By Clive Keeble

So what if Waterstone's and Borders gave ground to Amazon - it is near impossible to compete and stay in business when a rival outlet is hell bent on predatory pricing in order to obtain their foothold. I won't bore everybody by details of how Amazon evolved and how close to financial disaster they came in the fall of 2001 : Amazon had been watching eBay become cash rich out of their listing fees and commissions and decided to go for broke with Marketplace - a brilliant stroke. It was the financial stability and easy pickings from their cut of Marketplace which gave Amazon the clout to offer further hefty discounts on many titles. Don't forget that in the dot com days of the 1990's large corporations had made many financially disastrous decisions - two glaring examples were WHS, in 1998, buying bookshop.co.uk for 9.4million (just weeks after they had *sold* Waterstone's) and the Bertelsmann/B&N website which was a near total disaster. In the fall of 2001, with the flirtation of Abe and rivals Alibris for exposure on AZ Marketplace, revenue streams were established which would assure AZ of steady profit. (As AZ established Marketplace they fine tuned the system to bring pre-ISBN titles - via BASIN - from the dark holes of Zshops into a wider audience). Incidentally, I have never listed or bought a single item on Amazon (why sleep with a predator intent on destroying the terrestial trade) ; however, when I read all these self-serving blogs about the glory of Amazon I feel compelled to respond. It is also a plain fact that TheBookDepository was very much born out of Amazon, and is still dependent upon Amazon Marketplace for exposure.

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By Richard Mower

There is a huge opportunity for dynamic, forward-thinking and inventive players, who are quick on their feet, to disrupt old e-commerce models and bag online market share. And the time to move is now. The major High Street booksellers are, in some ways, a victim of their own longevity and branding success. In consumer minds, they all already have their place and brands might find it more difficult than they think to tweak these perceptions and truly Engage customers on the Web2.0 world. Sure, all things Web2.0 are exciting and shiny, but it's about how you, or rather how the customer, utilises them. I have a nagging feeling that we'll see a few examples of companies spending wheelbarrows of £££s and being led by the dazzling scope of the technology rather than the desired end consumer experience. What consumers are looking for today online is multifacted: they want to contribute, they want value, they want information, they want range, they want to 'share', they want speedy free delivery and so on. A complex mix of 'experiential' and 'rational' demands that need to be balanced and addressed. I can think of no other market with the same amount of creative, talented, passionate and experienced people in it. I would not be at all suprised if it is the bookselling industry that defines and delivers the new models for online retailing that others will follow.

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