Harvard Bookstore not only survives Amazon onslaught, it thrives
By adamg - 5/14/12 - 12:21 pm
Forbes interviews the Harvard Book Store's new owner, Jeff Mayersohn.
I respected his mission, even if I didn’t quite believe in its future. So, Jeff shocked me a couple of weeks ago, when he told me with a certain amount of pride and pleasure that he has been seeing double digit sales growth month by month over the last year.
Comments
I don't care...
If dude can get his books to me cheaply and in two days (and let me stream tv shows and movies), I'll holler at him. Otherwise, I'll continue to pad my library with books from Amazon.
Das Kapital!
When one single corporation
has complete monopolistic control over what I can read, I'll remember to thank you.
There's more to a value proposition than the current transaction; there are long-term issues.
They're a monopoly at the other end, too
As an author I have been informed by my publisher that the way Amazon finances its "deep discounts" is by cutting the rate that it pays the publisher (and therefore the author). And no, this is not because they buy in bulk. Rather, they place very frequent orders for very small quantities. By the time my publisher pays for shipping 1 or 2 books at a time, off of Amazon's deeply discounted price, my publisher may actually be losing money on the deal. And this fits perfectly into Amazon's consumer marketing as well: "Only two left in stock! Buy now!"
(Most regular bookstores pay for the shipping, but Amazon doesn't.)