Customer Reviews

Business the Amazon.com Way: Secrets of the Worlds Most Astonishing Web Business

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

When a publisher doesn't like your book proposal, the way they try to let you down easily is to tell you it would make a good magazine article. Why would a publisher take on a book whose sources are newspapers, magazines, and books from an author who tell us she doesn't like to buy books on line from Amazon.com to write about a company that started as an on-line bookseller? Since you are obviously a fan of Amazon.com or you would not be reading this review, my opinion is that you could probably write a better history of the company and its success pattern than this book did based on your own experiences with the company.

Given that everything in the book was from public sources, I could not understand how the author could call her points "secrets." But here they are:

(1) Understand e-commerce (2) Build an entrepreneurial team (3) Focus (4) Brand the site (5) Get and keep customers by offering value (6) Set up a distribution network (7) practice frugality

(8) practice technoleverage (improve your performance with technology) (9) constantly reinvent your business model (10) add strategic alliances and acquisitions.

What does that tell you that you didn't know before?

On the interesting question of whether Amazon.com will be able to sustain the cashflow losses, the author says nothing other than that the harvesting period is still ahead.

I compared this book to the book, Amazon.com, which had its own weaknesses, and found that this book lacked an authentic voice of reflecting what is different about the company it studies. Where are the anecdotes, the polls of customers, powerful material from message boards, and quantitative analyses of what happened? Even if Amazon.com executives would not talk to her, you can certainly do better than this.

Oh, by the way, the facts were not well checked. Those I was familiar with were usually wrong. So you can't even rely on this book for baseline information.

I can go on with more reasons not to buy and read the book, but I don't want to waste your time. You have better things to do.

In the same way that many Web Sites won't become valuable businesses, many books about Web businesses aren't going to do any better. Here is a fine example of that observation.

Ms. Saunders has taken riding someone else's wave to a new low - two waves really. The first is the branding and selling power of anything with "Amazon.com" on it. The second is the hope that this book will follow in the footsteps of Robert Spector's, "The Nordstrom Way," in giving the reader some insight into the world's leading and most successful e-commerce enterprise. Unfortunately, she fails to even remotely live up to either.

The book is dry and completely uninformative. Even worse, it's factually incorrect. A couple examples (though there are many, many others):

According to Saunders, Amazon.com set up shop in Seattle, Washington because Ingram is there. Um, Ingram is in Oregon, not Washington. What the heck is the Federal Trust Commission? I think it's usually referred to as the Federal Trade Commission.

These two errors and the many others in this book have regrettably been printed before - usually in the popular press - which speaks volumes about where she got her material.

The book is marketed as an investigative look at the business model and "Ten Secrets" that make it work. Considering the legendary secrecy surrounding Amazon.com's business and the supposed investigative nature of this book, I find it pretty amazing that she knocked it out without attempting to consult a single (current or former) insider. But then again, after the first two pages it becomes very clear that she had no intention of going out of her way. The book itself is about as pure an attempt to capitalize on Amazon.com's success as could have been imagined. Oh, and the ten secrets touted on the cover are actually basic common sense and obvious to anyone who visits Amazon.com on any sort of a regular basis.

If you're curious about Amazon.com, I say stick to Spector and read, "Amazon.com - Get Big Fast," (ISBN: 0066620414).

Keep in mind that as of this writing, there really is no truly in-depth factual piece on Amazon.com and it's business model. You can get more information about Amazon.com from the New York Times archives (online) or almost any Wall Street analyst who covers the company.

This book reads like a standard "how to succeed in business" pamphlet, except the author has ensured there is a reference to amazon.com every other page. Most of what's in there is common sense if you've been on the web for any length of time. It's probably aimed at the pointy haired CEO who hasn't yet got a computer on his desk and fancies his chances at this e-commerce thing. If you have an ounce of common sense, you don't need this book.

Don't bother with this book, thankfully I only borrowed it from the library intending to use it as a source for an MBA paper on the online book industry. I ended up using zero material in my paper. Most of the sentences aren't complete sentences ... factual errors abound. If Jeff Bezos chose Seattle because Ingram Book Company is there (as Saunders claims) he made a mistake because they're not ... Amazon.com was NOT the first bookseller on the web ... bol.com is not Borders ... the dates for B&N's planned takeover of Ingram are wrong. Who knows what other mistakes there are because I put it down at that point so I didn't mistakenly use any of her "facts" in my paper. Saunders should have done at least some research to make the book factual and interesting and her editor should have caught the fact that she was clueless. If your 6th grader or below is writing a paper, it could be ok because the book because is at that reading level ... if you're older than that don't bother.

This book suffers from bad grammar, factual errors (e.g. "Federal Trust Commission" instead of "Federal Trade Commission"), and devoting an abundance of copy to an elementary discussion of how to build a good web site. I bought the book expecting insights from someone who had firsthand information from people who work at Amazon.com. WRONG. All I got was a regurgitation of what's been written in the press.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Anyway it is not easy to write 212 pages about one of the most astonishing business and made it completely uninteresting. What we got? A couple of "wonderful ideas" like "put words "save money" in subject of your e-mail". There are hundreds of long known ideas like "acquaire technology" or "be open to future possibilities". But not the word about the Amazon phenomenon.And what about Amazon? Nothing. The author who even didn't talk to the founder of Amazon? Impossible? Yes, it is possible in this book. So, if you want to know something about Amazon go somewhere else.

This book was dry, and completely empty. Considering the author didnt even speak to anyone from the company, this book is just a shell of ideas with nothing cohesive or interesting to save it. WASTE of time and money.

I was very disappointed to read the book. In fact I kept it down after the first chapter. Thankfully I had borowwed it from the library and not bought it. Please save your money for something else. Or give it away to the Salvation army. At least some good might come out of it.

I have been watching Amazon.com grow since its start-up. I found it interesting to have many of the steps taken by its management explained by Saunders. Put into perspective, the actions taken by Bezos and his team make lots of sense. Ms. Saunders does a real thorough job of explaining things. Barnes & Noble should have had someone like her advising them.

The story of Amazon is fascinating and one we all want to know more about. However you won't find much here. This is the quick and cheap approach to publishing. It is superficial, continually repeats itself, has poor analysis & offers nothing new at all.

There is no evidence that the author spoke to anybody who works at Amazon and certainly not Bezos. Reads like she sat down with a pile of press cuttings and bashed out a quick book, knowing the subject matter would sell it. Avoid!