Amazon's latest figures are astounding and cement its dominance of the book business, particularly self-publishing, as well as the huge inroads it is making in many other areas. Read more
It's unusual to find a book chain boss who went into bookselling because he liked reading, but James Daunt, founder of Daunts bookshop chain in London, and CEO of the Waterstones chain in the UK, is that rare animal. Encouragingly, he still maintains that: 'Books still work and always will'. Read more
Two new initiatives from Amazon are worth checking out, one which may help get your books out there and one which seems largely to benefit Amazon's drive to grow its Amazon Prime business. Plus there's also an author outlining how you can get your own ebooks out to an international audience. Read more
So what can we say that's positive about the big changes in the situation for authors over the last few years? It's really a matter of the way writers now have the opportunity to get out there and shape their own destiny. Read more
There's been a lot of discussion recently about how things have changed for writers over the last few years. In some ways it's a radically different picture, in others not so much so. Read more
The growth in self-published books reported last week comes from Amazon, whose DIY print business CreateSpace has become far and away the biggest self-publishing platform in the United States. In a week when the Association of American PublishersThe national trade association of the American book publishing industry; AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies reported major declines in sales of trade books, there's also been talk about whether depressed digital sales are hurting Amazon. Read more
Ebook sales plunged in October 2015, with adult books dropping 22% in one month, compared to children's ebooks which went down a whopping 44.7%. As we've discussed elsewhere, the children's market has a strong preference for print books, with both parents and children preferring them. Read more
It's a slightly demanding read, but Mike Shatzkin's latest post on The Shatzkin Files is essential reading if you want to understand the contemporary bookselling scene and how it is increasingly controlled and shaped by the huge conglomerates which dominate the web. Read more
We had intended to report on the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. this week, but all we have been able to glean so far is that it was a busy fair, with a great many successful rights deals, and the new layout of the Fair was generally liked. Read more
According to some sources, the audiobook market is growing rapidly. Orion audio publisher Pandora White called the sector "the fastest-growing in publishing" and Booktrack is growing exponentially, but is the quality of the recordings being sacrificed in order to achieve the lowest price? Read more
Amazon this week announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California against some 20 individuals scamming authors by falsely claiming an affiliation with Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing. Read more
Amazon has revised its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) guidelines to require users to acknowledge AI-generated content, however the new section distinguishes between AI-generated content and AI-assisted content and does not compel disclosure of the latter.
Amazon is already facing a potential lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, and now, a group of authors, booksellers, and an antitrust think tank is calling on the agency to investigate the e-commerce giant's stranglehold on the bookselling market, as previously reported by The New York Times.
Amazon's main UK division has paid no corporation tax for the second year in a row after benefiting from tax credits on a chunk of its £1.6bn of investment in infrastructure, including robotic equipment at its warehouses.
After a long run of surging profits from pandemic-era shopping sprees, Amazon is feeling the hangover. The retail and tech giant is reporting its first unprofitable year since 2014.
Amazon lost $2.7 billion last year, the company said on Thursday. This was despite holiday-season sales growing 9%. Amazon's shares fell in after hours trading. Read more
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
It's not over yet: Nearly two months after being dismissed for lack of evidence, a potential class action lawsuit accusing Amazon and the Big Five publishers of colluding to fix e-book prices is back, having been been amended and re-refiled in federal court.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos came up with the slogan "Get Big Fast" because he knew size was crucial to exacting ever lower prices from suppliers. Read more
A deep drop in orders and sales from Amazon at many companies since mid-July has prompted rumors and speculation among industry players about the cause and whether it portends more buying changes at the online sales giant. A few companies contacted by PW reported orders down as much as 80% over the last four weeks for no apparent reason and with little explanation from Amazon. Read more
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