05-09-2018, 08:30 PM | #1 | |||||
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Bezos Interview: why Amazon started with books
...and other anecdotes...
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-...on-post-2018-4 Quote:
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Lots of other stuff. Highly recommended. Video and transcript. |
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05-11-2018, 09:40 AM | #2 |
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I know this was designed to make him look good, but I found Bezos quite likable in this article. I didn't expect that, as I am somewhat cynical when it comes to people.
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05-11-2018, 09:53 AM | #3 | |
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Puff pieces about big name CEO's is a staple of these type of magazines. I've read such pieces about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as well. Neither were exactly well known as people you particularly wanted to work for. |
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05-11-2018, 12:15 PM | #4 | |
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To be big time successful in business you need to be able to switch from your normal private persona to a ruthless executive persona. Big business isn't a place for touchie-feelie nice guys. The trick is knowing when to switch hats. Of course, some guys never switch or don't have a nice guy side. Most executive interviews are promotional efforts to highlight a specific product or initiative. This one is more about countering bad press than salesmanship. That's why there was all the talk about critics with agendas. But buried in between the "selling Mr Bezos" are a few reminders of the true history of Amazon. Like the fact that the company was built off one insight: Ingram had a catalog of every book in print, over 3 million titles, yet no physical store could stock even ten percent. More, Ingram could deliver those books within a day or two yet no bookstore offered better than multi-week waits on "special orders". Presumably because they would rather move their in-store inventory than act as a mail-order front. Anybody could do what he did, if only they thought of it. In fact, Amazon wasn't the only one who did it. Buy.com and B&N did it, too, to name just two. Amazon just did it better. Note that in the anecdote about packing tables, Bezos points out that most of his earliest employees were techie coders. That might have a bit to do with their quick and fast success. To sell online you need the best website you can possibly build, yet none of their competitors have done that, much less build one better than Amazon. (Mostly irrelevant anecdote: yesterday I went to WalMart.com looking for a specific model of a product. The search engine coughed up three links as in stock. All three led to the exact same third party vendor and the same SKU. Click on one. Listed as in stock. Put it in cart. Go to cart to see what the tax and shipping charge is. I'm logged in to my account. Still need to enter the zip code. And: Oh, sorry. It's not really in stock. No idea when it will be. Ten minutes wasted. I've bought stuff from them but it is always a last resort and it is always a pain.) It's not as if Amazon is even close to perfect. Anybody here can easily name three ways they could improve book discovery and sales using techniques music and video distributors use. But nobody else uses them either. Big business is a tough activity to succeed in, but a lot of these big business successes are simply gifted with singularly inept competitors. They're the one-eyed in the land of the blind. Last edited by fjtorres; 05-11-2018 at 12:26 PM. |
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05-11-2018, 01:14 PM | #5 | |
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While I wouldn't particular want to work for him, I give him a lot of credit for having a vision and holding the course of building up the company rather than worry about stock prices and bottom lines. I would be a lot happier on the ebook front if Amazon had at least one robust competitor who forced Amazon to continue to innovate and improves with regards to ebooks. That lack of competition is why we haven't seen meaningful improvement over the last decade, but that's hardly Amazon's fault. |
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05-12-2018, 01:12 PM | #6 | |
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05-12-2018, 01:57 PM | #7 | |
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05-12-2018, 04:32 PM | #8 |
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Life is change.
Without change, societies stagnate and die. Resist change and you're helping kill your society. Contribute to it and help steer it, instead of whining, and everybody prospers. Bezos himself said it clearly; "Complaining is not a strategy." Neither is nostalgia. The future comes to everybody, ready or not. Ebooks and publishing are a perfect example of this. Those publisher, authors, and readers embracing ebooks and self-publishing are benefitting from this era of change; those resisting are getting hammered and, yes, "damaged". You either surf the seas of change or drown. Ever hear of FUTURE SHOCK, by Alvin Toffler? Old, old book. As relevant now as in the sixties. Last edited by fjtorres; 05-12-2018 at 05:00 PM. |
05-12-2018, 05:13 PM | #9 | |
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The impact of a skilled editor is tremendous, as is the pre-filtering of junk (that which most publishers reject). Yes, there are some noteworthy self-published writers, and there is no hard rule that says self-published books cannot be properly edited, but these are, in my experience, rare exceptions. It's much like print journalism and blogging. Everyone is a journalist now, just like everyone can be a "published" author. I have neither the time nor the energy or desire to sift through piles of self-published e-books, so my solution is to avoid anything that doesn't come from an established publishing house. Ten years ago, I had a completely different view on this. My appreciation for the concept hasn't diminished, but I'm thoroughly disenchanted by the results. I disagree that you have to go with the flow or otherwise you're the "problem". Or rather, I don't care if that is the case. I'm not an Amazon customer, which I suppose means I limit my choice (it's largely theoretical, there is no shortage of books, both paper and e-book, that I can get from other places, far more than I can read in a lifetime) and results in slightly higher expenses because not every seller can or wants to price-dump). I still buy books from the few independent bookstores that are left, and yes, that also means I sometimes have to wait 2-3 weeks for the import of a book while Amazon's German warehouse has 20 copies sitting around that I could get the next day. Am I making a difference? I doubt it, but it's all I can do. To me, a monopoly, quasi or actual, is never beneficial for society. Resisting it and instead supporting local economies or competing businesses does not "kill society". It, quite likely, is the only thing one can do to actually protect diversity and choice. (I realize that on the surface this seems to clash with my take on self-publishing, though again, I don't disagree with the concept.) I don't subscribe to the belief that everything new is automatically better or superior. It's often more convenient and efficient, and quite possibly more rewarding in the short term. But in the long run? I only need to look at society and the environment to know that many of our improvements have done immense societal and environmental damage. Last edited by Mivo; 05-12-2018 at 05:17 PM. |
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05-12-2018, 06:34 PM | #10 |
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That's too bad, I've read some great self published stuff. Don't get me wrong, I've read some terrible junk too. That's part of the fun in looking for new writers. On the whole, I've read mostly good stuff, I think. Not enough bad stuff to make me give up looking, I guess.
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05-12-2018, 10:04 PM | #11 | |
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05-13-2018, 03:31 AM | #12 | |
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For the most part, I agree with the earlier poster from Germany who to paraphrase said that he liked the concept of self publishing, but doesn't like the current implementation. I also strongly agree that Amazon needs competition. Fanboy types who give their favorite authors a 5 star rating for books they have never read distort the rating system. The iron law of bureaucracy applies in areas other than bureaucracies, meaning that it's probably inevitable that people who want to support their favorite authors with such reviews will crowd out people who give an honest review of a specific work. |
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05-13-2018, 06:12 AM | #13 |
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90% of everything published has always been garbage, so readers have always had to deal with a "slush pile" of sorts. And when it comes to the "basic competence guarantee" that everyone likes to trot out when extolling the benefits of sticking to only traditionally published books/authors ... say it with me ... "no one has ever taken comfort in the fact that a book they purchased and didn't like was at least competently written." That dog won't hunt. "It was dry, boring, overly-long and utterly without inspiration. But gosh-darn it if most of the words weren't spelled correctly! I give it 3 out of 5 stars for sheer competence"--said no one ever.
Besides, navigating the self-published "slush pile" is no different than navigating the enormous pile of traditionally published books (of which there's only a tiny fraction you're truly going to enjoy): people talk about the good ones. I don't read that many self-published books, myself. But I read a few here and there. I'm utterly open to liking them. I can't remember the last one I read that I'd call dreck. I can certainly remember the last traditionally-published book I bought and read on a whim and thought was garbage, though. *shrug* Last edited by DiapDealer; 05-13-2018 at 06:20 AM. |
05-13-2018, 10:50 AM | #14 |
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When Sturgeon correctly said: "...90% of everything is crap." he was talking tradpub.
Nothing has changed since. Gatekeepers are no guarantee of quality, just that somebody thought they could make money shoveling it out. |
05-13-2018, 10:55 AM | #15 | |
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