Tuesday, September 19, 2017

My first Amazon orders

In the publishing community, Amazon.com is a polarizing topic. I see both sides. We can discuss. But not here.

This is purely nostalgia.

I was working as a marketing associate in book publishing when Amazon launched in 1995. I remember a group huddling around a blocky computer to catch our first glimpse of the home page, which looks so quaint now:


That's the standard "Amazon home page 1995" you can find around the internet. I wish I had documented it myself but didn't because (like most) I had no inkling what it would become.

I use Amazon and have since 1997 (a year before its offerings expanded beyond books). By that point, at age two, it looked only slightly more polished:


Number of times I ordered from Amazon during my first five years as a customer (not counting gifts for others):

1997—1
1998—5
1999—4
2000—13 (some with multiple items, often books for research)
2001—24

The first four:


 No surprise the subject of my first purchase. 
(A friend had the 1988 book when we were in high school. 
That must've seemed like a lifetime ago when
I bought my own copy in 1997.)

 I loved The New Yorker almost as much as superheroes. 
Weirdly, this devotion began in high school (because of the cartoons)
and continued into college.

the Gatorade commercial song about Michael Jordan.
Not proud.
(But still have in my music library.)

Another New Yorker book.

Now Amazon may sell nearly everything but it's not the original Everything Store. This is.

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