Tag Archives: Amazon

Bookselling

Amazon Launches Kindle In France

October 7, 2011 – 8:01 am

Online retailing giant Amazon has launched the Kindle Device and ebook store in France.

The newest Kindle eInk reader is available there for €99 but the company does not seem to have made the new touch screen Kindles or the Kindle Fire available to French customers.

The launch marks the fourth distinct Kindle store with stores having opened previous in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Yesterday Google launched its own ebook service in the United Kingdom and last week Apple finally rolled out its iBooks service to Ireland and several other European markets.

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Briefly Noted

Briefly Noted | Amazon’s Kindle to Make Library E-Books Available – NYTimes.com

September 22, 2011 – 7:49 am

The introduction of the Kindle, the biggest-selling e-reader, opens up library e-books to a wider audience, heightening the fears of publishers that many customers will turn to libraries for reading material. If that happens, e-book buyers could become e-book borrowers, leading to a potentially damaging loss of revenue for an industry grappling with a profound shift in consumer reading habits.

Library e-books are already available on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the Sony Reader, smartphones, laptops and other devices, but never on the Kindle, whose users had long complained that they were left out.

via Amazon’s Kindle to Make Library E-Books Available – NYTimes.com.

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Briefly Noted

Briefly Noted | Lawsuit Filed Against Apple and Book Publishers Over Illegal Ebook Price Fixing

August 11, 2011 – 9:05 am

Class-action law firm Hagens Bermans seeking more plaintiffs for its lawsuit against Apple and five publishers over illegal ebook price-fixing.

The publishers include HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster—five of of the top names in the book publishing world.

via Lawsuit Filed Against Apple and Book Publishers Over Illegal Ebook Price Fixing.

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Briefly Noted | Booksellers Alter App Sales – WSJ.com

July 26, 2011 – 8:52 am

Amazon and Barnes & Noble shoppers will be able to access their digital titles via the Kindle and Nook apps on their Apple devices, but in order to buy new titles, they will have to use the Safari Web browser and visit either www.amazon.com/kindlestore or www.nookbooks.com.

In February, Apple set new terms for companies wanting to sell digital content via its devices. It said such companies had to make their content available for sale via an app rather than through a link within the app to an outside website. As part of the change, Apple also said it would take 30% of each sale.

via Booksellers Alter App Sales – WSJ.com.

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Briefly Noted

Briefly Noted | Amazon’s ‘Big Deals’ Puts 900 Kindle Books On Sale – Including Big 6 Titles | paidContent

July 21, 2011 – 11:27 pm

Following the success of its “Sunshine Deals” promotion, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is running an even bigger sale on Kindle books: The Big Deal, with over 900 titles on sale for $0.99, $1.99, $2.99 and $3.99 through July 27. And here’s the kicker: For the first time ever, Big 6 publishers like Random House are participating in the sale.

via Amazon’s ‘Big Deals’ Puts 900 Kindle Books On Sale – Including Big 6 Titles | paidContent.

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Briefly Noted | Borders Succumbs to Digital Era in Books – WSJ.com

July 21, 2011 – 7:42 am

Borders Group Inc.s imminent demise marks the first major casualty of the digital era in buying and reading books. But the store closings also will mean fewer opportunities for shoppers to wander the book aisles, a loss that will affect publishers as well as competitors and authors.

The bookseller is expected to ask a bankruptcy judge Thursday to approve plans to start liquidating as soon as Friday. By the end of September, the remaining 399 stores of the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain will be shut down for good.

via Borders Succumbs to Digital Era in Books – WSJ.com.

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Briefly Noted

Briefly Noted | IDC: Tablet sales slow, Nook Color ousts Kindle as lead ereader | VentureBeat

July 12, 2011 – 9:20 am

Ereader shipments fell from the holiday rush to 3.3 million units, but still saw a 105 percent increase compared to last year. As for the Nook Color’s success, IDC points to Amazon’s lack of a color ereader as a reason for losing the lead sales spot. Rumors remain strong that Amazon will announce its own tablet devices in a few months, and I would imagine at least one will be an inexpensive Kindle-branded tablet/ereader device like the Nook Color.

via IDC: Tablet sales slow, Nook Color ousts Kindle as lead ereader | VentureBeat.

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Comment & Features

Guest Blog: Amazon Acquires The Book Depository. And a Little Bit of Egypt!

July 6, 2011 – 10:17 am

A Fascinating piece by Alexander McNabb looking at the implications of Amazon’s acquisition of The Book Depository for Egypt.

Amazon.com’s decision to acquire Guernsey-based online book distribution company, The Book Depository, was announced in a terse press release from the online retailing giant. The move is subject to British regulatory approval, but it would see a small online retailer gobbled up by the behemoth. Many people have seen it as a sort of David/Goliath thing.

Interestingly, the man behind The Book Depository, Andrew Crawford, has done it before – he was part of the startup team at bookpages.co.uk which was acquired by Amazon way back in 1998.

Even more interestingly, there’s a Middle East angle to the acquisition – The Book Depository is the majority holder of an Egpytian business process outsourcing company, elkotob.com, which provides back-end solutions for online book sellers but which also has expressed an aim to “to lead the Arabic book market, in the Middle East region as well as becoming the biggest Arabic books supplier in the world.”

Will the move bring Amazon, finally, to support readers in the Middle East with Kindles and content? Will we now be able to access amazon with Middle East addreses and accounts? Will Amazon start to support Arabic in a big way? Will Amazon’s e-commerce engines replace elkotobs? Will the 65 staff be expanded or replaced by Amazon? Will this see Amazon outsourcing some of its own massive development and server infrastructure to Egypt?

This could be an interesting move indeed…

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News

Amazon Agrees To Acquire The Book Depository

July 4, 2011 – 12:54 pm

Yahoo Finance today reported that Amazon had agreed to acquire The Book Depository, the online book retailer that offers free delivery worldwide to customers.

The UK based company had £60 million in sales in 2010 and is targeting £120 million in 2011 according to Retail Gazette earlier this year and was founded by Andrew Crawford in 2004.

It would seem to be a case of, ‘How do you know you are doing something right? Amazon acquires you!’ In that regard the team at Book Depository should be congratulated for building such an impressive company relatively quickly.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN – News) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire The Book Depository International. The Book Depository is an online bookseller offering over six million books for delivery worldwide.

“Customers in more than 100 countries enjoy The Book Depository’s vast selection, convenient delivery and free shipping,” said Greg Greeley, Amazon’s Vice President of European Retail. “The Book Depository is very focused on serving its customers around the world, and we look forward to welcoming them to the Amazon family.”

From Amazon’s perspective It’s hard to know what the play is here. It could be any of:

1) Increasing UK and European exposure
2) Building a better position in Australia
3) Defensive market-share building

Or any number of other things. There must be some worries about competition approval, at least in the UK, with this.

Finally, from Irish readers and book buyers view, the key will be whether Amazon changes the free postage model The Book Depository operates. If so, this could be a bad deal for those who purchase books online, though perhaps a boost to bookshops.

 

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Briefly Noted

Briefly Noted | Cherish the Book Publishers—You'll Miss Them When They're Gone | Postmodern Times by Eric Felten – WSJ.com

July 1, 2011 – 8:40 am

It’s only natural for those locked out to despise the gatekeepers, but what about those of us in the reading public? Shouldn’t we be grateful that it’s someone else’s job to weed out the inane, the insipid, the incompetent? Not that they always do such a great job of it, given some of the books that do get published by actual publishers. But at least they provide some buffer between us and the many aspiring authors who are like the wannabe pop stars in the opening weeks of each “American Idol” season: How many instant novelists are as deluded as the singers who make with the strangled-cat noises believing they have Arethaen pipes?

via Cherish the Book Publishers—You’ll Miss Them When They’re Gone | Postmodern Times by Eric Felten – WSJ.com.

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