Books Still Front And Center At Amazon
from the just-a-side-business dept
So far, the earnings of the major internet bellwethers have been pretty ho-hum, as eBay, Google and Yahoo have all come in with less-than-stellar results. But at least the forth horseman, Amazon, came through, blowing past analyst estimates. For a long time, Amazon's been dogged with the stigma of being just a faux-internet company, since it actually has to deal with things like warehouses and shipping costs. It's been trying hard to transform itself, through its attempts at becoming an e-commerce platform, rather than just a retailer. While these moves have done a lot for the company's reputation, they're still not moving the needle when it comes to the bottom line. Instead, its traditional business continues to carry the day, as it's seeing strong adoption of its Amazon Prime free-shipping plan. It also saw a boost from Harry Potter; although the book didn't come out until the current quarter, interest in it is said to have driven a lot of traffic to the site, which led to sales of other items. Meanwhile, the company's efforts to sell digital goods, like movie downloads, don't seem to be doing much of anything. Until these other businesses actually prove themselves, the company is still highly dependent on the whims of the consumer and whatever hit items happen to be coming out.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Kudos for foreign orders
It seems to me that with America's 15% foreign-born population, there is an untapped market for foreign books. Before, I had to custom-order from Japanese bookstores in LA or NY, with their rude and inefficient store clerks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Kudos for foreign orders
When I was living in Europe, I ordered several times from the US Amazon.com website, and items were shipped (internally) from Amazon.com to Amazon.co.uk (or Amazon.de) and then "more locally" shipped from there to me, all without any steep shipping costs
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Kudos for foreign orders
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Amazon Unboxed
I don't go to video stores, so this is something I would use, but I don't for the same reason I don't own an AppleTV... the selection is so limiting that it is not worth my time.
If any of these movie download companies could get the major studios to play nice and accept the business model so that either Itunes or Amazon could actually have a selection of even half of what a typical Blockbuster store has on the shelves, I would be all over it. Until then, I'll pass.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Amazon is a first response with me
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'll be back to the Amazon
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hi
I stumbled upon your site today and was quite impressed. I really liked the design. Did you make it yourself?
I wanted to let you know about ReadPrint.com -- a massive non-profit library similar to Bartleby -- except its far better organized and user friendly. We've been using it extensively in school nowadays -- it's great for doing research since you can search within the books.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]