Just as Engadget was hitting publish on its first posts, I was putting a freshly minted English degree to use working at an indie bookshop in Los Angeles. In seemingly unrelated news, Amazon had just reported its first profitable year after switching from selling books to selling “everything” four years before. (It still sold a lot of books.) Our bookstore did a good job keeping shelves stocked with a balance of the more worthy popular hits and smaller, better fare. But we couldn’t have every book a customer might want, so we offered to order any in-print title. If a distributor had it, it’d take about a week to get in, longer if we had to go through the publisher. That seemed fine for most customers. But sometimes “about a week” was too long. A few people came right out and said, “Nah, I’ll order it on Amazon.” In 2005, Amazon launched Prime, the membership program that, for $79 a year, gave customers unlimited two-day shipping on most orders. At launch, CEO Jeff Bezos called it “‘all-you-can-eat’ express shipping.” No one knew at the time how hungry the world was for Amazon’s brand of convenience. And now, nearly two decades later, we’ve seen the shifts that accommodate that buffet — in labor, retail and the entire customer experience. Prime wasn’t an overnight success. It’s estimated that six years after launch, just four million households paid for the service. But 10 years later, in 2021, Bezos claimed it had accrued 200 million members worldwide. Outside of that... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2024-03-08 14:15:57 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Stone Publication Date: Wed, 04/05/2011 - 16:00 Booksellers suffered their poorest sales in almost eight years last week with spending on physical books slumping by 12% week-on-week. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 03/05/2011 - 08:30 High street retailer Argos intends to increase its online book range from 500 to 5,000 titles over the next month. The chain store, known for stocking a large range of non-food products, launched its books category on its... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon has tweaked its Kindle for Android app to run optimally on tablets running Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2011-04-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Anja Sieg Publication Date: Thu, 21/04/2011 - 13:53 More than three years after it was introduced in North America and eight months after the UK become the first country outside of the US to get a dedicated Kindle store, Germany has followed suit. The German Kindle store was... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon said Wednesday that its popular Kindle e-reader will allow customers to borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 U.S. libraries starting later this year. Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2011-04-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon just eliminated one of the biggest differences between the Kindle and competing e-readers. It said today it will be rolling out the Kindle Library Lending feature later this year, allowing customers to borrow books for free from more than 11,000 libraries in the U.S. Other e-readers and... Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-04-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Mon, 18/04/2011 - 15:44 Police intelligence analyst Elizabeth Haynes has won the first Amazon Rising Stars award of 2011. The mother-of-one, who lives in Kent, came top in a consumer-review poll asking readers which one of four Amazon-selected... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Mon, 18/04/2011 - 09:22 Amazon.co.uk has launched a two-week Kindle ebook promotion, with Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White priced £1.47. According to information sent to publishers whose books will feature, the campaign will be a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Katie Allen Publication Date: Fri, 15/04/2011 - 14:59 Tor is to rejacket three-times Arthur C Clarke Award-winning novelist China Miéville to coincide with publication of his latest novel, Embassytown, in hardback. The new look, on supermatt paper, is being rolled out across eight... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon is dropping the price of its Kindle e-reader to $114 as it faces increasing competition from Apple, Barnes & Noble and other tablets. The new price point represents a $25 price cut on the Wi-Fi version, but it comes with one major trade-off: ads. The e-reader will be sold by Amazon,... Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2011-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Bookseller Staff Publication Date: Mon, 04/04/2011 - 09:00 Amazon has emerged as the surprise underbidder on a multi-million dollar auction for a self-published author, the first time the retailer is believed to have bid on frontlist. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Thu, 31/03/2011 - 09:14 Blackwell UK hopes to become profitable in two years, after nearly halving its operating losses to £5.6m. The academic booksellers year-end results to 26th June 2010 show the company has narrowed its operating losses from... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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With the recent reports from Bloomberg News that Android is one of the fastest operating systems currently on the market, it is no surprise that the system has introduced a new appstore in partnership with Amazon.com, Inc., which launched on Tuesday. "Custome Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2011-03-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Thu, 24/03/2011 - 15:50 Jean M Auel's new Earth's Children title is Amazon.co.uk's most pre-ordered book of 2011. The Land of Painted Caves: Earth's Children 6 (Hodder & Stoughton), is the last in the Earth's Children series. It will be published... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As convenient as they are, I've long worried about the many ways in which ebook purveyors restrict readers' rights. You can't resell the books you purchase for the Amazon Kindle, and you can't read them on most other e-readers. We also don't really own ebooks in the same way we own... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-03-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Stone Publication Date: Tue, 15/03/2011 - 15:56 Sales of the six £1 World Book Day books fell 36% week-on-week, to 159,000 copies solda figure down 9% on the comparative week last yearbut they nonetheless continue to dominate the sharp end of this weeks Official UK Top... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Fri, 11/03/2011 - 09:04 Continuum has been crowned the Independent Publishers Guild's Independent Publisher of the Year at the IPG awards, in a night when it and Faber won two awards. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Wed, 09/03/2011 - 09:48 Ten times as many people shop at Amazon than online at Waterstone's, a survey has revealed, while more than half of respondents bought books online. The research, carried out by the Institute of Direct Marketing,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Tue, 08/03/2011 - 08:50 Hodder author Jojo Moyes has won Romantic Novel of the Year at the Romantic Novelists' Association's (RNA) Pure Passion Awards, scooping the prize with The Last Letter from Your Lover. Both Josephine Cox and Penny Jordan,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 28/02/2011 - 09:42 Penguin UK had its best ever year in 2010 as parent company Pearson reported a profits increase of 21% to £857m. For the year ending 31st December, sales at Pearson were £5.66bn, up 10% on 2009. Sales at Penguin were... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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