> But in Amazon's case, they're playing down the real maganatude of the the
> "risk". Did you see that stat on Amazon that said they'd have to sell more
> books than have ever been sold in the history of the world to get close to a
> market average p/e? They're best case profit margin is 7% or something
> close to that, according to their own projections.
selling more books in a year than had been sold prior to, say, thirty years ago isn't entirely out of the question these days --not for amazon, granted, but for booksellers en masse. the recent expansion of publishing may very well have brought us surprisingly close to that benchmark. a library at a major re- search university probably holds more books than were made AD 1000-1500, to say nothing of AD 500-1000.
none of which is to suggest that amazon (or its equally kooky ilk) will ever end up stably in the black. it won't; UPS on the other hand...
cheers, t