Having managed to convert a passion for shopping and curiosity about digital technologies into a 25-year-long career as a journalist and publisher, and analyst and research director latterly, I’m lucky to have been able to bring my knowledge and experience to bear in advising retailers and their technology providers on strategy and best practice. So, it was a natural progression for me and my co-author to research and dissect their biggest disruptor, Amazon, as a subject for our own book. The books I’ve recommended here are some of those I felt really helped me understand the dynamics shaping today’s shopping experiences and their impact on the wider world we live in.
Selling on Amazon For Dummies is essential practical reading when it comes to selling on Amazon. It walks merchants through the process of building a business on Amazon almost anywhere in the world, as long as you have access to a computer and the internet. It covers the basics of selling on Amazon, from getting started to using its fulfillment services, Fulfilled By Amazon.
Selling on Amazon has become one of the most popular ways to earn income online. In fact, there are over 2 million people selling on Amazon worldwide. Amazon allows any business, no matter how small, to get their products in front of millions of customers and take advantage of the largest fulfillment network in the world. It also allows businesses to leverage their first-class customer service and storage capabilities.
Selling on Amazon For Dummies walks owners through the process of building a business on Amazon-a business that can be built…
As a physicist by education and therefore fundamentally interested in how things work, my early career was spent in secure communications before moving into finance, specifically payments. I helped to found one of the leading consultancies in the field and worked globally for organizations ranging from Visa and AMEX to various governments and multiple Central Banks. I wrote, it turned out, one of the key books in the field, Identity Is The New Money (2014), and subsequently, Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin (2017), about the history and future of money. The Currency Cold War (2020) was a prescient implication of digital currencies, particularly CBDC.
One of the first things I learned when I started to study the topic seriously was that there is a great deal of confusion between payments and banking. Of course, money has different functions; we all understand that, but we live in a time when those functions are, in a way, jumbled together.
There is no fundamental economic reason why banks provide payment systems on such a large scale, and indeed, one of the major impacts of new technologies in the space may be to separate them. This is a timely and well-written book about payments and the extent to which the unbanked problem should be reinterpreted because most people in most of the world want payments, not banking.
"What happens when we make a payment is literally a multi-billion dollar question. This is a fascinating and entertaining insight into those seconds between clicking a button and money appearing in far-off accounts - and the changing face of those who profit." - Dharshini David, author of The Almighty Dollar
How we pay is so fundamental that it underpins everything - from trade to taxation, stocks and savings to salaries, pensions and pocket money. Rich or poor, criminal, communist or capitalist, we all rely on the same payments system, day in, day out. It…
I am a writer and reporter who has spent two decades covering complicated topics for a wide audience. This started when I covered Wall Street for Bloomberg News, where I spent 17 years as a reporter, and continues to this day with my own crypto media company, DeCential Media. My love of distilling new technologies to their essence is what informs the best of my writing and comes with the added bonus of being able to interview and learn from some of the smartest people in tech and finance.
Lessig lays out his vision for how the Internet should and should not be regulated in easy-to-understand prose that belies a powerful ideology. This book really helped me frame in my own book how new technologies, like the Internet, are approached by regulators and governments. The idea that code cannot be owned, lest it be manipulated, as Lessig states, unlocked a way for me to think and write about how blockchain should be approached as well.
There's a common belief that cyberspace cannot be regulated-that it is, in its very essence, immune from the government's (or anyone else's) control. Code , first published in 2000, argues that this belief is wrong. It is not in the nature of cyberspace to be unregulable cyberspace has no nature." It only has code-the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is. That code can create a place of freedom-as the original architecture of the Net did-or a place of oppressive control. Under the influence of commerce, cyberspace is becoming a highly regulable space, where behaviour is much more…
I’m an economics professor, but I also have a column in Australia’s leading financial newspaper so I really appreciate authors who can tackle complex topics in an accessible manner. I’m also both extremely interested in and do academic research on topics to do with technologies like two-sided platforms, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. All these books made me think harder about the big issues in these areas, and how to combine rigorous research with what is actually happening—often at breakneck speed—in the real-world digital economy.
Well, the author is a friend of mine but it’s also on a topic close to my own academic research interests. So it was kind of compulsory reading for me, but it might be the most enjoyable compulsory reading I’ve ever done.
I thought NFTs were just a gimmick to do with internet pictures. But the authors explain, with great examples, that NFTs are best thought of as a new technology for creating digital assets. And better still, providing the true owner with irrefutable proof of ownership of these digital assets.
What I took away was that NFTs are a new technology for tracking property rights. And since property rights have been fundamental to economic development for millennia, this is a topic one can’t afford not to understand.
NFTs cause excitement and skepticism. How much value can a token hold? What drives this value?
To properly appreciate NFTs we must first understand what they actually are, how they work and in what contexts they are used.
The Everything Token is an essential primer on NFTs (non-fungible tokens), explaining their use, purpose, and how businesses can create and exploit them to develop new product lines, building customer loyalty and increased revenues at the same time.
Together the authors have spent much of the past few years embedded in NFT communities and helping launch NFT products. As self-described beta testers…
I have been reading, researching, and writing on the limitations of market capitalism and the unique and important role of government in meeting public needs for almost 30 years. I have come to firmly believe that we can’t – as a nation and planet – solve our most pressing problems without rebuilding trust in government and the capacity and authority of governing institutions. We can’t eliminate poverty, eradicate structural racism, protect our environment and the planet without democratic institutions that have the power to do so. We need markets, but transferring too much power to the market has created many of the problems we face today.
Although published several years ago, this book is a timely investigation about the power of big tech on so many aspects of our lives.
The book focuses to a great extent on the impacts on the music, book, and newspaper industries that have been significantly disrupted by the tech industry. But it also alerts to the larger implications, especially as tech becomes increasingly dominant in our economy, democracy, and lives.
LONGLISTED FOR THE FT & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
Google. Amazon. Facebook. The modern world is defined by vast digital monopolies turning ever-larger profits. Those of us who consume the content that feeds them are farmed for the purposes of being sold ever more products and advertising. Those that create the content - the artists, writers and musicians - are finding they can no longer survive in this unforgiving economic landscape.
But it didn't have to be this way.
In Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin offers…
Crypto’s rollercoaster journey has given rise to some of the most thrilling real-life tales of the last two decades. These tales teem with personal drama and reveal much larger truths: about our fractured global moment, about the ripple effects of well-intentioned technological systems, and about the massive divide between how we want society to function and how it actually does.
As much as some people wish it dead, crypto is not going away any time soon. Many of its followers have adopted a religious-like belief that it will transform humanity and bring unlimited wealth to its followers; others simply believe it to be a good investment. Their collective trust in these strange digital currencies means that crypto will continue to shape the world in unpredictable ways.
The journalist Nathaniel Popper starts at the beginning, telling the story of how Bitcoin emerged from message boards and was slowly but surely propelled forward by government-wary libertarians, computer science nerds, and opportunistic venture capitalists.
Popper persuasively articulates the many problems that Bitcoin solves across the world—and then reveals its extremely bumpy road toward adoption.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
A New York Times technology and business reporter charts the dramatic rise of Bitcoin and the fascinating personalities who are striving to create a new global money for the Internet age.
Digital Gold is New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper's brilliant and engrossing history of Bitcoin, the landmark digital money and financial technology that has spawned a global social movement.
The notion of a new currency, maintained by the computers of users around the world, has been the butt of many jokes, but that has not stopped…
When you have online influence, you have the ability to transform minds, behaviors, and outcomes. Dario Sipos is a Digital Marketing Strategist, Branding Expert, Keynote Public Speaker, Business Columnist, and Author of the highly acclaimed books Digital Personal Branding and Digital Retail Marketing. Dario has spent significant time working all over the World in the digital field, helping clients and developing brands. He helps leaders influence positive outcomes in all directions, even under the most difficult, changing conditions. Dario will help you build your influence in all directions of your online presence.
As a Digital Strategist, after hundreds of meetings with clients, I noticed that the lack of digital marketing strategy is the real reason that some retail companies do not manage to grow and some grow successfully. I went on a search for a book that will be a step-by-step framework on how to plan, integrate and measure the effectiveness of each digital platform. I discovered this book that covers many subjects of digital marketing strategy that are absolutely crucial in successfully managing the strategy of digital marketing retail or eCommerce business.
Optimize your digital channels and ensure your marketing strategy aligns with business objectives, with this second edition of the bestselling guide to digital marketing - recommended by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
There is no shortage of digital marketing resources yet finding a book that covers all disciplines can be a challenge. This essential and highly readable book provides an accessible, step-by-step framework to the planning, integration and measurement of each digital platform and technique, all tailored to achieve overarching business objectives.
Now featuring cutting edge updates on social media, SEO, content marketing, user experience and customer loyalty, Digital Marketing…
I’ve been fascinated by the news media and technology for as long as I can remember. I successfully campaigned for a VCR as a five-year-old, and watched multiple news programs with my grandfather growing up. Alongside these interests, I managed to read as many books as I possibly could. I’ve managed to somehow parlay that into a job as a researcher, where I study the news media sector and technological transformation. I read everything on this list while I was writing my latest book, and hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
Many of the concerns around news and technology, center around how the distribution of news through social media impacts the news business.
However, we can only understand how these two sectors interact by understanding platform economics. Thankfully, Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller have written a simple and concise introduction to a complicated topic. A great way to quickly deepen your understanding of an important issue.
Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas.
This cutting edge book introduces the origins and consequences of digital platforms, examining how artificial intelligence-enabled digital platforms collect and process data from and about users by providing social media and e-commerce services. Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller compare and contrast neoclassical, institutional and critical political economy approaches. They show how uneven…
I am a self-taught marketer. I have gained all my digital marketing knowledge by reading articles and watching videos online. I am the author of the digital marketing book, Entrepreneur Makeover. On my Entrepreneur Makeover website, I share digital marketing strategies through my articles that help people to promote their website/business for free or at a minimal cost. I have a passion for digital marketing because I realised how important digital marketing is in order to succeed in any kind of business. You can have a great website or product but if no one knows about it, this is something that will result in the failure of a business.
Master the evergreen traffic strategies to fill your website and funnels with your dream customers in this timeless book from the $100M entrepreneur and co-founder of the software company ClickFunnels.
The biggest problem that most entrepreneurs have isn't creating an amazing product or service; it's getting their future customers to discover that they even exist. Every year, tens of thousands of businesses start and fail because the entrepreneurs don't understand this one essential skill: the art and science of getting traffic (or people) to find you. And that is a tragedy. Traffic Secrets was written to help you get your…
I am a cryptography professor, which sadly doesn’t mean I spend my time breaking secret messages (at least not every day). I first studied cryptography simply because it was fun and interesting. It still is – but today it is unbelievably important, underpinning the security of almost everything we do in the digital world. I believe that developing a notion of 'cyber common sense’ is a vital life skill since so much of what we do is digital. A basic understanding of cryptography and its societal impact provides a superb foundation for making sense of digital security, so I’ve selected some of my favourite reads to get you started.
Most digital technologies crucially rely on cryptography for their security, but few are entirely built from cryptography. Bitcoin is – simply – cryptography. The idea that money can be created from cryptography is a little bit mind-blowing, even for a cryptographer like myself. Dominic Frisby wrote one of the first, and finest, books about the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin. He explores not just the incredible story of the founding of Bitcoin, but also gives an accessible explanation of how it works and what role it might play in our wider financial system. If you have let the term 'cryptocurrency’ wash over you but remain just a tiny bit curious, this book is your best route towards enlightenment. Whether you then decide to invest in any cryptocurrency is another matter altogether!
Following the economic crisis of 2008, the website `bitcoin.org' was registered by a mysterious computer programmer called Satoshi Nakamoto. A new form of money was born: electronic cash. Does Bitcoin have the potential to change how the world transacts financially? Or is it just a passing fad, even a major scam?
In Bitcoin: The Future of Money?, MoneyWeek's Dominic Frisby's explains this controversial new currency and how it came about, interviewing some of the key players in its development while casting light on its strange and murky origins, in particular the much-disputed identity of Nakamoto himself.
