Amazon has not grown to where it is today by being touchy-feely. Sure, it adopted the informal trappings that characterized many of the new technology start-ups of the 1990s. But if Bezos's first desk at the company was an old door on trestles, the business conducted from behind it has been as ruthless as anything he encountered in his previous gig as a Wall Street broker. Soon after Amazon's launch in 1995, Bezos told his employees that he wanted a place that was both "intense and friendly" but that "if you ever had to give up 'friendly' in order to have 'intense,' we would do that."
Hmmm...not what you want showing up in a press release, is it? But, how about this:
Another London publisher, head of a well-known transatlantic university press, complained about the way Amazon undermined his company's efforts to sell its titles direct. "They told us, in no uncertain terms, that if we tried to match the reduced price at which they were selling our titles they would take the lower price as the basis for calculating their discount, allowing them to price-cut still further."
Ouch!
Please read the whole thing; it will open your eyes to things as publishers see them...
2 comments:
Welcome to the economics of the supermarket, what the Tescos (and their US and NZ equivalents) have done to food producers Amazon is doing to publishers. The only hope of avoiding the bland pablum of supermarket literature is for the rest of us to make smart use of the new distribution and promotion channels available. But up to now Amazon has been usually one step ahead. Though your presence here and on e-mail biblical studies lists and the like point in a different direction :)
Tim,
I'd like to think that people would rather buy from Eisenbrauns, where we at least know what we are selling :)
James
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