The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

An open letter to Jeff Bezos

Dear Mr. Bezos,

Here is an idea for an Amazon service that leverages your technology and that allows you to squash Google's attempts to offer its users 'My Library' in 'Books'. I had this idea months ago and it is my frustrations with Google Books that prompts my writing to you today. Here it is, in a nutshell:

I'd like to be able to create My Personal Library the same way I create my Wish List, i.e. by using Search to find the books I own, in your database, and by clicking 'Add to My Library'.

So simple that I am surprised that you didn't offer it a long time ago (no wonder that you're only 11th in Business Week's list of the most innovative companies;-). You have the technology. You have the best database (Google's is terrible). You can implement the few required modifications to the user interface in a matter of days. I'm volunteering to beta test, of course.

In fact, I'd like to create, separately (and in priority):

- My Personal Book Library
- My Personal Music Library
- My Personal Video Library

In release 2.0, I'd like to be able to create my own categories, e.g.

- For books: business, design, history, science, fiction, etc.
- For music: jazz, classical, Latin, etc.
- For video: comedies, TV series, etc.

If you do that for me (and for the millions of Amazon customers), I'd Opt In to let you use my libraries to make really sensible personal recommendations, based on the dozens of significant books I own and keep, not on the few I bought recently for myself, my wife and children, my friends, etc. You could still use recent statistics to propose gifts to offer to these persons.

So, we're talking here of a proverbial win-win situation. Better service for me. Increased revenue for you.

Sincerely,

Henri Aebischer