1. Amazon’s Black Hole for Data Joseph J. Esposito Digital Book World 2014

2. The “Hawking Radiation” Project Metaphor from astrophysics: information that escapes from a “black hole” Amazon is notoriously secretive Some of the information it releases is misleading The fawning media compound Amazon’s reticence How to find indirect ways to get data about Amazon?

3. Strategies Work with defined subset of books (university press titles) Interview U. press directors Interview wholesalers Interview librarians (from 4-year colleges) Blog about findings to garner comments and additional information

4. Interesting Data Points A French-language U. press site receives one- half of sales from outside France: http://www.lcdpu.fr http://www.lcdpu.fr Many American press note increasing feedback from overseas readers All U. presses report declining sales through B&T All presses report sharply rising sales through Amazon for print

5. It appears that Amazon...... is quietly taking a growing share of the international market... is becoming a significant distributor to libraries... is increasingly competing with B&T and Ingram And all this is for print only

6. A Supply-chain Paradox: Case Study A publisher ships books to (say) B&T A library orders a book from Amazon Amazon orders the book from B&T B&T drop-ships the book to the library in an Amazon box Librarians say they order from Amazon instead of B&T because the service is better!!!

7. Speculations Amazon’s market share may be even larger than generally assumed Market share in libraries is unknown; some estimates put it at 10% or higher (Currently working on a grant application to research this with an extensive library survey) Likelihood Amazon will develop strategy to migrate this print market share to digital, perhaps through acquisition

8. Contact Information Joseph J. Esposito espositoj@processedmedia.com @josephjesposito +Joseph Esposito http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org