When COVID-19 hit in early 2020, the press coverage was overwhelming. The trusted book publishing media, including Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/, Publishing Perspectives, Publishers Lunch, The Bookseller in the U.K. and Quill & Quire in Canada, each did a fine job of monitoring developments within publishing and bookselling.
Then, early in the pandemic, Amazon prioritized what it deemed to be essential items and let book order fulfillment lag. This caught my attention: here was an impact that was not occasioned by anything that publishers were doing wrong, but was strictly an external force that (in the short term) had a major negative impact on publishing sales. But then it emerged that some booksellers were able to take advantage of the disruption, and with innovations like curbside pick-up, gain some much-needed retail sales.
