9 Items from The Everything Store

Blogger: Rachelle Gardner

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone tells the story of the rise of Amazon from a tiny upstart to the juggernaut it is today. I found it fascinating from the perspective of how successful businesses are grown and run, as well as from the viewpoint of a satisfied Amazon customer. Most of all, I experienced the book from the totally biased perspective of someone working in publishing—an industry that Amazon is fundamentally changing.

I posted a few thoughts about how the book elicited contradictory responses in me over at my blog. Here, I want to highlight a few interesting and important takeaways from the book.

1. First, it’s BAY-zos. Not BEE-zos. You are now in the know about how to pronounce Jeff’s last name. You’re welcome.

2. Amazon has always been willing to disrupt their own business in order to innovate and improve it. Their philosophy has been that it’s better to cannibalize yourself than have someone else do it. Innovation requires this painful process, and all of us in publishing had better be on board with the idea.

3. Bezos has always been willing to scrap something that’s not working—even if months or years and millions of dollars went into it—and start over. Writers, take note. We can all learn from this!

4. “Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day. Setbacks are temporary. Naysayers are best ignored.” This is one of my favorite quotes from the book. It seems to capture Bezos’s overall philosophy, and I think it can be a solid guiding principle for many of us.

5. Bezos encourages his people to “Do one great thing with maniacal focus.” We are not all so lucky to have that freedom—most of us have scattered focus and multiple priorities. But I think it’s an ideal to keep in mind as we strive to master our craft and our business.

6. What’s in a name? Quite a lot, actually. The working name of the Kindle, all during its development, was Fiona. I think we can all agree we wouldn’t want to be walking around reading on our Fionas. This is important to note, because authors sometimes spend months or years with a book title in their heads, only to have to change it at the publisher’s recommendation. Understandably, they don’t like this. But the title that gave you your inspiration and got you through the writing of the entire book isn’t necessarily the title with the most sales potential.

7. Amazon went far outside its core competency (technology and retail sales) to develop the Kindle. Executives objected vehemently, saying that developing hardware would be difficult and disruptive. Bezos dismissed the objections, saying, “We are going to hire our way to having the talent.” Can’t we all learn from that? If we don’t have the talent to accomplish our goals, we need to go find it. This applies to writers moving outside their core competency (writing) to publishing and marketing their books. And it applies to publishers needing to hire the talent to bring their businesses in line with the technology and requirements of the 21st century.

8. The $9.99 e-book was a tipping point. It was the one thing that sent the publishing industry reeling and moving in a whole new direction. We should all be aware of this. In a world where new hardcovers were $25 and trade paperbacks were $15, new books for ten bucks changed the game.

9. Amazon’s devotion to creating and maintaining satisfied customers—alongside the goal of being the biggest and best retailer in the world—creates a tremendous amount of collateral damage. We don’t need to debate fair business practices here, and we already know about the good Amazon brings to our lives. But we should all be aware that it has come at a cost.

If you’re interested in books about great businesses and the tyrannical geniuses who run them, then The Everything Store is for you. If you want to truly understand the complex relationship between publishers and Amazon, read this book. I found it fascinating, and I am so glad to finally understand some of the complexities that had previously eluded me.

But if you are an author, scratching your head trying to figure out what this all means to you, relax. As you already know, Amazon has brought you tremendous opportunities for self-publishing. Other than that, I recommend you keep focusing on what has always been most important: maintain a basic understanding of the marketplace by reading blogs like this, and write books that people want to read.

As an author, how much interest do you have in stories such as the rise of Amazon? How much do you follow business developments in publishing? Would you rather not think about it?

?Click over to my blog for a more personal response to The Everything Store.

 

TWEETABLES

“Publishing—an industry that Amazon is fundamentally changing,” says @RachelleGardner. Click to Tweet.

“First, it’s BAY-zos. Not BEE-zos.” @RachelleGardner on The Everything Store. Click to Tweet.

“Do one great thing with maniacal focus,” says Jeff Bezos. Click to Tweet.

“Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day.” Click to Tweet.