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business newsAmazon: Changing the World, One Kindle at a Time
Company's clearly won the digital-print sweepstakes.
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Exacerbating my humiliation, I wrote a love letter to the company in September of 2007, declaring it the King of Online Retailers, indeed “a great retailer” by any standard.I have no higher praise for an entity. I’ve been married to Mrs. Jeffmacke for more than a decade; I adored her at first sight, and she’s the only blind date I ever saw fit to go on. I’m still not ready to call her a Great Retailer. Helen Mirren is the dishiest 60-something British woman I know. She’s a lemonade stand compared to Amazon.
Amazon is 85% higher since I made sweet verbal love to the company in September of 2007. Worse than that, the stock all but implored me to get long by trading lower than my print date for extended periods twice in the intervening period.
All of which begs the question: Why does my opinion matter? Because of the Kindle. The Kindle is Amazon’s iPod. Apple (AAPL) was the maker of adorable and wildly overpriced Macs prior to the iPod. Digital music was something tech wonks stole online and put on baffling mp3 players (remember those?).
What Apple got, and what Amazon gets, is that consumers will pay for, rather than steal, digital products if you give them a fair price and easy interface. Not only that, the company offering said fair price and interface thus takes control of the bulk of the distribution channel. They change the game in ways existing players never even considered. That’s what the iPod did. That’s what Kindle is starting to do.
Buy a Kindle. Subscribe to a few newspapers. Then, when the mood strikes you, download a book as an impulse item. A Kindle book costs about $9.99, and you have it in your hands in a couple minutes.
I’m a little weird about this kind of thing, so your reaction may differ - but my reaction the first time I purchased a book this way was akin to what the Italians call “being struck by the lightning bolt.” I was in love. Not only didn’t I care who knew it, I actually wanted to start telling people around me about it.
Suffice it to say, I’m not a guy who enjoys sharing his inner feelings with strangers. Or anyone. Ever.
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