Amazon, Built by Retail, Invests in Its AI Future (wsj.com) 26
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon built a $2 trillion company through years of aggressive spending on its retail and logistics businesses. Its future gains will likely be determined by the billions designated to fund its artificial-intelligence push. Amazon is planning to spend more than $100 billion over the next decade on data centers, an impressive level of investment even for a company known for its spending ways. The Seattle company is now devoting more investment money to its cloud computing and AI infrastructure than to its sprawling network of e-commerce warehouses.
Amazon Web Services, the arm that manages Amazon's cloud business, has opened data centers for years, but executives said there is a surge in investment now to meet demand triggered by the excitement around AI. "We have to dive in. We have to figure it out," said John Felton, who took over as AWS's chief financial officer this year after spending most of his career in Amazon's retail fulfillment operations. The company's financial commitment reflects the importance and high costs of AI. Felton said building for AI today feels like building that massive delivery network in years past. "It's a little uncertain," he said. AWS is expanding in Virginia, Ohio and elsewhere.
Amazon Web Services, the arm that manages Amazon's cloud business, has opened data centers for years, but executives said there is a surge in investment now to meet demand triggered by the excitement around AI. "We have to dive in. We have to figure it out," said John Felton, who took over as AWS's chief financial officer this year after spending most of his career in Amazon's retail fulfillment operations. The company's financial commitment reflects the importance and high costs of AI. Felton said building for AI today feels like building that massive delivery network in years past. "It's a little uncertain," he said. AWS is expanding in Virginia, Ohio and elsewhere.
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Thanks.
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Amazon has a database. It's filled with the names and e-mail addresses of people categorized by what kind of fiction they like. They know how many books they buy, what formats they prefer and what kind of pricing motivates them the most. Amazon has retail rights to pretty much every popular book on Earth.
According to Bezos himself, there are only 1000 authors making six figures or more. Think about that for a moment. We can put a book in anyone's hands in seconds worldwide and there aren't enough six-figure authors to fill a high school gym.
Over the last 1-2 years, Amazon has fucked up their relationship with Google (which removed the ability to buy books on Android) and their relationship with Apple (which hosed everything else).
WITH ONE EMAIL Amazon could make me a NYT best selling author. They could move millions of books (I had 30+ titles at one point). They could pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions. All pure profit. The money would go on for years and years and years. With my writing speed I could make them millions a year.
I can make a list right now of 100 other authors whose books would accomplish the same thing. Tens of millions of dollars. Pure profit. They could start pocketing it tomorrow. They could have started ten years ago.
And yet, they never sent that email.
Instead, they took control of the entire publishing industry and drove it right into the ground like a lawn dart. Want to know how bad it is? The Kindle still doesn't support transparent PNG backgrounds.
So Amazon, on behalf of all the authors you screwed out of a career, you can take your AI, your billion-dollar TV shows and all the rest of your stupid crap, roll it cylindrically and ram it directly up your ass.
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Amazon has a database. It's filled with the names and e-mail addresses of people categorized by what kind of fiction they like. They know how many books they buy, what formats they prefer and what kind of pricing motivates them the most.
And yet, with Kindle books, they insist on mostly showing me romance novels - which I have never purchased and have no interest in.
Amazon certainly has a ton of data on my reading habits, but they're apparently very bad at parsing it.
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Only 1000 authors making 100k or more? Yikes.
As a fledgeling author myself (I'm 40k+ words into several stories I'm working on...), I'm curious how you think Amazon could've made more authors profitable, without compromising their own profits.
I'm assuming that's the gripe you've got: that Amazon is making profits in excess. From where I'm sitting - having not looked into it thoroughly, yet - it's a fairly straightforward process to self-publish books on Amazon. Is it just that they're not prioritizing the s
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I'm curious how you think Amazon could've made more authors profitable, without compromising their own profits.
Amazon knows exactly who will buy my books. Yet they insist on charging me 60c a click to guess in their goddamn CPC casino.
Their profits are not at issue. They are leaving mountains of cash on the table and have been doing so for years and years.
If they focused on the educational market alone, they could pocket a billion dollars a month.
Is it just that they're not prioritizing the sales of the good authors, and instead relying on ratings? Something else?
They are completely ignoring it. I suspect there are numerous high level executives at Amazon who think books are obsolete, so they are content to let them suffocate.
I'm wi
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Having seen how the Amazon Devices/Kindle development is run, it's all being done by third world dreamers - or people who are otherwise not very bright. Some of the dumbest software developers I've ever had the displeasure of working in opposition to.
The whole point of those devices, of course, is to push other Amazon services (Kindle Unlimited, etc.).
It's all massively mismanaged and run by incompetent folks, and the recent layoffs demonstrate that fact. Nobody worth their salt in tech actually wants to work for Amazon, and AWS only then because of the pay. Mostly, you get eager beaver recent graduates in most positions and sometimes they'll stick around long enough to be useful, if they're the useful type. If they're the "success through metrics" type, they'll establish a fiefdom and fuck things up for everyone trying to get things done.
They've also been shooting themselves in the foot by giving preferential treatment to resellers, which is mostly just "people who dropship from AliExpress" or similar. It's most of their business now, and those folks get preference.
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I have 2 accomplished writers in my family. One wrote non-fiction on global politics, business/economics, and was published by Crown, Penguin etc. The big publishers would advance authors between $80k and $1M, just on the idea of the book. Biographies of famous industrialists had big advances, and sometimes the advances were paid out even though the book was never published. One was the former CEO of Morgan Stanley. He decided not to publish his biography because he realized somewhere before the end of it t
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"I do know several fantastic authors personally who've struggled to make enough money on Amazon with their books, despite them being very popular amongst the military scifi demographic. I can understand the frustration."
Would that include Dietmar Wehr , Chris Nuttall, Glynn Stewart , D J Holmes, Chris Hechtl , Saxon Andrew
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It would include Dietmar Wehr. he's a perfect example. Early works have thousands of positive reviews. Recent works are struggling to get sales.
Chris Nuttall, same thing. Previous books: 1000s of reviews. Book released two weeks ago: approaching a six-figure sales rank.
Amazon knows for a fact those books sell and review well. But they aren't promoting them at all. What the hell is Nuttall doing with a two-week-old book in the high 80,000s sales rank? What the fuck is that?
Look at Chris Fox. Got a book out
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I don't think you realize how small the book business is for Amazon compared to... pretty much everything else they do, really. Why do you think they didn't release any more Kindle devices in 2023 and 2024 so far? And no new Paperwhite, their best selling model, since 2021?
And Mil SciFi? So a niche of a niche of a niche? The billions you're talking about exist only in your imagination.
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I don't think you realize how small the book business is for Amazon compared to... pretty much everything else they do, really.
Fine. Why don't they say so instead of pretending to run a bookstore?
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i mean.... just playing devils advocate here.... but isnt it in Amazons interests for these books to sell? you know, seeing as they take a cut on sales?
That's the best part. By not promoting those books, they are leaving money on the table.
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Let me guess, you do fiction?
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I already am a best-selling author. Twice. I have 13 years of sales data that proves what I wrote is a mathematical certainty.
I write both non-fiction and fiction. I write comics. I'm also a fairly accomplished technical writer. Why, I've even written at least one classroom book.
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barely a few sentences in and im struggling to comprehend you
Not my problem. I write in plain English.
maybe theres a reason you cant make a living as a writer
I am making a living as a writer. Total strangers in foreign countries pay to read what I write.
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