Fergus O'Connell is one of the world’s leading authorities on project management and getting things done. He is the author of eight novels and sixteen business books, including Simply Brilliant, a book about common sense and how to use a power you already have.
I buy a lot of books. And I remember how it was before Amazon. If I wanted a particular book, I would go into my local bookstore and ask if they had it. If they didn’t, they could order it. That would be duly done, and then I would wait, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, or more. If I happened to be passing the bookstore, I’d call in to check on the progress. More often than not, a shake of the head. “Try again in a couple of weeks.” Eventually, I would get a call (or, more likely, a postcard). My book had arrived. Sometimes, the gap between ordering and arrival was so long that I’d forgotten I had ordered the book in the first place.
Then, one Sunday, this was sometime in the mid-to-late nineties, I read in the Sunday papers about a company where you could order books online. Whoa! It was in America, but what the hell? Give it a try. I placed a tentative first order. A week later, I had my book. Overnight, my world was transformed. When Amazon began to sell other things, I hardly noticed, as it had become my go-to shop for just about anything.
I haven’t worked out how much I’ve spent at Amazon, but it’s a lot. I just checked what I spent in February of this year: €109.73. There was nothing particularly special about February, it was a fairly typical month. So, over a year, my Amazon spend could easily amount to twelve times that: €1,316.76. But from 1 March 2025, Jeff Bezos is not getting any more of my money.
I have a few reasons for this, but the tipping point for me is what’s happening at The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Let’s just remind ourselves that The Washington Post is the newspaper that exposed the Watergate scandal and brought down U.S. President Richard Nixon. Something like that won’t be happening again anytime soon. Instead, Bezos has ordered that the range of opinions expressed on the comment pages of the newspaper be drastically limited to Trumpian themes.
In a message to staff, also posted on social media, Bezos stated, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” Essentially, Bezos has instructed The Washington Post not to publish articles critical of Trump.
Why does this matter, especially to us Europeans?
It matters because abolishing the free press is one of the things that dictators and their henchmen do. And while there’s not much I can do about what’s happening to democracy in America, I can do something. I can stop funding this.
Bezos is not getting any more of my money.
This is hardly going to keep him awake at night. My measly €1,316.76 is a literal drop in the literal ocean that is Jeff Bezos’ unimaginable wealth, but I do what I can.
It turns out, too, that this is not as easy as it sounds. For example, I could decide not to buy any more second-hand books on Amazon Marketplace and buy them from AbeBooks instead. Uh-uh! AbeBooks is owned by Amazon.
I’m sure I’ll come across other gotchas, but I plan to press ahead.
It has to be true that anything you can buy from Amazon, you can buy someplace else. It may be cheaper, or not. And there’s always the choice of not buying it. Don’t we all have too much stuff anyway?
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Fergus O'Connell, Novelist, Project Manager, Teacher, Speaker
Fergus O'Connell is one of the world’s leading authorities on project management and getting things done. He is the author of eight novels and sixteen business books, including Simply Brilliant, a book about common sense and how to use a power you already have.
He founded his first project management company – ETP – in 1991. His disruptive, common-sense project management method, The Ten Steps, has influenced a generation of project managers. In 2003, this method was used to plan and execute the Special Olympics World Games, the world’s biggest sporting event that year. Fergus’ new company, Fast Projects, is again disrupting the project management space by focusing on speeding up projects / shortening time to market.
