With the advancement in e-reading technology, I was curious if it were possible for readers to be able to hear the actual songs while reading the book. I contacted Amazon and discussed the idea with their Kindle team, and they were very enthusiastic about it.
Netflix, Amazon, iTunes - whatever platforms emerge - we are looking at as having the same potential that home video had for the movie business. Which means there are entirely new opportunities to monetize our capital investment in content and do so in ways that work for distributors, for consumers and for creators.
Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary... That has always been a potent combination.
I use Amazon for books. I use Amazon for loads of other things. I regard Amazon as a source, as I think a lot of other people do.
I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon, and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books.
At the end of the 1990s, we decided we should invest our best efforts to work in a sustainable way with the ingredients that the Amazon produces.
The film division at Amazon is made up of true cineastes who love movies and really want to try and provide opportunity for independent film visions to find their footing in a vastly shifting market. They love cinema.
We operate in a world where you can have a package from Amazon arrive on your doorstep the same day; where Uber has a private driver at your front door within minutes; but when it comes to Congress, it takes three weeks for someone to get a form letter response to his or her questions.
With 'Machine of Death,' we became the #1 bestselling book on Amazon in a single day.
In the non-Greek stories, Persia, Egypt, even China, Central Asia, in oral traditions and written literature, anyone who fights Amazons admires their courage and beauty, and they want to be allies of the Amazon; they don't wanna kill them.
I said the only way I would join Pets.com was if I could get Amazon to invest, and I did. I knew that anything that could be sourced externally, Amazon could do better and cheaper than anyone else except Walmart. It was really obvious to me.
Which is the healthier kind of literary diversity: an un-gate-kept self-published book world, run substantially through Amazon? Or our current book world, which is part-gate-kept, part-not, with many different publishers and retailers and platforms? I'm not smart enough to figure it out, but if I had to guess I'd guess the latter.
Amazon is such a big player in publishing, but a lot of authors feel this connection to their publishing house and their editors who helped them get their books out there, so their loyalties tend to go that way.
I have more faith in doing something creative for a cable station or something like Yahoo or Google or Amazon. What Netflix did with 'House of Cards' and David Fincher was brilliant. That is inspiring to me. I think there is more chance for creativity in animation, it just hasn't happened there yet.
We're not trying to be Amazon, all things to all people.
Low-value payments are now possible. Now, Ripple can make it easy for Facebook and Uber and Amazon to make payments to developers in real time. It's online and completely global.
Companies that are terrifying to a writer are companies like Amazon.
I feel very passionately that we need to take care of the planet and everything on it. Whether it's saving the Amazon or just being kind to those around you, we need to take care of each other and Mother Earth.
I think Amazon is a place where people don't want to work.
Yes, Brazil, like the whole world, stands to lose a lot in a climate-altered world. But it's also one of the major forces determining our future: It's the home of most of the Amazon rain forest.
I knew people were independently publishing, and I buy books on Amazon. I began seriously considering it when Amanda Hocking was in the news about her self-publishing success.
I love that thing on Amazon that you can go on and order a book, and you click on it and it says, 'You might also like,' or 'Other people who bought this have bought that.'
When I began work on my first book, 'The River of Doubt,' which tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt's 1914 descent of an unmapped river in the Amazon rainforest, I thought of it as a tale of adventure, exploration and extraordinary courage.
Of course, to publish something, you have to write it, polish it, then hire out the line editing, copy editing and cover design. After which, you pick your way through the minefield of conforming to the differing requirements of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, or hire someone to do it for you.
With paper printed books, you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash, which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.
Despite outsiders being invited to write software, the iPhone thus remains tightly tethered to its vendor - the way that the Kindle is controlled by Amazon.
I find that the Amazon comments often are exceptionally shrewd and insightful, so I'm not going to diss them. But you don't really have any guarantees that what you're reading wasn't written out of friendship or spite.
Seattle was hardly a tech magnet before Amazon, Microsoft, and then a host of once-fledgling technology firms set up operations there.
In the old days you could do re-runs, and people would have to watch that because there's nothing else. But with Netflix and Amazon, Hulu, Xbox, as well as premium and regular cable, it's very hard to do that.
I think Amazon is the greatest start-up and the greatest company in the world. The way they are using new technologies is not just disrupting retail, it's getting ready to disrupt everything.
With the way Amazon and eBay had become big companies and with the way people were embracing technology, I was like, it is so obvious that this is going to be a huge game changer in this space. The combination of these things is going to change what it means to retail, what it means to launch brands, what it means to connect with your consumer.
I was like, Amazon Prime? Who has Amazon Prime? It turns out everybody.
If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.
Microsoft makes numerous apps for both Android and iOS, as do Google, Amazon and Facebook. You can run iTunes and iCloud on Windows and Office on the Mac.
I have no idea what the economics of the movie business is, especially with all the new Amazon, Netflix, Showtime, AMC, SyFy, and HBO series. But I am intrigued with what feels like a new type of show - the six-to-eight-hour movie. It's a little too long to watch in one setting, but you can watch it over a three- to five-day period.
Amazon may be the only studio that's run by people who come out of making independent movies, real hands-on moviemaking.
