Amazon Releases "Missionary" Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has gone public with the company's annual message to shareholders highlighting its achievements with Kindle and congratulating the company for all that it has achieved in the past ten years.

"We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention, providing a counterbalance to the recent proliferation of info-snacking tools," says Bezos. "I realize my tone here tends toward the missionary, and I can assure you its heartfelt. It's also not unique to me but is shared by a large groups of folks here. I'm glad about that because missionaries build better products."

Though the company has attracted battalions of critics, as any giant and powerful corporation will do, the congratulations are well deserved. Amazon has not only revolutionized bookselling, it has revitalized the publishing business.

As an e-book missionary myself (with the scars to prove it), I hail Bezos and his Amazon team and look forward to more of his zealous annual letters to shareholders, customers, and publishing people.

- Richard Curtis