How Amazon won the book selling war, and how it could win all of retail

When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, Americans didn’t spend much money buying books — but that didn’t matter. The book The Everything Store investigates the creation and success of Amazon starting from its early days, and n+1 magazine reflects on its findings and what they mean for the company’s future. The article points out that even in 1994 when Amazon began, Bezos might have wanted to sell everything, but he knew he had to focus on one thing — and he chose books. From then on, Amazon learned and began to redefine the business of online retail: Amazon doesn’t have to be profitable (and often isn’t each quarter) to be the biggest player in the game. Read the entire article to see how Amazon grew from selling only books to selling books, music, and DVDs, and eventually, to selling nearly everything.