A Look Back at Amazon’s Twenty Years

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Publisher’s Weekly has a retrospective on Amazon.com’s 20 years of selling books, DVDs, electronics, and everything else. The article cites the introduction of the Kindle and the Kindle e-bookstore as Amazon’s most important innovation, but is quick to cite the company’s other advances—as well as the many controversies sparked by said advances.

For example, before it entered the e-book business, Amazon angered publishers with its aggressive tactics toward selling used books. But the company pressed on and in 2008 Amazon cemented its place as the most important seller of used books when it bought AbeBooks, an online marketplace for used and rare books that was its largest competitor in that market.

Kelly Lynn Thomas reads, writes, and sometimes sews in Pittsburgh, PA. Her creative work has appeared in Sou’wester, Thin Air Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, metazen, and others, and she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. She is hopelessly obsessed with Star Wars and can always be found with a large mug of tea. She also runs the very small Wild Age Press. Read more at kellylynnthomas.com. More from this author →