One of the great things about the Internet is that it truly is creating all sorts of new economic and business activity that we never imagined just a few years ago. Amazon is one of those "new economy" businesses, and it is a good example of why the U.S. economy keeps humming along, despite a heavy loss of manufacturing jobs.
Amazon did not exist ten years ago, but now employs thousands of people, in an online enterprise, rather than a manufacturing enterprise. As more and more manufacturing plants close, companies like Amazon keep growing and hiring more people. The challenge for a lot of communities is to ensure that young people leave high school with the right motivation and training to join the Knowledge Economy, as well as to help displaced workers enter the Knowledge Economy. Neither is an easy task, but both need to be done.
What does this have to do with "building your own bookstore?" Via Jakob Nielsen's great usability newsletter, he notes that Amazon now has a new feature that lets anyone create their own bookstore, as Nielsen has done. Amazon handles all the technology, you put your name on the bookstore, and you get a small commission for every book sold via your "bookstore."
It is a really neat idea, and as Nielsen notes, it gets rid of the really awful clutter of most Amazon Web pages, filled with a million distractions. And it is another example of how the Knowledge Economy is transforming business. Are the workers in your community ready to take advantage of these opportunities?