A book, another book, another book, more and more books, oh god so many books, CDs, a DVD player, DVDs, picture books, story books, audiobooks, headphones, earphones, earbuds, more earbuds, a Ben 10 costume, a mad hatter costume, usb cables, more usb cables, garden hoses, jewellery, fifty self-seal envelopes, a laptop, an eight-piece set of crockery, ring binders, glue, dog leads, dog bowls, whisky, gin, tequila, running shoes, a tent… Just some of the thousands of purchases Jeremy Ettinghausen has made since Amazon UK launched in 1998.

 

Delving deep into his purchase history uncovers a story of reading, technology, parenting, homemaking, adulthood, global pandemic and frivolous, easily gratified consumer desire. With an inventory of over 350 million items Amazon really is the everything shop - if you want it, they’ve got it. And so, finding out what we’ve searched for, what we’ve added to our baskets and what we’ve actually bought, offers a revealing glimpse into who we, the modern connected shopper, really are.

 

Your Life Is Out For Delivery is also a story about arguably the most impactful business in the world and its effect not just on what we buy, but on how we buy, how we are sold to and how we consume all this stuff. With a seat at the top table of UK publishing, Jeremy witnessed the profound effect of Amazon on readers, writers and booksellers - reverberations that similarly transformed many other businesses.

What does £25000 of Amazon purchases tell Jeremy about who he is? And what does £30billion annual sales tell us about who we are as a culture and how we got here? Your Life is Out For Delivery is all of our shopping, all of our needs, crazes and cravings, all our stories and all of our fully-primed just-in-time, 5* reviewed, 21st century existence.