Online retailing

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

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

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

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

"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.