This morning I read about a conflict during a recent lunch meeting between Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and lunch guest author/bloggers Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. These are the guys behind the book Naked Conversations. Sidenote: I tried finding that book in the Portland airport bookstore and it wasn’t available (sold out? not stocked?). Haven’t read the book and intentionally stayed away from their website where they were blogging the process and even including pieces, but I am interested in reading the book.

Werner summarizes why he was critical questioning Scoble and Israel:

Just because blogs are cool and everybody is doing them does not automatically mean that we should institutionalize them at Amazon. We have a long history of promoting customers to use their voice about our products and our operations, so if you come to Amazon to tell us our business is going to really suffer if we do not blog, you better be prepared to defend your ideas with very strong arguments and hard evidence. We expect that from anyone, externally or internally, who wants to promote an idea within Amazon.

While the bone of contention for this particular exchange seems more geared toward Amazon employees and the company blogging (that’s the gist of Scoble and Israel’s book), I’d like to switch the focus on why Amazon should do a better job providing their authors a good blog platform. This could do more to helping promote more book sales I think than having Jeff Bezos or a bunch of managers blogging about life behind Amazon. I guess I disagree with Scoble/Israel — if this is their belief — that every company should have a blog. Human resources might want to have a blog, but only if it will be updated and useful for potential job candidates. The CEO might want to have a blog, but only if it’s updated by the CEO, not some stand-in PR shill.

Take somebody like Dori Smith and Tom Negrino. They could benefit from having a blog on amazon.com where they could discuss the book in greater depth. Sure, they can do that on their own blogs, but that’s not at the point of sale, which for the authors who are more involved could increase their sales. They could provide bonus content to Amazon readers and tidbits that didn’t make into the book. I met Dori at the Search Champs and we talked a bit about the book writing process. Writing technical books is largely a process of trimming the fat. Some of that fat might be of interest and quite useful to readers but for a wide variety of editorial factors might need to have been trimmed. A blog could be one place to delve into that content and what better place than where the book is being sold?

I don’t buy that much from Amazon but my wife is a regular shopper. We get Amazon packages pretty much on a weekly basis. Neither of us buy many books there. I’d rather walk into a Borders to thumb through a book. This is one area of weakness in all online stores, that you can’t feel and touch and demo the merchandise before buying. It’s the reason I don’t think offline retail will ever completely go away. And this might sound weird but I also like the smell of books. There is something serene and almost sacred about a bookstore. Amazon cannot and does not create that ambience.

So what can Amazon do for me as a customer and offer something the local Borders can’t? A real author written blog complete with comments (which either the author or Amazon should moderate to keep out the spam and crazies) is one marketing tool. I wrote back in December 2005 that the Amazon Connect program wasn’t a blog author program despite some claims otherwise. Readers can sniff out fake marketing and to this Amazon should try to disconnect not connect. I can see that being a legitimate concern over releasing a true blog program across their website for authors and perhaps these were some of Mr. Vogels underlying concerns.

Rough draft author to reader interaction
Something like what O’reilly is doing with Rough Cuts appeals to me as providing additional value that no brick and mortar store can provide and is similar to what Scoble and Israel did during their rough draft process. The Amazon Connect program seemed too shallow and limiting to both authors and readers to be attractive. Maybe if they actually improved that connection?

Virtual book signings
The brick and mortar stores provide book signings which are attractive to readers — the thrill of meeting celebrity authors — drives people to the stores, but what about Amazon hooking up with somebody like Second Life (SL) to provide virtual book signings? Lawrence Lessing tried this and I think that’s a partnership with many sales possibilities. There’s a rumor that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is checking out SL.

Blogging right for every company?
I’m glad to see somebody from Amazon challenge and question what value blogs might provide their company. Would Amazon employees and executives blogging make any difference to how much shopping you did there? Not me.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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