How 19 years of Amazon Prime has satisfied our need for speed

Just as Engadget was hitting publish on its first posts, I was putting a freshly minted English degree to use working at an indie bookshop in Los Angeles. In seemingly unrelated news, Amazon had just reported its first profitable year after switching from selling books to selling “everything” four years before. (It still sold a lot of books.) Our bookstore did a good job keeping shelves stocked with a balance of the more worthy popular hits and smaller, better fare. But we couldn’t have every book a customer might want, so we offered to order any in-print title. If a distributor had it, it’d take about a week to get in, longer if we had to go through the publisher. That seemed fine for most customers. But sometimes “about a week” was too long. A few people came right out and said, “Nah, I’ll order it on Amazon.” In 2005, Amazon launched Prime, the membership program that, for $79 a year, gave customers unlimited two-day shipping on most orders. At launch, CEO Jeff Bezos called it “‘all-you-can-eat’ express shipping.” No one knew at the time how hungry the world was for Amazon’s brand of convenience. And now, nearly two decades later, we’ve seen the shifts that accommodate that buffet — in labor, retail and the entire customer experience. Prime wasn’t an overnight success. It’s estimated that six years after launch, just four million households paid for the service. But 10 years later, in 2021, Bezos claimed it had accrued 200 million members worldwide. Outside of that... Continue reading at 'Engadget'

[ Engadget | 2024-03-08 14:15:57 UTC ]

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The Week announces 100,000 giveaway for 20th anniversary

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[ The Guardian | 2015-05-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Life After Life for Atkinson backlist

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[ The Bookseller | 2015-02-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Technology changes our leisure time but that's OK

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[ Stuff | 2015-01-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A Time-Traveling Graphic Novel and More Great Books We’re Reading This Month

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[ Wired | 2014-12-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Good book for your flight? JetBlue can provide

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[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2014-11-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Kindle Unlimited: it's the end of losing yourself in a good book

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Attitude magazine celebrates 20th anniversary as same-sex marriages are legalised in Britain in pictures

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[ The Guardian | 2014-03-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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What books sell best? Self-help, kid lit, and erotica

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USA TODAY Celebrates The 20th Anniversary Of USA TODAY'S Best-Selling Books List

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[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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