Books>Business, Finance & Law>Biographies & Histories>Company Histories>
Company Histories Search Company Histories Company HistoriesBusiness the Amazon.Com Way: Secrets of the World's Most Astonishing Web Business (Big Shots Series)
Capstone Search Capstone by Rebecca Saunders Search Rebecca Saunders
Amazon.co.uk Review
Business people are incurably nosy about their peers which is why airport bookstores are crammed with books purporting to reveal the innermost secrets of the corporate elite de nos jours. Rebecca Saunders has previously unearthed the "secrets" which guided Michael Dell to success as the man who first started selling computers on the Net. Now she has turned her attention to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, and the Web's most talked-about entrepreneur. Her book contains one great insight--that Amazon is much more like a department store than a bookshop--and provides an interesting, if somewhat breathless, account of the origins and growth of the company, interspersed with formulations of the "10 Secrets" which allegedly explain its remarkable rise to corporate prominence. "Live and breathe e-commerce" is Rule One, for example, while Rule Seven exhorts us to "Develop unbeatable logistics". They all look plausible but then so is motherhood and apple pie. One is left with the feeling that if success in business could be attained by following rules then we would all be as rich as Jeff Bezos. He must be doing something right, though. Otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. --John Naughton
Customer Reviews:
Dull and Repetitititititive
This book starts well, and after the introduction is finished, it goes downhill. It unfortunately does not then ever pick up again. I was hoping for much more insight.
Rehashed Outlines of Old Newspaper and Magazine Stories 
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 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.
After the "DIRECT FROM DELL" the folow up is here 
Yes, if you are interested in Michael dell miraculous story,you have to read what this book have to offer.Good on details it`s a book both for business people and techies.
A good hand-book on the basics of Amazon 
You hear so many people discussing Amazon who have never so much as taken time to find out about its history or purpose.This book, which is inexpensive, would be a good place to start learning about why the company is on its present course.It contains some useful facts and figures and whilst not being a master thesis on Amazon , is useful in gleaning the gist of the Amazon story. Not a regretted purchase at the price.
No substance - just repeats the same old stuff over and over
The first 40 pages were quite interesting but then she runs out of ideas and we end up reading the same old "amazon puts customer service number1"(which it does!) story over and over. No new insight or info - if you are looking to make your company an amozon.com - this WONT tell you how. Buy permission marketing by seth godin instead.
RELATED:
Business the Amazon.Com Way: Secrets of the World's Most Astonishing Web Business (Big Shots Series) & More...
related blog:
忘川河。空间: Amazon.com
Saunders, R. (2001) Business The Amazon.com, UK: Capstone Publishing Limited, ISBN 184112155X Bianco, A. (1997) Virtual Bookstores Start to Get Real. Business Week, pp7-9. Geiss, C., Helwagen, H., Hillow, R., and Kelly, K. (2005) Mouse ...
http://chaiyun921.blogspot.com/2009/07/amazoncom.html
big shots, business the amazon.com way: secrets of the worlds most ...
list price: $24.95. amazon price: $15.14. discount: 39%
http://spendfish.com/product/184112155X
![Understanding Organizations [Fourth Edition]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0140156038.03.THUMBZZZ "Understanding Organizations [Fourth Edition]")
