Last October, while Amazon opened its first four-star stores in the UK, more than 500 book and publishing industry professionals gathered for a two-day conference called "Reimagining Bookstores". Read more
When Andy Hunter was looking for US$1.2 million to create Bookshop.org, "It was actually an extremely lonely experience because I was wandering around New York City talking to big agents, like publishers, high-net-worth individuals or investors I thought might care about bookstores. Read more
The post-pandemic recovery is pushing China's tech-savvy population - 885 million digital consumers - even further online, not only for shopping, but also for entertainment, reading and learning, according to a New Media for Publishing research report. Read more
Despite Amazon reporting more large gains in sales and earnings in the second quarter of 2021, investor attention was drawn to the conglomerate's outlook for the third quarter, which sees revenue increasing 10-16% over last year's third quarter. Operating income is projected to fall from last year's third quarter of $6.2 billion, to between $2.5 billion and $6.0 billion. Read more
Take a look at this graph. The blue is Amazon's share of book sales in the past six years. The orange is where we are headed if their average growth rate (8%) continues. If nothing slows their momentum, Amazon will control nearly 80% of the consumer book market by the end of 2025. Every single book lover should worry. After we're done worrying, we must change the way we buy books.
Jeff Bezos has been stirring things up in the book business ever since he launched Amazon.com 14 years ago, and this past year has been no exception. During the year, Amazon acquired Audible and AbeBooks, expanded BookSurge, saw sales of the Kindle (and Kindle titles) soar and managed to keep book sales growing at double-digit rates. Read more
In announcing another round of record financial results, Amazon said that founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will turn over his CEO duties to Andy Jassy, currently head of Amazon Web Services (AWS), sometime in this year's third quarter. Bezos will become executive chairman of Amazon.
When Shakespeare wrote, "What's past is prologue" in The Tempest, he could never have imagined that the phrase would be used for a consumer promotion in China. But millions of Chinese understand perfectly why e-commerce giant Alibaba adopted it as a marketing slogan for its hugely successful Singles' Day. Read more
Amazon is the opposite of our romantic imagination of Italian villages lined with bakeries and old cobbler shops. But the pandemic persuaded Italians to overcome their reluctance to online shopping - and Amazon. Read more
Three of publishing's most important organizations have teamed up to write a letter to the chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee investigating the market power of Big Tech to press their case that, over the last several years, Amazon's growing dominance over book publishing and bookselling has fundamentally altered the competitive framework of the industry. Read more
When Andy Hunter was looking for US$1.2 million to create Bookshop.org, "It was actually an extremely lonely experience because I was wandering around New York City talking to big agents, like publishers, high-net-worth individuals or investors I thought might care about bookstores. Read more
Since the pandemic arrived in early 2020, the entirety of the publishing community has turned its eye toward online events as a key way to spread word of mouth about books. And a lot continues to ride on the success of these events. Yet how many authors have been effectively trained in staging a meaningful online event-especially one that translates into sales? Read more
The post-pandemic recovery is pushing China's tech-savvy population - 885 million digital consumers - even further online, not only for shopping, but also for entertainment, reading and learning, according to a New Media for Publishing research report. Read more
Jeff Bezos has been stirring things up in the book business ever since he launched Amazon.com 14 years ago, and this past year has been no exception. During the year, Amazon acquired Audible and AbeBooks, expanded BookSurge, saw sales of the Kindle (and Kindle titles) soar and managed to keep book sales growing at double-digit rates. Read more
In announcing another round of record financial results, Amazon said that founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will turn over his CEO duties to Andy Jassy, currently head of Amazon Web Services (AWS), sometime in this year's third quarter. Bezos will become executive chairman of Amazon.
When Shakespeare wrote, "What's past is prologue" in The Tempest, he could never have imagined that the phrase would be used for a consumer promotion in China. But millions of Chinese understand perfectly why e-commerce giant Alibaba adopted it as a marketing slogan for its hugely successful Singles' Day. Read more
Amazon is the opposite of our romantic imagination of Italian villages lined with bakeries and old cobbler shops. But the pandemic persuaded Italians to overcome their reluctance to online shopping - and Amazon. Read more
Amazon's dubious ethical employment standards are nothing new. You know the ecommerce giant is unrivalled when it comes to logistics and infrastructure. And their unscrupulous pricing strategy has long ceased to astonish - retailers simply cannot compete. Read more
"I see them as kind of a great white shark. You don't really want to mess with them." The words are those of a former manager at Amazon - and she is describing her former employer.
It is an apt analogy. Amazon is huge - worth $740bn (£530bn) at Monday night's share price - but it moves fast and is a lethal predator.
Amazon has a Donald Trump problem. For days now, the president has been tweeting about the online retail giant, accusing it of ripping off the U.S. Postal Service, shortchanging state and local governments on taxes, and using these unfair advantages to put countless retailers out of business. Read more
LAST March, Amazon quietly changed the way it sells books. An obscure and seemingly harmless modification to its website has opened the door for some third-party sellers to deceive Amazon's customers by selling books as "new" that may not come straight from a publisher or its wholesaler, thus depriving authors of royalties they should have earned from the sale of a new book.
Amazon has long ceased to simply be "Earth's Biggest Bookstore," which was how it described itself back when it launched in 1994. It's now the Everything Store, a place where you can buy underwear and bananas. It is the largest e-retailer in the world, accounting for more than half of all e-commerce growth in 2016. Read more