Inside Amazon: My Story
The memoir “Inside Amazon” examines Gisela Hausmann’s experiences as a small publisher, a top reviewer, an indie author, and a warehouse associate, from 1997 to 2020. More
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- Category: Nonfiction » Biography » Business biography
- Published: May 1, 2021
- Words: 39,070
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781732421189
About Gisela Hausmann
Her motto:
"Don't wait. The time will never be just right."-Napoleon Hill
Gisela Hausmann is an email evangelist, an author, a former film maker and a transportation professional. Some of her books have been featured in the Success magazine, in Entrepreneur and on Bloomberg's podcast "Decrypted." She is also the winner of the 2016 Sparky Award “Best Subject Line.”
A unique mixture of wild risk-taker and careful planner, Gisela globe-trotted almost 100,000 kilometers on three continents, including to the locations of her favorite books: Doctor Zhivago’s Russia, Heinrich Harrer’s Tibet, and Genghis Khan’s Mongolia.
She graduated with a master’s degree in Film & Mass Media from the University of Vienna. She now lives in Greenville, South Carolina. She tweets at @Naked_Determina
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Reviews of Inside Amazon: My Story by Gisela Hausmann
RT Graham
reviewed
on Dec. 17, 2021
A great, informative read from about some inner-workings of Amazon by someone who's actually been there.
We've all heard a few horror stories about Amazon, but Hausmann spent a year in one of their warehouses, and details how she went from being highly impressed to totally disgusted in only twelve months. This is an enlightening book -- and maybe a warning -- about the perils of any company reaping massive profits yet suffering high turnover. Anyone who does business with Amazon should read this.
(reviewed 8 months after purchase)
Karen Penn
reviewed
on May 17, 2021
I've read most of Gisela's books and was eager to read this one. I was not disappointed. What an amazing account of the inner workings of an Amazon delivery center. As one of the many customers who have spent the last year getting every little thing from the behemoth that is Amazon, I had no idea how they prepared items for shipping and delivery. What an eye opener.
Who knew? As a self-published author, I've experienced their email glitches and the instances when their sales or ad dashboards break down. Irritating, but not unbearable.
After reading Gisela's account of being a worker bee, I am thanking my lucky stars that publishing / advertising my books is as close as I get to their inner workings.
Interestingly, I read this book shortly after learning of books that Amazon has banned from its site--actions I find horrifying and 1984ish. Another recent read was a story in the WSJ about the scandal in Bezos's personal life and how he chose to deal with that in the press--spin doesn't begin to describe it.
All of these stories together lead me to wonder what Amazon's next BIG thing will be and how it will be perceived by customers and shareholders. Time will tell.
Thanks to Gisela, I won't take any of the company's moves at face value but instead will look beneath the covers.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
Charles Ashbacher
reviewed
on May 12, 2021
Few people can match the breadth and depth of experience of Gisela Hausmann in the area of book publishing as well as dealing with Amazon. She has extensive business and managerial experience outside of Amazon and her experience with Amazon began before the year 2000, when Amazon was still a fledgling company where many people questioned its survivability. The capstone of her experience with Amazon was her working in an Amazon warehouse. It was here that she was exposed to many of the ways that Amazon actually functions at the worker bee level.
My experience with Amazon also dates back to before the year 2000. At the time, I was the book reviews editor for “Journal of Recreational” and my first interaction with Amazon was when an author asked me to post my review on the Amazon site. I was hooked and at one point was briefly ranked number 48 in their top reviewer list before it became popular. I have also sold books on their site since the early 2000’s. For these reasons, I also have a lot of experience in dealing with Amazon.
Therefore, there were some things mentioned in this book that I already knew. For example, as a follower of employment issues, I knew that Amazon treats their warehouse workers as automatons. Their work can be described by the phrase, “Grab next object, move it from here to there, repeat as quickly as possible.” Amazon does not offer their workers even the smallest of perks if they do not have to.
Yet, I was surprised at how much I learned from reading this book. Hausmann is an excellent expository writer, and she gives enough of her history, so the reader understands her perspective when she walks into her job at Amazon. I have had both positive and negative experiences with Amazon and now I understand many of the reasons for that.
In the final analysis, there is one thing that Amazon is an expert at, avoiding a federal tax bill and getting massive state and local subsidies. Hausmann provides some explanations as to the mechanisms employed by the Amazon executives to achieve this goal. Especially striking is how Amazon hired more workers during the pandemic so that they could achieve tax savings. The executives at Amazon even manipulated this into their advantage.
Whatever you think of Amazon now, that will change when you read this book.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
Linnhe McCarron
reviewed
on May 5, 2021
During the pandemic, my husband and I self-isolated, getting groceries and grain for the horses through the new "curbside" feature stores were offering. Liquor, too—case of wine, curbside. Anything else that we needed could be ordered from Amazon and would appear on our front porch two days later and, sometimes, the very next day. We relied heavily on Amazon's amazing inventory and equally amazing delivery capabilities and were grateful to be on the receiving end. This book sure was an eye-opener, and I don't disbelieve one word; it could only have been written by someone 'on the inside.' Like Gisela Hausmann, I, too, am an indie author, and like her, I was grateful for the opportunity Amazon offered for writers to self-publish and sell, to market and promote. And, like her, I was shocked and distressed to find a banner for another author's books at the top of the page offering MY books. I called Amazon to ask how that happened and was advised that it was their new "sponsored brand" advertising that I was welcome to participate in—for a fee. I was already paying to sponsor each of the novels in my six-book Riverwood Series, and now it appeared that if I wanted to be competitive, I'd need to spend more for brand advertising so my banner could float at the top of other authors' pages. I feel that this new money-making venture benefits Amazon's bottom line and is a disservice to authors. And like Gisela, I, too, feel disillusioned. This book is fascinating, and I encourage any author who plans to publish with Amazon to read it. Moreover, her insights into the work lives of those who package and ship my purchases make me appreciate their efforts far more than I ever would have if I had not read this book.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
Linnhe McCarron
reviewed
on May 5, 2021
(no rating)
During the pandemic, my husband and I self-isolated, getting groceries and grain for the horses through the new "curbside" feature stores were offering. Liquor, too—case of wine, curbside. Anything else that we needed could be ordered from Amazon and would appear on our front porch two days later and, sometimes, the very next day. We relied heavily on Amazon's amazing inventory and equally amazing delivery capabilities and were grateful to be on the receiving end. This book sure was an eye-opener, and I don't disbelieve one word; it could only have been written by someone 'on the inside.' Like Gisela Hausmann, I, too, am an indie author, and like her, I was grateful for the opportunity Amazon offered for writers to self-publish and sell, to market and promote. And, like her, I was shocked and distressed to find a banner for another author's books at the top of the page offering MY books. I called Amazon to ask how that happened and was advised that it was their new "sponsored brand" advertising that I was welcome to participate in—for a fee. I was already paying to sponsor each of the novels in my six-book Riverwood Series, and now it appeared that if I wanted to be competitive, I'd need to spend more for brand advertising so my banner could float at the top of other authors' pages. I feel that this new money-making venture benefits Amazon's bottom line and is a disservice to authors. And like Gisela, I, too, feel disillusioned. This book is fascinating, and I encourage any author who plans to publish with Amazon to read it. Moreover, her insights into the work lives of those who package and ship my purchases make me appreciate their efforts far more than I ever would have if I had not read this book.
During the pandemic, my husband and I self-isolated, getting groceries and grain for the horses through the new "curbside" feature stores were offering. Liquor, too—case of wine, curbside. Anything else that we needed could be ordered from Amazon and would appear on our front porch two days later and, sometimes, the very next day. We relied heavily on Amazon's amazing inventory and equally amazing delivery capabilities and were grateful to be on the receiving end. This book sure was an eye-opener, and I don't disbelieve one word; it could only have been written by someone 'on the inside.' Like Gisela Hausmann, I, too, am an indie author, and like her, I was grateful for the opportunity Amazon offered for writers to self-publish and sell, to market and promote. And, like her, I was shocked and distressed to find a banner for another author's books at the top of the page offering MY books. I called Amazon to ask how that happened and was advised that it was their new "sponsored brand" advertising that I was welcome to participate in—for a fee. I was already paying to sponsor each of the novels in my six-book Riverwood Series, and now it appeared that if I wanted to be competitive, I'd need to spend more for brand advertising so my banner could float at the top of other authors' pages. I feel that this new money-making venture benefits Amazon's bottom line and is a disservice to authors. And like Gisela, I, too, feel disillusioned. This book is fascinating, and I encourage any author who plans to publish with Amazon to read it. Moreover, her insights into the work lives of those who package and ship my purchases make me appreciate their efforts far more than I ever would have if I had not read this book.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
Charles Freedom Long
reviewed
on May 3, 2021
Gisela Hausmann has done it again: produced an eminently readable, well-documented, soundly-reasoned non-fiction book that deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone who has any association with THE GIANT ZON.
One thing I learned in forty years of administration and turnaround management of service-oriented organizations in the health and human services sector of the U.S., England, Canada and West Africa was that MBA’s are insufficient to running effective companies of people. Managers who want to excel need to add MBWA, “Management By Walking Around”—(and listening to frontline associates) to their repertoire. Amazon seems to have missed this point completely. Oh yes, they have data, but piles of data is not knowledge. And knowledge does not become information—useful knowledge to make necessary, effective change unless it is leavened with the ability to listen to frontline associates and the willingness to incorporate their knowledge and ideas into action.
Gisela Hausmann is a master of information. And her book of her twenty-two year study and 15 month employment at Amazon gives the reader an intimate look into what happened on a day-to-day basis. How “outdated training programs, ill-designed award programs, insufficient boxes and packaging tape, shelves that made it hard for shorter people to do their job and [above all else] what looked like total unwillingness to correct deficiencies,” let Amazon go from “The most powerful supporter of the First Amendment to a company who just ‘spins off’ ideas to make money at the expense of others.”
As a student of management, we are taught not to study present methods of giant corporations, because they did not get to be as big as they are by doing what they are now doing. Ms. Hausmann’s book is as good a case study as any I have seen to drive this point home. Buy it. Read it. And if you are on any level of management, turn the knowledge you gain from the data she gives you into information.
Charles Ferraro, Winner of the Harvard Prize for Innovation, the EXCEL Award for Innovation in the Public Sector, the National Alliance of Business, “Work America Award”, and three American Public Welfare Association Successful Project Awards.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
RR Amos
reviewed
on May 2, 2021
(no rating)
Gisela Hausmann’s latest, Inside Amazon, provides a unique perspective unseen by most consumers who’ve become familiar with Jeff Bezo’s mega-corporation through their Amazon e-commerce purchases via the website. The book is tagged as a business biography, but is not your typical CEO motivational success story tome. Here Ms. Hausmann chronicles her days as a ground level employee while interspersing her story with tidbits of expertise from her background as an entrepreneur and logistics professional. Chronically organized as her life story parallel with her day to day on the job experiences, she traces the timeline as a beginning indie author riding a wave of success using Amazon’s nascent innovative self publishing tools of Bezo’s early years, up until turning attention to her eventual disillusionment with disruptive changes to the mega-company’s self publishing program. As she assumes the role of a typical Amazon employee, the reader gains insight into how the company juggles best practices with profiteering concerns, with mixed results for workers and consumer publics alike. An interesting read for anyone wanting a thoughtful perspective on the future of our rapidly growing Silicon Valley-dominant Digital Information Economy.
Gisela Hausmann’s latest, Inside Amazon, provides a unique perspective unseen by most consumers who’ve become familiar with Jeff Bezo’s mega-corporation through their Amazon e-commerce purchases via the website. The book is tagged as a business biography, but is not your typical CEO motivational success story tome. Here Ms. Hausmann chronicles her days as a ground level employee while interspersing her story with tidbits of expertise from her background as an entrepreneur and logistics professional. Chronically organized as her life story parallel with her day to day on the job experiences, she traces the timeline as a beginning indie author riding a wave of success using Amazon’s nascent innovative self publishing tools of Bezo’s early years, up until turning attention to her eventual disillusionment with disruptive changes to the mega-company’s self publishing program. As she assumes the role of a typical Amazon employee, the reader gains insight into how the company juggles best practices with profiteering concerns, with mixed results for workers and consumer publics alike. An interesting read for anyone wanting a thoughtful perspective on the future of our rapidly growing Silicon Valley-dominant Digital Information Economy.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
Wanda Luthman
reviewed
on May 1, 2021
This book was intriguing to me because I’m an indie author who missed the heyday of publishing books on Amazon and making tons of money. I have sold books and made some money, but Amazon keeps changing their algorithms which has made it increasingly more difficult to make money from selling books on their platform.
This book gives an insiders glimpse into how the company actually runs.
I found myself turning page after page to see what was next. I didn’t want to stop reading—that’s how well written this book is!
I enjoyed it and learned a lot.
One thing that really startled me is that the famous brands have even left Amazon! That tells you something right there!
I highly recommend this book to anyone selling anything on Amazon.
We may feel we are the little guys and can’t fight back but if enough people make the switch, it can make a difference.
I give this book a full 5 stars or whatever rating system is used, the highest rating.
In full disclosure, I received a copy of the book for free in exchange for an honest review which I have provided. I received no remuneration for my review nor any other form of reward.
This is standard practice in the industry.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
Kasey Riley
reviewed
on May 1, 2021
Inside Amazon - INDEED!
I've read several works by this author, and this is likely her best effort to date. In this memoir, she tells it as she saw it from her first love of Bezos and Amazon to her final disappointment and disenchantment with the company and its leader.
As an Indie Author, I can empathize with all the issues she describes because I've been through some of them from the outside looking in. This work opened my eyes, and I've now been educated about what the situations are from the inside looking out.
I can visualize many of the large corporation scenarios. Gisela hits many of the problems square on the head. Management spends little to no time trying to fix issues - even with good suggestions from those doing the job because they are not well qualified and don't care about stopping the issues, only about solving the momentary problems. Logistics and personnel issues can be prevented, but the frustrations Gisela experienced are common among employees who have eyes to see and a brain to use and yet know management has no intention of helping them.
Amazon has moved from a company with new and fresh methods to a company experiencing the same issues as other major corporations - but one who has yet to figure out measures to keep good employees while trimming those who "have no time" to fix the problems.
I felt Gisela's annoyance with all of the different issues of promoting her books only to have Amazon use her promotion to piggyback other products. That is poor customer service to their paying vendors and authors. So long as advertisers keep paying for clicks and not complaining when Amazon places their competitors above them on their own page/ad...it will continue and Amazon will keep hauling in the bucks.
I absolutely love the ending of this book. It was the only way this memoir could end this phase of Gisela's career, but she words it perfectly. I felt like cheering. Good job, lady. I can't wait to see what you do next.
(reviewed the day of purchase)
Larry Murley
reviewed
on May 1, 2021
In this very enlightening book, Gisela Hausmann tells her story about the giant, Amazon. From book publishing to filling orders, to the distribution by the big corporations mega-fleet of drivers and trucks. In the beginning you can see an appreciation of Amazon's goals and daily activities. It's growth was rapid even before the Covid19 Pandemic beginning in spring of 2020. By mid summer of that year, it had exploded into the answer of everyone's prayer, ordering your goods and getting them delivered, promptly and efficiently. I myself was very appreciative of that myself. But every machine, regardless how well oiled is bound to find difficulties in a complex world such as ours, and Amazon was no different. Find time to sit down and read this story, and see where you fit in from both sides, customer or employee. You can be sure of one thing, you will come away much better informed than before. Good job Gisela, thanks for your time and energies, in this daring expose
(reviewed the day of purchase)