Rating: 
Summary: Nothing New Here!
Review: Unfortunately you'll not get any astounding insight into how and why Amazon.Com has reached the level of success it has...or why selling on the web has "brick and mortar" retailers quaking in their boots from reading this book. The author seems to get most of her information from the press or other books. I got more insight into the company from Segaller's "Nerds 2.0.1" (which this author quotes from!). Save your time and money!
Rating:
Summary: Very basic work
Review: Very basic book on doing business via the web. This should have been released a generation ago when Amazon.com itself was finding its way. The new enterpreneur exploring online business is more knowledgeble than the informaiton and insight provided here and hence can disappoint reading it. It may be suitable for those who are hearing the name of e-business and trying to set up the business online for the first time in their country to know what happend when Jeff Bezos tried doing so for the first time in the history. Certainly this book is not for those who already heard about e-business.
Rating: 
Summary: Rehashed Outlines of Old Newspaper and Magazine Stories
Review: When a publisher doesn't like your book proposal, the way they try to let you down easily is to tell you it would make a good magazine article. Why would a publisher take on a book whose sources are newspapers, magazines, and books from an author who tell us she doesn't like to buy books on line from Amazon.com to write about a company that started as an on-line bookseller? Since you are obviously a fan of Amazon.com or you would not be reading this review, my opinion is that you could probably write a better history of the company and its success pattern than this book did based on your own experiences with the company.Given that everything in the book was from public sources, I could not understand how the author could call her points "secrets." But here they are: (1) Understand e-commerce (2) Build an entrepreneurial team (3) Focus (4) Brand the site (5) Get and keep customers by offering value (6) Set up a distribution network (7) practice frugality (8) practice technoleverage (improve your performance with technology) (9) constantly reinvent your business model (10) add strategic alliances and acquisitions. What does that tell you that you didn't know before? On the interesting question of whether Amazon.com will be able to sustain the cashflow losses, the author says nothing other than that the harvesting period is still ahead. I compared this book to the book, Amazon.com, which had its own weaknesses, and found that this book lacked an authentic voice of reflecting what is different about the company it studies. Where are the anecdotes, the polls of customers, powerful material from message boards, and quantitative analyses of what happened? Even if Amazon.com executives would not talk to her, you can certainly do better than this. Oh, by the way, the facts were not well checked. Those I was familiar with were usually wrong. So you can't even rely on this book for baseline information. I can go on with more reasons not to buy and read the book, but I don't want to waste your time. You have better things to do. In the same way that many Web Sites won't become valuable businesses, many books about Web businesses aren't going to do any better. Here is a fine example of that observation.
Rating:
Summary: Rehashed Outlines of Old Newspaper and Magazine Stories
Review: When a publisher doesn't like your book proposal, the way they try to let you down easily is to tell you it would make a good magazine article. Why would a publisher take on a book whose sources are newspapers, magazines, and books from an author who tell us she doesn't like to buy books on line from Amazon.com to write about a company that started as an on-line bookseller? Since you are obviously a fan of Amazon.com or you would not be reading this review, my opinion is that you could probably write a better history of the company and its success pattern than this book did based on your own experiences with the company.
Given that everything in the book was from public sources, I could not understand how the author could call her points "secrets." But here they are: (1) Understand e-commerce (2) Build an entrepreneurial team (3) Focus (4) Brand the site (5) Get and keep customers by offering value (6) Set up a distribution network (7) practice frugality (8) practice technoleverage (improve your performance with technology) (9) constantly reinvent your business model (10) add strategic alliances and acquisitions. What does that tell you that you didn't know before? On the interesting question of whether Amazon.com will be able to sustain the cashflow losses, the author says nothing other than that the harvesting period is still ahead. I compared this book to the book, Amazon.com, which had its own weaknesses, and found that this book lacked an authentic voice of reflecting what is different about the company it studies. Where are the anecdotes, the polls of customers, powerful material from message boards, and quantitative analyses of what happened? Even if Amazon.com executives would not talk to her, you can certainly do better than this. Oh, by the way, the facts were not well checked. Those I was familiar with were usually wrong. So you can't even rely on this book for baseline information. I can go on with more reasons not to buy and read the book, but I don't want to waste your time. You have better things to do. In the same way that many Web Sites won't become valuable businesses, many books about Web businesses aren't going to do any better. Here is a fine example of that observation.
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