Come on Bezos, Kindle My Fire, or: Amazon's week on our blog

Jeff Bezos introduced on Wednesday Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet device. The new $199 tablet , as well as Amazon's other new products, the all-new Kindle for only $79, two new touch Kindles – Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G – for $99 and $149, are the biggest development in the e-reader /tablet market since the launch of iPad last year and created an incredible buzz.

We also think this is big news and we will have an Amazon week next week, exploring the impacts of the new products in five posts from our green perspective:

On Monday we'll discuss if the new Kindles will contribute to making e-reading greener.

On Tuesday we'll compare Kindle Fire with iPad 2 and Nook Color and see which device is greener.

On Wednesday we'll see what will be the impact of the new Kindle products on Barnes & Noble.

On Thursday we'll check what will be the impact of the new Kindle products on independent bookstores.

Finally, on Friday, we'll discuss the influence of the new Kindle Fire on Amazon's carbon footprint and if we'll see any change in the company's refusal to disclose it.

See below Jeff Bezos demonstrating the new tablet at a presentation on Wednesday:



So stay tuned and visit us next week to learn more on the green impacts of Amazon's new tablet.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Why Amazon rejected a shareholder decision to disclose how it deals with climate change?

Last Tuesday Amazon's shareholders rejected on their annual meeting a resolution calling the company to prepare and publish a report describing how Amazon.com is assessing the impact of climate change on the corporation.

This resolution was This resolution was filed by Calvert Investments, one of the largest sustainable and responsible investment companies in the U.S. and we also helped in the preparation of this resolution.

Why Calvert filed this resolution? Because as a shareholder it sees climate change in terms of risks and opportunities that Amazon can’t and shouldn’t ignore any longer. Rebecca Henson, sustainability analyst at Calvert, explained it to Seattle Times:

"We own this company and want it to do well, so we wouldn't want any poor performance to come from the release of a document. We just think it's something that would be beneficial and could save money in the long run."

Amazon's shareholders rejected the measure mainly because Amazon was opposing it. Why Amazon opposed it? Well, according to Seattle Times "Amazon opposed the measure, saying that preparing a climate-change report would not be "an efficient use of time and resources."

I think this is a poor reply and definitely not the one you can and should expect from Amazon. We're talking about a company that in the same shareholder meeting reported on $34.2 billion sales and $2.5 billion free cash flow.

Now, how much it costs to prepare the report Calvert was asking for? If Amazon would use the format offered by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which is used by 70 percent of S&P 500 companies that unlike Amazon disclose their emissions, then it would be about $80,000 (65% of the companies surveyed by CDP are spending up to £50,000 on reporting greenhouse gas emissions). Let's say for the sake of arguments that it would be $100,000 because Amazon is a large company.

$100,000 are 0.004% of Amazon's free cash flow. In other words it is such a marginal expense, Amazon wouldn't even notice it. Actually, according to the CDP, most companies believe the benefits of reporting outweigh the costs, so there's a good chance it won't even be an expense at the end, but a profitable investment.

It's not just Calvert and I that are positive that climate change represents material risks and opportunities that should be assessed and considered accordingly. A growing number of investors understand that climate change is influencing every business and ignoring it equals poor management of their money.

Only yesterday climate change investor groups published a report on global investor practices relating to climate change, and according to their press release "the majority consider climate change a material investment risk/opportunity and incorporate climate change risk assessments into their existing investments; public policy a key driver of investment decisions". This report is based on survey responses from 44 asset owners and 46 asset managers with collective assets totalling more than $12trillion.

Unfortunately the majority of the shareholders of Amazon doesn't see it this way and chose last Tuesday to follow the company's position against a measure that even doesn't propose to take action, but only to prepare a climate change assessment.

For a company involved in the manufacturing and sale of the Kindle, providing web services, relying on data centers and using shipping it just doesn't make sense. Not to mention the fact that Amazon is a company that is proud in making decisions based on “long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions”. We hope that Jeff Bezos and Amazon will understand it eventually, not just for the sake of the environment, but also for the sake of the company's future success.

More related articles:

Why Amazon Needs to Come Clean About its Carbon Footprint - Triple Pundit

Why Amazon is so hush hush about the Kindle's sales figures and footprint?

Dear Jeff Bezos, please make Kindle the greenest e-reader

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Dear Jeff Bezos - Part 2: I get a disappointing answer and try again!

Couple of days ago I wrote to Jeff Bezos, explaining to him that I'm considering to buy the Kindle but I first want to know more about the Kindle's environmental and social impacts.

I wrote Jeff Bezos that my request is very simple: Please make sure the Kindle is as environmentally and socially friendly as possible and share the information about your efforts with me and other interested stakeholders. You can read the whole letter here.

Couple of days went by and I received a reply. Well, not from Jeff, but on his behalf. Here it is:

Hi Raz,

I'm Valari Parmenter of Amazon.com's Executive Customer Relations. Jeff Bezos received your e-mail and asked me to respond on his behalf.

We’ve carefully reviewed your concerns and understand you feel strongly about this issue. We require our suppliers to be in compliance with all applicable manufacturing laws to sell on Amazon.com.

I'm happy you're also concerned about properly recycling Kindle. Amazon.com recognizes the importance of recycling electronic equipment at the end of its useful life so we’ve created a recycling program for Kindles and Kindle batteries. All Kindles sent in for recycling will undergo material reclamation by a licensed recycling facility and Amazon covers all the costs associated with shipping and recycling. For more information about this program, please visit the link below:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200197550&qid=1282087346&sr=1-1

We value all feedback from our customers, and I thank you for taking the time to send us your comments about this issue. Although we won't be able to comment further on this topic, we hope you'll allow us to continue to serve you.

Thanks for your interest in Kindle!

Regards,

Valari C Parmenter
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com

It won't surprise you that I was a little bit disappointed with this reply. Although Valerie discouraged from continuing this dialog, I decided to reply and be more clear and specific. Maybe it's my fault and the request wasn't understood. So here's my reply to Valari:

Hi Valari,

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it, but I'm not sure I received an answer to the main concerns I brought up, which were:

1. What efforts Amazon is making to ensure the Kindle is as environmentally and socially friendly as possible?

2. When will Amazon publish the Kindle's footprint and share information about it with its stakeholders?

E-waste is becoming an increasingly important issue (even the EPA is making it now a top priority - http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/08/18/epa-chief-cites-e-waste-as-a-top-priority/), so I appreciate the information on your recycling program, but I was wondering what Amazon is doing to incentivize its customers to recycle their Kindle devices besides making the recycling program available?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Raz

Now we need to wait. I hope to hear from Valari soon. In any case I'll keep you posted!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

When will Amazon start being more transparent about the Kindle and their ebook sales?

Amazon announced yesterday that for the last three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books.

Amazon's release didn't provide a clear picture on their e-book and Kindle sales, but nevertheless created of course a lot of buzz and there was almost no media outlet that didn't report about it.

BUT, is the information Amazon released really significant and why can't they just be fully transparent once and for all??

First, the significance of the information: Amazon said that in the past three months, it has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. In July, sales of e-books accelerated to 180 sold for every 100 hardcover versions. Also, Amazon said Kindle device sales accelerated each month in the second quarter—both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis.

Jeff Bezos tried of course to build a positive momentum from these figures, saying in a statement that the shift at Amazon is “astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months". According to the Wall Street Journal, he also said that "the growth rate of Kindle device sales had "reached a tipping point," having tripled since the company lowered its price to $189 from $259 last month, following a similar move by competitor Barnes & Noble Inc. to cut the price on its Nook e-reader."

Some analysts also got excited from this data. The WSJ quoted Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney who said "That is dramatic evidence of how powerful the e-book is now. What the iPad and other book reading devices have done is just raise the overall e-book market—and Amazon is extremely well positioned to take advantage of it." The New York Times quoted Youssef H. Squali, managing director at Jefferies & Company in charge of Internet and new media research, who said that "Amazon’s latest sales figures are “clearly an indication that the iPad is complementary to the Kindle, not a replacement.""

But what these figures really mean? Is the e-book market growing? Definitely. Is the whole book market growing or people are just buying e-books instead of hardcovers? It's not clear, although Amazon said its hardcover sales continued to grow. And What about paperbacks? Nada. Amazon says nothing about this segment.

So even though this information is another clear indicator of the e-book market growth, is it really a "tipping point" as Bezos calls it, or a " dramatic evidence of how powerful the e-book is now" as Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney describes it? I'm not so sure. As the WSJ pointed out it, Amazon still attracts an online audience that is more inclined to be early adopters of new reading technology. This is still not the mainstream. And it certainly goes hand in hand with the forecast of Gina Centrello, President and Publisher of The Random House Publishing Group that eBooks which represented 3% of the market will increase this year to about 10%. Impressive? Yes. e-Revolution? Not yet..

We have to remember that Amazon wants to paint a picture of accelerating growth in sales of e-books, which should serve it to outweigh a negative sentiment because of the iPad launch and concern that Amazon would lose market share to the iPad and other competitors. You could see it, as the NYT reports, on Amazon’s stock price that is down about 16% in the last three months, in part because of those fears.

It was very clear that Amazon is not presenting the whole picture, but only bits of information that can help generating the right sentiment. For some reason, there wasn't almost any criticism about it on the media. Only few media outlets and bloggers such as David Rothman on TeleRead wrote about it (at least that's what I managed to see online..).

That brings me to the second question - why Amazon is not more transparent? Rothman on TeleRead titled his post "Amazon needs to reveal actual Kindle unit sales numbers and stop misleading investors." No matter if you agree or disagree if Amazon is misleading its investors or not, I'm sure you'll agree that their practice of revealing only few pieces of the puzzle is certainly annoying. For example, although Amazon is a public company and sell the Kindle since 2007, the company has never said how many Kindle devices or e-books it has sold (

And it doesn't stop there. As we mentioned here in the past, the company does not make environmental data available. Amazon also ignored requests for providing such information. Here are two examples:

- When Joe Hutsko of the New York Times tried to learn more about the Kindle, he reported that “phone calls and e-mail messages to Amazon inquiring about the materials in the popular Kindle device have thus far gone unanswered.”

- Emma Ritch of Cleantech Group who wrote the report “The Environmental Impact of Amazon's Kindle” wrote that “Amazon declined to provide information about its manufacturing process or carbon footprint.”

I believe that transparency is not just something Amazon owe to its investors and stakeholders, but also a powerful tool that can actually become beneficial for Amazon. I totally agree here with Jeffrey Hollender, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Seventh Generation, who wrote on GreenBiz the following:

Information technologies now let the public keep an eye on everything we do, and we invite this scrutiny. Publicly sharing all our activities preempts our critics, and more eyes on our behavior means more advocates and friends. Radical transparency also creates new partnerships and in this way becomes the first step towards overcoming the deficiencies that ultimately harm our profitability.

Will Amazon do it? I think eventually they won't have a choice, especially when competing with companies like Apple and Google that take a different approach towards information sharing and transparency. How much time? well, it depends on Amazon and even more on their stakeholders and the pressure they're willing to put on the company.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Amazon did great on the first quarter. Can it also help the book industry to go green now?

Amazon.com announced yesterday its first quarter (Jan-Mar 2009) financial results and not surprisingly it did very well and even managed to beat Wall Street expectations.

Here are some key figures from Amazon's press release:

Net sales increased 18% to $4.89 billion in the first quarter, compared with $4.13 billion in first quarter 2008.

Operating income increased 23% to $244 million in the first quarter, compared with $198 million in first quarter 2008.

Net income increased 24% to $177 million in the first quarter, or $0.41 per diluted share, compared with net income of $143 million, or $0.34 per diluted share, in first quarter 2008.

So how come other companies both in the book industry (as well as outside the industry of course) are struggling so much and Amazon is doing so well? well, there are couple of good reasons:

1. The Kindle factor - Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO is quoted on their press release saying "We’re grateful and excited that Kindle sales have exceeded our most optimistic expectations." Now, Amazon didn't release new sales numbers, but according to a couple of estimations we discussed earlier this year when Kindle 2 was released it can be very substantial. In any event, the Kindle definitely helps to generate a positive buzz around Amazon and generate a positive sentiment.

2. The weakness of Brick and mortar companies - Imran Khan, an analyst at JP Morgan told the New York Times that "Brick-and-mortar companies are going bankrupt and going out of business altogether and that is helping Amazon gain market share".

3. According to Reuters, Bezos also said shoppers enrolled in the Amazon Prime discount shipping program were boosting growth, as they were picking up goods across multiple categories.

I don't know if Amazon actually sold more books on the first quarter in comparison with the first quarter of 2008. Books are part of the media segment, which we know that rose in 7% this quarter to $2.7 billion sales. But we don't know more than it, so we could only estimate and my estimation is that there was probably a modest growth, which is also impressive in the current economic environment.

The last but not least point I wanted to make is regarding the carbon reduction goals of the book industry we discussed here on Wednesday. As Amazon gains a greater importance in the book industry, I thought of an idea that could generate a stronger incentive for the publishers to meet their goals (and I'm leaving the impact of selling more e-books aside for a moment, as this is still inconclusive).

My suggestion is that Amazon will provide better pricing to publishers that will meet certain carbon reduction goals. As the biggest bookstore, a carbon-based pricing can definitely drive publishers to put more efforts into their carbon reduction attempts.

It makes sense if we look at it through the ultimate test of 'creating a shared value' - publishers will gain more profits with better pricing on sales of their books and Amazon can gain by strengthening the green side of its image and attracting more customers that will feel good about being part of such a program and supporting the environment without the need to pay any premium. Looks like a win-win model to me.

I can only hope Amazon will take the challenge of leading the book industry not only by sales, but also with the efforts to reduce the industry's carbon footprint and make reading more sustainable.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net

The Kindle 2 week - part 2: Bezos on the Daily Show

We're continuing with our special Kindle 2 week, where we cover the Amazon's new e-book device that was launched last week.

Today we have a special gem: Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO is coming to the Daily Show to chat with John Stewart on Kindle 2, where he is revealing one important advantage of the device: you to read with one hand.

Now, seriously, this might be the funniest piece you'll see on Kindle 2, and maybe even one of the best talks I saw on the Daily Show (one of my favorite shows..). Still it includes some interesting insights on the Kindle and how people, like John Stewart, who enjoys the "comfortable low tech" characteristics of books see it.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jeff Bezos

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net