Robin Gaster, Behemoth: Amazon Rising.

 

                                  

- This is an exceptionally good, well written and fascinating book. Unlike so much that is written about Amazon it is fair and even-handed, fact based not fear based. And it's very up-to-date, the manuscript being completed in November 2020. Many statistics date from late 2020.

- Gaster is president of a data and program evaluation consultancy and a visiting scholar at George Washington University. He's an expert in the field of ecommerce.

- There is a lot of detail about Amazon’s battles with publishers in the early days: discounts demanded, discounted pricing, the ‘Look Inside’ initiative, the Kindle and ebooks revolution including the low $9.99 price point, among others. As George Packer observed in his classic New Yorker article 'Cheap Words' in 2014, Amazon executives considered publishers to be 'antediluvian losers with rotary phones and inventory systems designed in 1968 and warehouses full of crap...the New York publishing business was just this cloistered, Gilded Age antique just barely getting by in a sort of Colonial Williamsburg of commerce'.

- The book is also excellent on the new and flourishing self-publishing industry. And stunningly good at summarising Amazon’s encroachment and now virtual ownership of the book industry. 

- But today's Amazon is a huge enterprise, having moved well beyond books. In fact the book industry only takes up the first 40 pages of this 370 page tome. We move on to the amazing Amazon Prime story, to the massive investments in logistics and distribution capabilities, to the hugely successful Amazon Web Services, to the smart speaker Alexa, to the highly profitable Amazon Marketplace which offers more than two million small to medium sized independent sellers of goods a sales and distribution platform. While Amazon Retail itself is highly unprofitable, Marketplace on the other hand is highly profitable and has emerged as the real core of the entire business. It generates more operating income than any other segment (including Amazon Web Services).

- We've rarely seen any of Amazon's numbers however - its revenues by segment and associated margins, expenses and profits/losses. Gaster delves deeply into all this and has scoured a comprehensive array of sources to put together some telling financial data. 

- While celebrating the positives Gaster doesn't shy way from Amazon's substantial negatives. In Marketplace for example Amazon often plays really dirty, excluding and undercutting suppliers, stealing product designs, and indulging as a matter of course in ruthless, autocratic, uncompetitive behaviour. There are plenty of stories from disgruntled sellers who accuse Amazon of screwing them over.

- There are two chapters on Amazon's appalling treatment of its workers - blue and white collar. It operates like a cult. There’s something fascist about it - setting a bar for human performance that a large percentage of people can’t meet, and terminating them accordingly. 

- Gaster considers whether there is a case for Amazon to be broken up under Antitrust law. He concludes, quite credibly in my view, that that path would be a waste of time and resources because in all likelihood it would not be successful. The option he prefers, in the interest of taming the beast, is government regulation by an independent government agency. Full disclosure of all data should be required: sales, costs, staffing, disputes, etc. Utility-style mandatory disclosure would provide permanent and real-time monitoring of Amazon’s platform. Information transparency would enable Amazon to be held to account and prosecuted if it deviated from standards set by law.

- I've no doubt that this book will become a classic in the business genre. It's a must read.

 (It is self-published, and unfortunately the text is littered with quite a few missing words, letters and misspellings. A professional proofreader would have corrected these easily).