What can you say about a company that, despite all predictions, didn't die? A company that opened its virtual doors to the public 10 years ago this July, enjoyed a rollicking late-'90s stock ride, was proclaimed near death soon thereafter and, now, on the eve of its anniversary, is making decisions and deals that could shake up the very industry that created it.
You could say, as we did in our April 11 issue, that that company—Amazon.com—was the Bill Clinton of the book biz, i.e., publishing's comeback kid. You could also call it the sleeping giant, which has just awoken from an early millennial nap.
I'd also call Amazon.com one of the great branding stories of our age, a company that is estimated to comprise at most 10% of the book sales in this country (higher for business books, lower, perhaps, for children's) but way better than half the consciousness of the bookish world. Not only do those of us in and around the book business use the company's Web site for research about pub dates, author names, backlist and much, much more (which can't make established book research firms that charge for their info very happy), but even the hoi polloi think "Amazon.com" is a synonym for online bookselling. In a completely unscientific survey, I gave book-loving friends, mostly "civilians," this verbal Rorschach test: "When you think 'online bookseller,' what name comes to mind?" I asked. They all mentioned a very long river.
As for authors, well, just ask agents and publishers how many calls they get a day from writers who've got repetitive stress disorder from pushing the refresh button on their Amazon rankings page.
When you think about it, it's really remarkable what Amazon's done—and I don't say this because they license our reviews or because, I understand, when Jeff Bezos was starting his business, he spent some time in the PW offices studying the business. In a decade, Amazon has built and maintained a brand recognition, and a usefulness, that far exceeds whatever number Wall Street is valuing it at that moment. (That the retailer has recently become the third, and in some cases, the second biggest account in the country may come as a surprise to most of us only because, well, we probably thought it had been that successful for years.) In other words, it's the poster child for the theorem that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Which is not to say, of course, that Amazon is perfect. We've all heard about the glitches that exposed reviewers' real names (though, of course, that raises the question: Why doesn't the site insist on real names in the first place?) and more than once I've come upon a misspelled author's name or a confused pub date. And you can preorder the next installment of Harry Potter at lots of places that will ship it out in the same expedited manner this July. But it seems telling that Amazon reported recently that it has received 700,000 preorders for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince; no other online retailer has released its preorder numbers, but experts suggest that no other online retailer will come close. The bigger outfits, in the end, may sell more books than Amazon, but they're not getting the advance buzz—or the online traffic.
But that's Amazon's great trick:. It has hardly cornered the market on product or even service. But what it has done is cornered the market on buzz and perception. Which, as any honest book person will tell you, is equally, if not more, important in this crazy business.
