News

Amazon.com Opens E-Book Store
John Mutter and Edward Nawotka -- 11/20/00

Amazon.com opened its long-awaited e-bookstore last week. The new store (www.amazon.com/e-books) features content not available in print, along with exclusive e-book titles in an Amazon-customized Microsoft Reader format plus downloadable digital audio titles from Audible. Ingram's Lightning Source is the "preferred and primary" e-book fulfillment provider for the e-bookstore. Amazon is offering a little more than 1,000 titles to start. Some 30 will be free.

Some of the titles are e-versions of books that will soon be published in print, including In Fidelity by M.J. Rose (Pocket), Star Trek: S.C.E. #1: The Belly of the Beast by Dean Wesley Smith (Pocket), Turtle Island Dreaming by Thompson Sayer Crockett (ipublish.com); and Up, Simba! 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate by David Foster Wallace (ipublish.com).

Other titles are available in print, but are e-book exclusives on Amazon. These include Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel (Harvard Business School Press); Secrets of FrankHerbert's Dune (ibooks); and The GE Way Fieldbook: Jack Welch's Battle Plan for Corporate Revolution by Robert Slater (McGraw-Hill).

Amazon's partners were ecstatic about the launch. Steve Stone, general manager of Microsoft's eBooks product group, said, "Once again, Amazon.com is redefining what it means to buy a book. The combination of Amazon.com's incredible shopping experience and the unique capabilities and instant delivery available with Microsoft Reader will make electronic reading a powerful new reality."

Donald Katz, founder and chairman of Audible, in which Amazon has an investment, commented: "We are proud to bring Amazon.com customers the opportunity to program their own listening time with digital audio streams and downloads from audible.com."

Ed Marino, president and CEO of Lightning Source, called the collaboration between Amazon and his company "a significant step in the development of the e-book market. This alliance marries the strength of Lightning's publishing partnerships and the wealth of their collective digital content with the reach and retail muscle of Amazon.com, providing publishers with a new and extensive outlet for their e-books and greatly expanding consumers' access to e-book titles."

Used Book Hubbub
Overshadowing Amazon's e-book launch this week was its introduction of a controversial feature, the selling of both new and used editions of recently published books on the same shopping page.

A prominent blue box just below the cover image of a book asks, "Already own this item?" and offers a link to place a used copy of the book up for sale. This new practice has been criticized by some authors and publishers, who believe that it has the potential to undermine sales of new copies of a book. Specifically, authors appear most worried about prepublication copies of the book that go out to reviewers and the media ending up for sale on the site as collectible or used copies prior to the release of the new book.

Erick Goss, Amazon's group product manager for books, responded to the criticism by saying, "Amazon.com is focused on the customer and giving the customer choices. By offering readers different formats--both new and used--we're giving them the opportunity to try new titles and new authors at a lower price point. By selling the used titles, we're hoping to get readers to buy books that are new to them. By doing this, we're hoping to introduce authors to new readers."

For every used book sold in this manner, Amazon gets 15% of the sale price, plus 99 cents.

Some bookstores have defended Amazon, citing their own policy of selling both new and used titles on the same premises. Many have pointed to Powell's World of Books in Portland, Ore., which stocks new and used titles next to each other on the same shelf, as a successful real-world example of Amazon's online model.