Dropping Profits Sends Amazon In Odd Directions 152
tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post has a story detailing how Amazon has purchased the rights to turn a recently published book into a feature-length movie. The article also outlines other 'strange directions' Amazon has taken in response to declining profits and a plummeting stock price, including moving into the grocery business and producing original live webcasts and streaming shows."
We'll Tell You What You Like (Score:4, Insightful)
They probably got him to sign over the rights for nothing and then started pushing the book to set up the movie: Poor guy. Sounds like another Anthony Burgess who sold the rights to make A Clockwork Orange into a movie to The Rolling Stones for around $5,000.
This kind of reminds me of a media outlet gone wrong. Or American Idol informing people of what good music is. You really have to wonder if Amazon found this book and said "this is a really good book" or if they said "find me a book that will translate well to the big screen."
You want to make money? Find an acceptable product or well known name and shove it down America's throat. Instant cash. Examples: Mission Impossible 2, corporate boy bands with music written by teams of people, any media that follows a standard high selling formula, etc. Next up? Amazon studios presents their new movie
In TFA, they even admit it:
3rd party shippers (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The old saying goes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Desperation + Poor Management = (Score:2, Insightful)
I used to work at a company that did the same thing. What they did, they did poorly, because management had a poor attitude toward employees, customers, and partners.
Rather than fix these things, which would have soiled their resumes by admitting error, they desperately attempted to cut costs to ridiculous extremes and move into new market segments that didn't in any way leverage their strengths.
Last I knew, they were still losing money (now that they can't cut any further) and competent employees were fleeing for their lives to much better and more stable opportunities.
My problem with amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
The lagging economy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The old saying goes... (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't shopped at Amazon in a loooooooong time (the whole multiple stores and sellers in the Amazon search, so when you go to check out you have 10 different shipping and handling fees, that drove me off...) but I have heard their name mentioned a bunch lately b/c of the movie thing....
Re:We'll Tell You What You Like (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I find it far weirder that they've gone into the Grocery business. I went to Amazon this morning, to see if I could hear a snippet of a new album, and there was Tony the Tiger, hawking cereal on the Amazon home page! What possible advantage could there be for the average person in ordering their corn flakes online, paying shipping charges, and waiting two weeks for them to show up? Are they going to order their milk from Amazon, too, and hope it get to them before turning into cheese or exploding in the back of a hot mail truck? I doubt it, so they're going to have to go to the store, anyway, so what's the point? And, what was Amazon thinking?
As for American Idol, am I going to trust a bunch of "Reality TV" (an oxymoron, if ever there was one) watchers to tell me what's good music? I don't think so. These are people who probably aren't even aware that the sound from their TVs is approximately as good as the sound from a Dollar Store radio, and wouldn't understand how that's relevant, or why that's a bad thing, if they were told. But, hey, these are the same people who gave us our current President, so how wrong could they be? Right?
Re:Prepare to be toppled! (Score:5, Insightful)
A. Make a big budget movie even though you are a retailer...
B. ????
-or-
A. Get rid of the whole thing where someone spends half an hour shopping on your site, filling their cart, thinking that they are getting a good deal, but when they get to the checkout they find that each item was from a different seller and all the shipping and handling is separate, so it adds like $60 to the bill.... Yeah, get rid of that, and then B may be:
B. Profit!!!!
Re:We'll Tell You What You Like (Score:1, Insightful)
I disagree. Perhaps you've been unable to frequent a bookstore as of late. Find any book by L. Ron Hubbard, open it up to any page you wish, and gasp in horror. If you still remain unconvinced I implore you to inspect the contents of any celebrity written book, and hopefully you will find one that isn't ghost-written. Also, feel free to check out any of the ego massaging political books with titles such as "Lying Liberals and the Obease Conservative that Eat Them".
Many books, and I'd say most books, are published because publishing houses need to make money, and not because the books are good, which leads me to your next comment...
You want to make money? Find an acceptable product or well known name and shove it down America's throat. Instant cash.
Which is a sentiment I totally agree with. Harry Potter anyone? Oh, my, did I touch a nerve?...
Re:They are listening to the stockholders (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, yeah, sure, if you put it that way it makes perfect sense.
KFG
Re:We'll Tell You What You Like (Score:3, Insightful)
They're trying to leverage the expertise in their pool of customer reviewers, who gave enough positive feedback for Amazon to move forward with this. Really, this isn't a bad idea - circumventing traditional book critics and going right to a group of customers to try and get ahead of the "next big thing."
I wouldn't overreact to this story, as it's prompted by a lousy 2nd quarter earnings report. Let's check back 6 months down the road and see how the story spins...
3rd-party sellers can be good (Score:3, Insightful)
I must admit, though, that I wish there were an "advanced search" feature beyond the current offering, including the ability to limit results to products shipped by Amazon itself.
Re:Third Party Merchants (Score:3, Insightful)
They are ignoring their profitable core competancy to provide services that their customers neither desire nor expect from them. It used to be that I went to Ebay for used books & such and Amazon for new books, DVDs and popular consumer electronics. Now I buy new books from B&N, continue to purchase used items from Ebay and I have a netflix subscription for my DVD fix. Amazon couldn't hope to compete with Newegg for electronics. Bye bye, Amazon.
Tired of Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
In the brick and mortar world, a big department store can beat small specialty stores because one-stop shopping really saves time. But it doesn't take long to hop from one website to another. If Amazon's corporate goal is still growth through diversification, it could become a dinosaur and lose business to more-narrowly focused competitors, which often sell at lower prices (e.g. Bookpool [bookpool.com]) and are easier to shop (e.g. Newegg [newegg.com]).
Re:I'm not that surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazon used to have highly responsive customer service representatives, who had wide discretion. When they tried to organize they were fired and phone responses were outsourced to Belfast and e-mail responses to New Delhi. I assume that the webpage management has been similarly outsourced.
Amazon has always been the vendor of last resort for me. They established themselves by dumping product below cost, decimating independent bookstores in the process. Now that they have to service this debt and compete on a level playing field, they pursue "odd directions" to cover up the weakness of their core business.
I suspect that the ever overrated Jeff Bezos will eventually go down as notable failure similar to Kozomo but on a much grander scale.