NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> The Amazon.com model
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> The Amazon.com model
glenn fleishman (glenn_at_popco.com)
Thu, 31 Jul 1997 09:22:18 -0700
I hate to be the voice of rebuttal about Amazon.com issues, but as former
catalog manager, I feel like some points in Bob's post should be corrected.
Amazon.com isn't relying on small points in the market that can be easily
duplicated.
Bob Schmidt <schmidt_at_magicnet.net> wrote:
>The fact is, every
>book in print is readily available for purchase from the publisher if
>through no other venue. And sooner or later every bibliophile figures this
>out.
Publishers aren't necessarily all in the business of fulfilling single
books. You have to spent money on a long-distance call, typically, and
spent more than $3.95 shipping to get the book delivered. If the book
doesn't arrive, you have to do the follow-up yourself. This is useful for
certain presses, but not for most books.
>In addition, the vast majority of in print books are now distributed
>through one wholesaler: Ingram. Since all bookstores buy from this
>wholesaler, the wholesaler;s inventory becomes the inventory of any
>bookstore.
This is completely wrong, sorry. Ingram, at any given time, has
approximately 350,000 titles in its several distribution centers (DC).
There are over 1.5 million books in print, according to generally accepted
figures in the industry. Baker & Taylor has (if I recall correctly) 150,000
titles. The overlap between Ingram and B&T is considerable. So out of 1.5
million titles about 400,000 are available through these two distributors
at any given time.
The other 1.1 million titles must be ordered from 20,000 to 40,000
individual publishers (the number of publishers is a highly inexact number
depending on how you track imprints, who's still in business, etc.).
I said many times when I worked at Amazon.com: "Any bookstore can duplicate
what Amazon.com does. Any bookstore with 50 specialists who know the
publishers' order desk people by heart, who have billing arrangements with
thousands of publishers, who order daily in sufficient quantity from many
publishers to get significant discounts."
>While this circumstance gave Amazon the full product line it
>needed, it is not a unique selling proposition that cannot be matched by
>any other bookseller.
Yes, it is. Barnes and Noble and Borders are probably the only other
booksellers with the millions of dollars to set up the distribution and
receiving operations, as well as tracking and billing necessary to handle
real volume. There are other booksellers like Book Stacks (400,000 titles
-- only those in distribution) and alt.bookstore (not much volume, I would
guess, but they don't release numbers).
>What made Amazon so unique was its innovation of online retailing with all
>the concomitant characteristics we have come to expect, convenience, ease
>of ordering and selection uppermost among the list.
That I agree with. In many cases, it was impossible to walk into a
bookstore and get them to special order titles. In fact, anecdotally, I
heard many stories of people going into Books-A-Million or a local
bookseller and asking for a title only to be told its out of print. They
would go to Amazon.com and find it was available in 2-3 days -- which means
that it was actually SITTING on a shelf in Oregon or Nevada at a
distributor's warehouse.
That's all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn Fleishman, unsolicited pundit. Or, in German, ungefragter Ratgeber
mailto:glenn_at_popco.com . NEW! http://www.glenns.org . fax 206.285.0308
contributing editor and "web watcher" columnist . . adobe magazine
currently working on the book "Real World Scanning & Halftones," 2nd ed.
conference chair, web advertising '98/new york conference, feb 2-4, 1998
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