Skip to main content

Amazon Now Hiring Kindle Sales Reps, Also Recruiting Indie Bookstores

AmazonRetail_2013_04_21[1]Editor’s note: No, this is not a delayed April Fool’s Day joke.

When I caught up with Kobo at BEA 2013 last week they made a big deal about how their ABA member partners were having a positive effect on their ebook sales. It seems Amazon has also noticed Kobo’s success, because the retail giant appears to be building a similar network of retail partners.

Update: Amazon officially launched the program in November 2013.

Reports have been coming in for the past week that Amazon is trying to recruit indie bookstores to sell the Kindle. The first to report this shocking news was Los Angeles-based Skylight Books.

This indie bookseller posted on their blog last week that they got a call from an Amazon rep:

so i got a phone call today from a representative of Amazon! apparently, he was given the task of reaching out to independent bookstores in order to ‘build’ a ‘relationship’ with the indies in order to ‘partner’ with us in a program to sell Kindles in our store…yea, really. so, in my most incredulous voice i asked him if he was serious and stated flatly that we wouldn’t be interested.

I haven’t been able to confirm the accuracy of this story, but other sources have indicated that this isn’t the only bookseller to be telemarketed by Amazon. One report even lead back to an email for the Amazon Kindle Wholesale Team. That in and of itself is not newsworthy (I knew of that team already), but it does provide convincing supporting evidence that this story is true.

Update: Shelf Awareness beat me to this story this morning, and they have a second bookseller who reports that he too was contacted by an Amazon rep.

But we now know for sure that Amazon has approached at least one other independent bookseller about selling Kindles. Roger Page, co-owner of Island Books, Mercer Island, Wash., was standing near his wife, Nancy, when she fielded a call like the one made to Skylight Books. "I believe they mentioned the word Kobo and said they could offer competitive prices," he said, adding that he suspected the caller was "somebody low down on the totem pole" and describing Nancy’s response as "very firm."

But never mind the unconfirmed story; there are other signs today that Amazon is much more interested in brick-and-mortar stores than they used to be. I have discovered new job listings on the Amazon website for field sales reps for the Kindle.

Amazon is currently looking to fill 10 different positions for a "Field Sales Representative – Kindle" (as well as a management position). The locations for the sales reps are spread across the US and are focused on major metro areas like Seattle, NYC, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Francisco.

So far as I can tell these listings are brand new; they certainly weren’t there when I was researching a related story in late April. The job is a part time position with duties including being a Kindle evangelist, leading training sessions, and so on. There’s not much in the job descriptions that is really all that unusual for a sales rep, but there is one line that caught my eye:

Participating in assisted selling activities on weekends at select retail locations

That seems a little intense when compared to Amazon’s past interest in retail sales, don’t you think?

So far as I know Amazon had previously focused their efforts on getting into retail chains like Staples, Target, Microcenter, and the like.  But that task doesn’t seem to fit with the impersonal sales of a major retailer.

Instead, I think that "assisted selling activities" would more closely describe pitching the Kindle at book fairs, author signings, and other more personal events. You know, the kind of events that a bookstore might run.

I’m not suggesting that Amazon will have much luck in convincing bookstores to sell Kindles, but I do think they are working towards that goal. And Amazon has convinced Waterstones to be their partner in the UK, so this clearly isn’t impossible.

And it would also be a good idea. Over the past year Amazon has lost a number of retail partners as major retail chains have decided to stop pimping for their competition. Both Target and Walmart stopped carrying Kindles in 2012, costing Amazon shelf space in thousands of retail stores.

Still, the bookseller at Skylight Books is probably a good example of the response Amazon will receive. This bookseller asked that Amazon fulfill a couple requirements before he would agree to be a partner:

  • Amazon has to stop its predatory business practices such as undercutting the prices of an entire market of products (books) that they themselves do not depend on for revenue and/or creating sleazy apps that encourage people to buy from Amazon while they’re actually standing in a bookstore.
  • Amazon needs to start paying sales tax in all 50 states of the union and stop sucking all the money out of every community they infiltrate.

I don’t see that happening, do you?

P.S. I am still trying to find out more about this story, and I am waiting to hear back from Amazon. If you know of an indie bookseller who has been contacted by Amazon, please let me know in the comments.

Similar Articles


Comments


ucfgrad93 June 5, 2013 um 2:15 pm

Gotta love the snarky comment about Amazon paying sales tax in all 50 states. If the bookstore owner wants that to happen perhaps they need to contact the people responsible for the fubar tax code – their US Representative or Senator. :rolleyes:


Rob Siders June 5, 2013 um 3:27 pm

Missing from the bullet points above was this gem:

the Kindle has to be open source

I wonder if he made that a precondition for partnering with Kobo.

… stop sucking all the money out of every community they infiltrate

Ignoring, of course, the communities where they have have fulfillment centers and all of the communities they ship to 250 days per year. (Note: I’m assuming all of those warehouse workers and delivery personnel are paid for their labor.)

Beth Spencer June 6, 2013 um 11:22 am

Rob, yes, Amazon pays its warehouse workers. And they pay as well: http://www.motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/09/amazon-warehouse-heat-shipping

Rob Siders June 12, 2013 um 12:45 am

While I don’t doubt for a moment that working in a warehouse in the summer is shitty—so is working in a lumber yard, or in construction, or the army, or an airline—it doesn’t change the fact that saying Amazon "sucks all the money out of every community they infiltrate" is patently false. It may not be a great job or one that you want, but those workers buy stuff in their communities every day.


Amazon Now Recruiting Indie Bookstores to Sell Kindle, Tells Them About the Awesome Cookies – The Digital Reader November 6, 2013 um 9:23 am

[…] the story from June about Amazon recruiting indie booksellers to promote and sell the […]


Booksellers Respond to Amazon Source: "Die Amazon Die" – The Digital Reader November 7, 2013 um 8:32 am

[…] To be honest, none of this comes as a surprise. The general tenor of the responses matches with what the very first bookseller said when news about this program broke in June. […]


Amazon's First Retail Store is Here Today, Gone Tomorrow – The Digital Reader December 2, 2013 um 3:27 pm

[…] they’re staffed by anyone from Amazon. While Amazon has been hiring Kindle field reps since June of this year, those reps would likely be more willing to talk than the one employee cornered by the WSJ […]


Amazon: Those Pop-Up Stores Aren't Strictly Stores – The Digital Reader December 2, 2013 um 10:07 pm

[…] know that Amazon has been hiring Kindle field reps since June 2013 and that they have at least one based in the SF metro area, but were any Amazon reps at the pop-up […]


Write a Comment