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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.
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
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.
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!)
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 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
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
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.
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?
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); }
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.
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I've done Windows development, and I think the platform's an ugly mess. So naturally I give my support to people who have the good taste to agree with me. It's a lot like the environmentalist who would rather buy from an environmentally responsible company; I don't like seeing the web polluted with Windows servers.
In addition, Barnes & Noble raised my ire by suing Amazon over the "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" slogan. Tacky, tacky B&N. I don't forget things like that, and I don't want to deal with the type of person who would pursue such a suit. The suit, of course, was dropped after massive protests from people who felt the same way, but it's still a substantial drag on B&N's image for me.
D
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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
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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
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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.
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'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.
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 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
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
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.
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
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.
. . . 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
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
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)
Next time you are looking for a book you might want to try out:
"Price Compare or Search Online Bookstores by ISBN" http://isbn.nu
... a great way to find out who REALLY has the best prices for books on the net.
-Kazir (c:
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.
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
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.
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
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