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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John May who wrote (1802)	2/27/1998 9:56:00 PM
From: Tom D	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Subj: You don't have to be cheapest to win! (from the Yahoo AMZN board yesterday) By: bestbookbuys Date: Feb 26 1998 2:15 P.M PST Reply To: Msg. 699 by tomd12345 As the founder of Best Book Buys, I can tell you that I agree with tomd12345 in that we (the bookstore comparison sites) will not be putting Amazon out of business anytime soon. Best Book Buys (http://www.bestbookbuys.com/) currently surveys A1Books, alt.bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books.com, BooksNow, and Intertain. We sort our search results by price, highlight the cheapest price, and still we find that our users click to Amazon and Barnes & Noble more often than the bookstores that usually have the best price. Our only explanation of this phenomenon is that as long as our users see that they are getting within a few bucks of the cheapest price, they would prefer buying from a name they know. Definitely, proof that Amazon is taking the right road by bleeding to get market share and name recognition. (WARNING - BLATANT PLUG, PRESENCE SHOULD NOT DISCOUNT ABOVE COMMENT!) So, go find the best prices for your book purchases at: bestbookbuys.com Thanks, Steve Message 717 of 755

To: John May who wrote (1802)	2/28/1998 12:34:00 AM
From: William T. Katz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

John, I'm not in denial. And I don't call the books you bought "technical". I stand by my statement and think if you try to refute my statement, try entering in some Physics, Engineering, Biology, etc. textbooks. I'm more than comfortable with my short position and have expanded it at 70 and 73. Try: "A Primer for the Monte Carlo Method" ($23 difference) "Monte Carlo Transport Of Electrons And Photons" ($32 difference) "Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling for Engineers" ($21 difference) In each case above, AMZN was worst price. The best was B&N for first two and booksnow.com for last one. Depending on the field and the particular book, one online store can be substantially cheaper than another. Unless AMZN is always the cheapest, I can't see why anyone would spend the extra $20 to buy from there exclusively. In the real world, it takes a lot of time to go from one store to another. On the net, it takes 5 minutes and even less if you use a best book price engine like bestbookbuys.com. AMZN has nothing special. While it may capture a reasonable # of customers that won't shop around, I believe many will think a 15-20% price difference warrants using a price engine. A price war is also inevitable. Even if B&N won't commit to a war, just wait until the big publishers and giants like Bertlesmann decide to exercise their superior cash position. If you are sitting on AMZN at $77 and expecting a 10% rise, you are hoping for a continuation of a short squeeze. I'm a patient short. And once word gets out on these book price engines, people will eventually realize that regardless of the hype, AMZN deals in a commodity market with low low margins. And if AMZN prevents access of their database, it will only take a few manual price comparisons to convince some people that they aren't missing much by not ordering through Amazon.