The Gazelle Project. That's what Amazon called its initiative to cajolebook publishers into giving them better deals. According to The New Yorker, CEO Jeff Bezos said "that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle."
A cheetah can sprint 70 miles per hour, accelerating faster than a Ferrari Enzo. Bezos's company moves at a similar clip. Amazon has grown at breakneck speed over the past decade and brought in nearly $75 billion last year, thanks to the unconventional, daresay ruthless style of its chief executive. Here are five strategies that Bezos used to build the Amazon empire.
1. Be like the Godfather: Make them an offer they can't refuse.
In 2004, Amazon set its sights on the Melville House. The boutique publisher of serious fiction and nonfiction based in Brooklyn, N.Y., was just a fledgling company when things got tense with Amazon. Co-owner Dennis Johnson recalls his distributor calling him and describing negotiations with Amazon "like dinner with the Godfather."
As The New Yorker reports, Amazon "wanted a payment without having to reveal how many Melville House books were sold on the site." Johnson was critical of the policy, and shared his concerns with literary trade magazine Publishers Weekly. A day after it published a story on Johnson, the "Buy" button on Melville House's Amazon pages suddenly vanished.
So Johnson, who's since blogged of Amazon's war on books, decided to pony up. "I paid that bribe," he says, "and the books reappeared."
Check all five strategies here