One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com

This could have been a great book. But, much like a beautiful gymnastics routine that falls flat in its execution, the book fell off the bar in the first chapter and never quite recovered its promised glory.It's also an illustration of how the big publishing houses STILL don't get the powerful concept of the e-book.Allow me to elaborate: I pre-ordered this about 2 days before the release date, Oct 27, 2011. Even though it mentions Steve Jobs several times and pits him as a major rival to the Amazon model, there was no mention of his death in early October. Nor of the announcement of the pending release of the color KINDLE FIRE in mid-November. Nor of the disappointing staging accident that Blue Origin suffered in July or August of this year. Borders' bankruptcy news was tacked onto the bottom of a couple of no longer necessary paragraphs about its financial difficulties.Other editing issues include a lot of what, in my opinion, were simple cases of bad judgement. The author is obviously extremely conflicted on his opinion of Jeff Bezos (probably because Bezos didn't want to give him an interview) and often selected adjectives and verbs that betrayed this negative prejudice when a neutral adjective or verb would have served his purposes better ("boasted" instead of "said," etc. etc.).A fundamental lesson every writer learns is: WRITE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE.This is a Kindle book. Who buys Kindle books? People who shop at Amazon. And who are Jeff Bezos' A#1 Fans? Amazon customers. Sheesh! You have a built-in fan base you can tap, telling people who LOVE Amazon the story behind WHY they love Amazon. And they tell 2 friends, who tell 2 friends, and so on and so on...So how do you "muss that up?"Start with a couple of badly constructed opening chapters, quoting some unknown bookseller who is understandably upset at the very concept of Amazon's existence. Throw in a few statements from a disaffected, low level customer service rep. And set all this at a tempo that throws the reader off as the story starts, stops, shifts, and restarts. Painfully. Fortunately, after the first chapter or two, it did get better.I definitely appreciate all the work that Richard Brandt did to research this piece; I think he was failed by his editors.Quite seriously: large publishers need to learn a few lessons from Amazon. Start crowd-sourcing the editing of your books. Get 10 or so people to pre-read these books before you release them. Do you see how much valuable feedback you've already gotten from the 13 reviews already posted in the 3 days this book's been available? Now, imagine that you had this feedback BEFORE you went to press. Issues can be addressed & you can present a superior book that has the potential to be adored by the public.And stop OLDTHINK. The Kindle edition does not have to exactly match the print edition. Update, update, update!In Brandt's defense, he did have to construct his book from publicly available sources. I also think he did a good job of presenting somewhat dry information (with the exception of the lack of neutral adjectives) in the later chapters.I really did enjoy learning more about Amazon's history & although I already knew quite a bit about what Amazon has done and is doing and where they're investing (admittedly, I'm just one member of one of Amazon's many subclasses of demographics, what I call an Amazon Evangelist), I can say this book taught me some new things. Overall, this was an interesting read (if you can survive the beginning stutters and stops) & I liked the specificity of the stats presented on book sales vs. other retailers, etc. For Brandt's hard legwork, I'm upping this to a 3-1/2 star rating.Until Jeff Bezos decides to help someone write the Amazon story, I can say that this, imperfect as it may be, is your best chance at a glimpse inside what makes Jeff Bezos and Amazon tick.P.S. I am disappointed to find that the Kindle edition has not been indexed. I wanted to fact-check my recollection that Jobs' death was not mentioned anywhere, only to find that the book is not yet searchable. :(

Things I learned from Bezos:-The value of being the first one there: 'When something [the Internet] is growing 2300 percent a year, you have to move fast... A sense of urgency becomes your most valuable asset.'-Systematic decision making by listing criteria. On finding a wife: 'The number one criterion was that I wanted a woman who could get me out of a Third World prison... Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.'On choosing a location for Amazon: 'It had to be a place with an established population of entrepreneurs and software programmers. He wanted a state with a relatively low population because only residents of that state would have to pay sales tax on the products he sold. He wanted a city near a warehouse run by one of the major book distributors... The city also had to be a major metropolitan hub.' Based on these criterion, he chose Seattle over NYC or Silicon Valley.On choosing what to sell: It had to be easy to sell online, sight unseen. It had to be easily located and put into a database. Books were the perfect product to start with because unlike clothes etc their content was all interchangeable and they were already well categorized. Music was the next logical move.-Be inventive. He listed features physical book stores thought an online store could never offer and figured out ways to address those problems: now customized book recommendations based on customer browsing and buying histories, listmania lists, book pairings, are things Amazon does better than any chain book store.- Think big and long term. 'It was now a race: Whoever captured market share first would establish the pole position and would be difficult to pass. The mandate was now, 'Get big fast.' 'We are not profitable,' he told the NYT in 1997. 'We could be. It'd be the easiest thing in the world to be profitable. It would also be the dumbest. We are taking what might be profits and reinvesting them in the future of the business.'- Win by out-innovating the competition. 'Whenever we have a problem, we never accept either/or thinking. We try to figure out a solution that gets both things. You can invent your way out of any box if you believe you can.' After building 'the worlds largest book store, Bezos reinvented it into an online market place that also sold music, DVDs, and eventually many different products, then invented the kindle reader, thereby adding ebooks to his business and transforming the publishing industry, also expanded his business by offering his servers as hosts so that he hosted all of Netflix's instant play videos, and is now going into the instant play business himself.What an inspiring and exciting story! It takes a lot of courage and vision to achieve something like Amazon.

A competent, informative, albeit a bit one-dimensional account of Jeff Bezos's building Amazon from nothing to the world leader in not only book sales but virtually all types of consumer products, and in the process creating a mega computer facility of boundless complexity that is used, at a cost of course, by many other unrelated concerns.The book runs through both the chronological progression of Amazon, and explanations of the various Bezos mind-sets that moulded the different aspects and directions of the 'Amazon' roller-coaster, particularly his take and explanation that for the first few years huge losses were for the long term benefit of both the company and what must have been very nervous investors. However he was right, and both the company and it's investors have prospered.However, during this fast moving race to world commercial domination there must have been much in-fighting etc. and dark and unattractive aspects of Bezos's character that was outside of the picture painted in this book. The book lacked a bit of 'colour' and gutsiness that would have added to the overall impact, not least of which would have brought a touch of reality to this somewhat sanitised work.But still a good and worthwhile read.

This is a book of only around 200 pages, I read it in a weekend. It's easy to pick up and read despite some little oddities of speech (in the text the author refers to something falling "like spit from a bridge").I'm a big Amazon fan, the site is easy to navigate, prices are good and everything arrives in good time and as described. If I was rating Amazon the company I'd have to give it 5 stars. 3 stars only for this book, I'd recommend it for anyone that wants a taste of the Amazon story. It reads and feels more like an extended magazine article than an in-depth analysis of the rise of Amazon. I'd still like to read a deeper analysis of the development of Amazon and of Jeff Bezos who has steered it to its present pre-eminent position. Amazon's success has possibly lead to the closure of bookstores as it has attracted so much on-line business. On the plus side it has also provided cheaper books, I live in England and until recently book prices were effectively fixed. Amazon also makes it easy to find out-of-print books, again at reasonable prices. There's plenty to write about.

Should be titled "Amazon, the early years only" as the period this book covers ends more than TEN years ago... The narrative is very dry and the book seems to be a compilation of materials already in the public domain.

An interesting summary of the rise of Amazon. Nothing earth-shattering though...

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