
Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption - lleims
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/12/18/amazon-is-ripe-for-disruption/
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joonix
Books? I haven't perceived Amazon as a bookstore for a very long time. When
I'm in a country that doesn't have Amazon, I'm not missing the bookstore, I'm
missing the accessibility and convenience of a huge range of products at good
prices shipped to my door in 2 days.

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GabrielF00
I looked at the Pottermore website, which the author seems to think is a model
for disrupting Amazon. They don't seem to sell physical books, just eBooks and
digital audio books. Fulfillment and distribution of physical items at a large
scale is probably beyond the means of an individual author. Where they sell
eBooks, Pottermore is branded with a Sony logo and it looks like Sony is
running the store. So lets say that other big authors decide they want to do
what JK Rowling is doing, run a store themselves and get the customer data.
Couldn't Amazon say to the authors: "Okay, you run your store and get your
data, but we'll handle the payments and the fulfillment for you instead of
Sony. That way the customer can use their Amazon account and can take
advantage of Amazon's customer service. Plus we can actually ship physical
objects if they don't want ebooks." In that case it seems like Amazon could
probably make just as much money as they are now. In fact, if you look at a
lot of Kindle books they are actually sold by the publishers (Hatchette,
Random House, etc.) rather than by Amazon, so it seems like that's what Amazon
is already doing to some extent. I don't see the desire for better data as a
disrupting factor for Amazon.

There are some areas where Amazon needs to get better - recommendations and
reviews are one and making it easier to actually find the one product out of
30,000 available that you want is another. That's a pretty hard problem to
solve.

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prostoalex
I'm not sure how much of a disruption it is considering Amazon has been
pushing exclusive print and electronic publishing for a while. Tim Ferriss is
the latest out of somewhat famous authors to go exclusively through Amazon as
publisher, distributor and retailer
[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-4-hour-c...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/08/18/the-4-hour-
chef-the-new-book-with-amazon/)

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greenyoda
_"Amazon has created its dominant position by providing customers with what
they want: (almost) any book, at a ridiculously low price, delivered
rapidly."_

Amazon's prices aren't ridiculously low. For paper books, they're a little
lower than the list price that book stores charge, which reflects Amazon's
economies of scale and reduced staff costs (they don't have to pay to keep a
bookstore open and staffed even if no customers are walking in for several
hours). Their prices for Kindle books are, in fact, ridiculously _high_ \--
there's no way that a Kindle book could possibly cost more to produce and
distribute than the paper version of the same book, but for certain titles,
the Kindle version actually costs more.

Also, while it may be possible for an author like JK Rowling, who is already a
celebrity, to sell books from her own web site, an author who isn't successful
yet probably won't get enough visitors at their site to justify the cost of
building and running it.

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serge2k
I often see close to half the price of the bookstore when I check amazon.

Of course this is in Canada where we get charged extra simply because
publishers got away with it.

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OafTobark
As a I consumer, I love a lot of what Amazon does. As an entrepreneur, I do
not envy their business. At best, I love their AWS side of things, not their
low margin high volume retail side of things (with exception to some Prime
related stuff like Instant Video) etc... I guess I love the tech parts, not
the warehouse and retail selling part.

