{"id":1376,"date":"2014-02-12T10:44:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T23:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1376"},"modified":"2014-02-12T10:44:19","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T23:44:19","slug":"the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-jeff-bezos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1376","title":{"rendered":"The Way A Cheetah Would Pursue A Sickly Gazelle – Jeff Bezos"},"content":{"rendered":"

The company\u2019s relationship with those publishers was called the Gazelle Project after Mr. Bezos said Amazon \u201cshould approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.\u201d A joke, perhaps, but such an aggressive one that Amazon\u2019s lawyers demanded the Gazelle Project be renamed the Small Publishers Negotiation Program.<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com.au\/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10<\/p>\n

‘Sadistic’ Amazon Treated Book Sellers ‘The Way A Cheetah Would Pursue A Sickly Gazelle’<\/span><\/p>\n

JIM EDWARDS<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
\"Bezosjeff\"<\/a>Jeff Bezos<\/small><\/div>\n

Amazon was so ruthless with small book publishers that its pursuit of new, more favourable contract terms with them was \u201csadistic,\u201d according to Brad Stone\u2019s books about the company, \u201c
\nThe Everything Store<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basically, small publishers leaped at the chance to get better distribution through Amazon in the early 2000s. But once they became dependent on Amazon for sales, Amazon turned the screws, Stone claims, demanding longer pay periods and lower discounts. Publishers who didn\u2019t \u201cpay to play\u201d would get unfavorable treatment on Amazon, making their books more expensive and harder to find.<\/p>\n

CEO\u00a0Jeff Bezos regarded the publishing business as a \u201csickly gazelle,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Stone writes, according to a review in the New York Times:<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s relationship with those publishers was called the Gazelle Project after Mr. Bezos said Amazon \u201cshould approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.\u201d A joke, perhaps, but such an aggressive one that Amazon\u2019s lawyers demanded the Gazelle Project be renamed the Small Publishers Negotiation Program.<\/p>\n

Mr. Stone writes that Randy Miller, an Amazon executive in charge of a similar program in Europe, \u201ctook an almost sadistic delight in pressuring book publishers to give Amazon more favourable financial terms.\u201d Mr. Miller would move their books to full price, take them off the recommendation engine or promote competing titles until he got better terms out of them, the book says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did everything I could to screw with their performance,\u201d Mr. Miller told the writer. The program was called Pay to Play until the Amazon lawyers changed it to Vendor Realignment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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