slashsdot, still exist, I can ignore the rest.
Well, if you're looking for computer books, I don't think I've seen a place that beats Bookpool. I just checked out fatbrain, which gives a 20% discount on O'Reilly books that I was looking at, compared to 35 or 36% at Bookpool. I've ordered from them a bunch of times, never had a problem, and their shipping is reasonable, too.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
More and more I've been conviced that Amazon.com is falling head-long into new markets too fast. They waited quite a while to establish themselves in the book market before adding any other content. Now they're adding "features" like I eat M&M's. It's too fast and too much. They've not established themselves in any of the previous areas before moving on. From what I've heard, response to their on-line auction has been weak at best.
I too have been ordering from Amazon.com for a long time, but probabaly no more....it's too much of a mess. I don't want to see the latest crap that's being auctioned off show up in my search for books...when I want to search for books, I want to see content on books. Preferably related to the query. But maybe I'm unique? (Me thinks not)
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
What is he talking about? Is it his wife or a bookstore he is talking about? What is the difference between selling Daniel Steele and CD player?
I think Jon has attributed some qualities to Amazon that were never there.
- I like pudding.
Anything avant-garde about Amazon.com was lost the day they made their IPO. This corporation is there to make money, and I'd say that this move shows that they intend to do so in as great of sum as is conceivable.
I don't think that idealistic views of the internet are intirely misplaced. It's beauty is in the forum of information, of knowledge, not commerce. But I will say that any idealism about the motives or ethos of a $multi-billion corporation are misplaced. Any idealism about Amazon should have been rightly placed in the hands of the people behind it; Amazon was lost they day they decided to answer to the market instead of themselves.
A pretty neat free site that offers comparison
between dozens of Internet bookshops. You can see that Amazon is not the only one, and certainly not the cheapiest nor the speediest. No, I am
not affiliated, except as a satisfied user.
>Bezos has tossed away his biggest advantage, the
>sense right or wrong that he was creating a
>different kind of company with something
>resembling an ethical sensibility.
Well actually I think that their biggest advantages are convenience, selection, good prices and the fact that it's never taken longer than three business days for me to get an order from them. As long as those qualities persist, I see no reason to stop buying from them. The tone of this article article is that of someone whining that they're favorite band has "sold out" by getting on a bigger record label.
Anyway, Harman-Kardon makes some really nice stuff, wouldn't you put your big dollar items right out front?
-=albert
Inventory is expensive.
It doesn't matter if you're looking for books, cd players, stuffed animals, or anything else. Any business that sells this stuff is spending money for every second that it sits on a shelf.
Look for a lot of retailers to go out of business in the next decade or so. This potentially includes big chains such as Wal-Mart, which is really threatened by e-business. As I understand it, Wal-Mart's competitive edge came in part from its lack of "back rooms"; it timed its deliveries to fill up the shelves as they emptied. In fact, WalMart provides only two things to producers: shelf space on which they (not Wal-Mart) stock their products, and sales statistics and information from the cash registers. This was pretty innovative when it first came about, but Amazon.com's way of doing business came as a trump card.
Any inflated ideas about Amazon.com are moot. Retail shelfspace is going to go away wherever possible, simply because it costs money -- this is the driving issue. A close second factor is the fact that Amazon can collect a lot of information about its customers, better than the Wal-Mart registers, especially regarding their buying habits over time. Even cars can be bought over the web now (e.g., Saturn). In the particular case of books, paper-and-ink will soon be a luxury item, considering how much cheaper disk space is. The book industry, as such, will probably go the same way most Slashdot readers seem to want the music industry to go (mp3 is more complicated than HTML).
There's a company in Japan that sells custom bicycles at below average prices; they read your specs from a web form, and can ship in 48 hours. All they need to do is store and assemble parts, which turns out to be cheap. On-demand manufacturing like this will spring up wherever practical to get rid of expensive warehouse space, as well as retail shelves. Gateway Computers leases an Atlanta hangar from UPS so that UPS doesn't have to ship components to Gateway, and then ship assembled systems back -- Gateway just builds the things in the hangar, and they go right back on the planes.
The next Wal-Mart (even the next A&P, for those who remember its heyday) will sit behind a URL, and Amazon clearly wants to be it. However, it doesn't really matter to the consumer whether it's Amazon or some other company.
The big deal about Amazon is that it was the first company to do business like this in the mainstream, with a commodity item like a book. Of course, the industry that really pioneered e-business is in fact the porn industry (billions anually over the web in both products and -- ahem -- "services"). There are a lot of self-made millionaire(sse)s in that arena.
Amazon isn't special in and of itself. It is merely an early indicator of how the internet will change mainstream business interactions. There are good and bad sides to this, but the cost of doing business will certainly get lower.
To me, this is just a reaction by Amazon to the current thinking in e-business. This line of thinking uses the fact that, as a whole, people are lazy. They are more likely to stay on whatever site they happen to be using at the moment to do what they want to do next, than to go on the net searching for it. Why else do you think the portal sites were/are so successful? Sure, part of it is that they filter out a lot of the noise that the web generates, but most of it is because people are lazy.
:)
I also see this as part of the disturbing (well, to me any way) trend today of the box/program/thing that does it all. Do people really want to surf the web on their TV? Or check e-mail/surf the web with their cell phone? Or be able to create web sites, documents and a spread sheet all from Word? Maybe it's just me, but I don't want a stereo that surfs the web, or a coffe maker I can tell to turn on by sending it e-mail, or...well, you should have the idea by now.
To my mind, the best products come from picking a relatively small set of features (with the size of small being determined by what you are designing) and making those features easy to use. But, maybe that's just the engineer in me.
"You can put a man through school,
But you cannot make him think."
Ben Harper
Very well said. I'll add one question: Why do some people feel the need to tear down successful people? ...
What kind of logic is this? Amazon is only allowed to be successful in one line of merchandise?
What a load of bull. Anyone who has a problem with this is simply jealous.
Successful at what? Certainly not making money
bjg
Fatbrain promises to ship any book that is in stock the same day provided you purchase by 4pm. I stopped buying techical books from Amazon. Perhaps Amazon has devolved to the point where it's no longer a leader, since it 'Normally ships in 2-3 days'
The real money in e-commerce won't come from retail sales (though online sales are a nice supplement to real world sales), and it won't come from streamlining and integration of real world and online inventories (though that is a significant way to cut costs). The web is all about destroying middlemen, and retailers are the ultimate middlemen! Why not go to eBay and buy that new bestselling hardcover from a guy in Tulsa who just finished it for five bucks plus shipping?
No, the real money in E-commerce is going to come from the sale and analysis of DATA and information. The web is first and foremost a communications medium; it's greatest strength is its ability to send data back and forth... it's therefore a natural assumption that money should come from the sale and transfer of significant and valuable pieces of data.
The company I work for currently has two clients who are leveraging their databases onto the Internet, and we're designing databases and making convenient web-based search and reporting front-ends for their subscribers. These companies are going to get a hell of a lot of money from people using the same data source. Their only overhead will be maintaining the servers and databases - no inventory, or shipping costs, or anything.
Internet companies that sell services and information online are going to be the truly profitable e-commerce sites. The problem is, most people are still trapped in the "world of atoms", as Negroponte puts it. They're still trying to fit real world strategies into the online world, and when the balloon bursts and people realize it's not going to work that way, stock prices are going to crash really, really hard.
Mike Caprio
Mike Caprio, mikecap@nospamworld.stdspam.com
Digital Renaissance Man - Writer, Coder, & Artist
I just have to say, the lack of awareness regarding Amazon from JK is disheartening.
Jeff Bezos isn't some touchy feely, NewAge Guru. He cut his teeth on Wall Street.
Bezos has said -- repeatedly -- that he's not even going to try make a profit for investors before the next Century.
Why the name Amazon? Not a Xena fixation. Think "big river". As in the biggest source? Why do you think Wal Mart sued? Amazon -- from day one -- has planned to be the biggest online store on the web. period.
Becoming disillusioned with Amazon is absurd. It's a business kids, not a support group. They're doing exactly what they set out to do. If their service isn't up to your standards, then shop elsewhere.