Tim Carmody

A Glimpse of the City

This will be (I hope) a brief coda to my earlier post, “Tolkien and Amazon’s Fight for a Franchise.” In that post, I claim that J.R.R. Tolkien’s First Age stories, collected in The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin

Tolkien and Amazon’s Fight for a Franchise

Amazon is spending a huge amount of money on its new multi-season television series set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy universe: an estimated 250 million USD for the rights and 465 million USD just for the first season, making it quite likely the most expensive television series in

Moderating Amazon Web Services

I’m trying something a little different here: a forum-style post where I pose a question or problem, usually after describing it at some length, and ask for your comments and feedback. To be honest, I’m stealing this format for my own purposes from Helena Fitzgerald’s excellent newsletter

Who Is Blue Origin For?

It’s a tricky thing when you’re writing and reporting a newsletter about Amazon, perhaps especially when you’re writing about Amazon in a very broad sense as both a company and a cultural phenomenon, to avoig getting caught up in Amazon’s own news cycle. Amazon produces a

Amazon Prime Days as Media Event

I generally dislike writing about Prime Day (or Black Friday, etc.), or any Amazon sales or deals because I don’t see the job of this newsletter as helping Amazon move products, even (or especially) when they’re things I use and like. I’m not an Amazon expert or

What It Means for Oxford University Press to Shutter Their Printing House

It’s a big deal, but a different kind of big deal than you might think

Amazon’s Staggering HR Failures

Welcome back to Amazon Chronicles, my newsletter about Amazon and the industries in its shadow. As always, the main newsletters themselves are free for everybody; paid supporters usually pledge $5 a month or $50 a year for access to comment threads, some behind-the-scenes community posts, but mostly just to help

A new series: on Amazon’s labor future

It seems clear that Amazon is one of the contemporary companies that is broadly transforming the nature of labor in the 21st century. This is happening along many different fronts: executives whose life-changing wealth is tied to the company’s stock success, cloud programmers looking for new ways to automate

What’s happening with Amazon Chronicles

Hello Amazon Chronicles Subscribers! For the last year, I’ve disabled new paid subscribers to this newsletter, since I wasn’t posting often and didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with the subscriber list going forward. HOWEVER, that does not disable autorenewed subscriptions, and many of my

I want to publish a book

I’ve been writing about the history and future of media and technology on the web for about twenty years now — earlier, if you count some stuff that might be considered juvenilia. I’ve been writing about it professionally for well over ten years. Over that time, I’ve accumulated

Jeff Bezos Exits Stage Right

On Tuesday, February 2, 2021, Amazon announced that its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos would resign that second position and assume the role of executive chair sometime during the third quarter of this year. Andy Jassy, currently the head of Amazon Web Services, will take over as CEO at that

What’s the Point of a High-Tech Custom-Made T-Shirt?

A lot of stuff happened this week. However, for the purposes of this newsletter, we’re going to confine ourselves to stuff that happened involving Amazon this week. Trust me: there’s a lot! Most of it happened on Monday. The smallest one in the news cycle (but maybe the

Pennies to Dollars: The Problems With Amazon’s Plans for Detroit

An artist’s rendering of the transit center that will be part of the Amazon complex at Detroit’s State Fairgrounds site. Courtesy the City of Detroit. I have had another story planned for Wednesday for a while, and I’m still going ahead with that. Now, though, I want

Who Can You Trust at Amazon?

I hope you all had a lovely few days off for the Christmas weekend (I loved all those NBA games! Almost all of them since have been trash, though) and are looking forward to a fun, safe, and relaxing New Year’s Eve / New Year’s Day. I hope you’

When Buying From Amazon Isn’t So Simple

For this edition of The Amazon Chronicles, I thought I’d offer another personal narrative. This one, though, will be a lot more about Amazon. It started with my brothers, Sean and Kevin. Sean is two years older than I am, Kevin a year and a half younger. We’re

Long Overdue

Image by Mike McCaffrey Dear readers, It’s been a long time. So, first I’ll ask: are you well? What’s changed for you since I last wrote? (Um, maybe keep that answer brief, if you choose to reply.) And the last is the most unusual one, although maybe

Amazon Goes Back to the Long Term

This was an earnings week for Amazon, and the earnings didn’t make everyone happy. The numbers are huge, but they didn’t match expectations. * EPS: $5.22 vs. $5.57, according to analysts surveyed by Refinitiv * Revenue: $63.4 billion vs. $62.5 billion, according to Refinitiv * AWS: $8.

Amazon Under Pressure

Welcome back to the Amazon Chronicles, a weekly update on the retail, logistics, and media giant. I’m still easing in after recovering from shoulder surgery, and still, to be honest, trying to figure out what this newsletter ought to be. It’s not as self-evident as it might seem.

Amazon's Counterfeiting Problem

Welcome back to the Amazon Chronicles. Thanks for your patience these weeks while I’ve been recovering from shoulder replacement surgery. For those wondering how it’s going — it sucks! They try to make a completely different part of your shoulder do the work the rotator cuff used to do.

Putting the Chronicles on Hiatus

After long deliberation, I’ve decided to put this newsletter on a temporary hiatus until I can recover from my shoulder surgery. It sucks! There’s a ton to write about and I really want to write it. But physically, I can’t get it done, and setting myself up

How Much Can Amazon Make Free?

Welcome back to the Amazon Chronicles, and thanks for your patience in getting this issue to you. A couple of things have happen since I wrote to you last: I went on what was supposed to be a working vacation, and I managed to dislocate my shoulder again. It turns

The Best of the Best

Hello Amazon Chroniclers! There are two things happening here. I am traveling along America’s eastern coast, which tempted me to shut down the newsletter for a week, since I am busy busy busy. Also, this week was a pretty quiet one for Amazon, dominated by press releases and a

March 28th: An Amazon Chronicles Event

Greetings friends, This will be a quick update. I’m writing a long overdue note to tell you about an upcoming event, in Philadelphia, on Thursday, March 28th. It’s going to be a dinner party, basically, but with me as the guest of honor, talking about all things Amazon.

Amazon Keeps Making Its Basics Better

Kind of a chill week for Amazon. No lawsuits from top executives, no stunning legislative revolts in Arlington, no breakthrough product announcements. But that doesn’t mean Amazon wasn’t up to anything. Let’s start with the three press releases that all hit yesterday, March 20th, because they’re

There Are Only Two Amazon Stories That Matter

It's the monopoly and the marketplace