Barely a footnote at the end of a Publishers Weekly column about market share for online retailers versus bricks-and-mortar booksellers was this:
“With Amazon’s growing power in book sales, it’s understandable that publishers may be a bit anxious on learning that in Amazon’s 10-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company lists among its many competitors not just bookstores but also publishers.”
Nothing more, just that. Maybe it was intentional in trying to grab attention, but it also seems like an open-ended, unclear way to end a column. Like an episode of Lost but without any enjoyment or entertainment whatsoever.
So I dug into Amazon’s 10-K myself to see what was up. I came away unintimidated, not because Amazon.com isn’t a megapower when it comes to selling product, but because the Publishers Weekly writer took a vague piece of legalese from the 10-K and fed it to us as something worth worrying about. You decide (this is long):
Our market segments are rapidly evolving and intensely competitive. Our current and potential competitors include: (1) physical-world retailers, publishers, vendors, distributors, manufacturers and producers of our products; (2) other online e-commerce and mobile e-commerce sites, including sites that sell or distribute digital content; (3) a number of indirect competitors, including media companies, Web portals, comparison shopping websites, and Web search engines, either directly or in collaboration with other retailers; (4) companies that provide e-commerce services, including website development; fulfillment and customer service; (5) companies that provide infrastructure web services or other information storage or computing services or products; and (6) companies that design, manufacture, market or sell digital media devices…
My take: “Anyone might be our competitor.” I mean, they listed EVERY. SINGLE. TYPE. OF. COMPETITOR. THEY. COULD. CONJUR. Didn’t they? If you search for the word book in this 82-page document you can barely find it, so I don’t think Amazon is too concerned about taking on the publishers of the world. If they were, would they tell us about it? Would they include us in their plans?
Or not?
