One Click by Richard L. Brandt

Amazon was always fairly expensive in Singapore (shipping and all that). But, when I moved to Japan, it became a life-saver when I was looking for English books. Or you know, just wanted to buy anything from Amazon Japan (Prime for students, celebrate!) Ironically, I didn't get this book from Amazon, I chanced upon it in a BookOff store.

One Click is basically a short history of Amazon.com, from it's early beginnings (actually, even before it started, since it does talk about the jobs Jeff Bezos had before he started Amazon), to their crash, and a short discussion on the impact of Amazon.com on the book industry. This is a revised version, so an afterward about the Kindle Fire was added.

What this book showed me that Amazon.com, which I've always taken for granted, is no ordinary company. The reason why it's so successful is because it has a founder who is driven and timed the launch of the website very well. One other thing that I learnt was that the decision to sell books was a largely practical one.

This is mostly a history of Amazon.com, and the short chapter asking "Is Amazon Killing the Bookstore"? is to me, not comprehensive enough. It's really more of an introduction to the debate than anything. But, this isn't the focus of the book, and I'm sure that there are other books that talk about this more in-depth (perhaps I'll look it up on Amazon.com).

This short (207 page) book is a quick introduction into Amazon.com. If you're interested in learning more about the company, this may be a good introduction book. There are about 10 pages of notes in the back, so you can find different sources for further reading.