Amazon reported first quarter sales after the close of the market yesterday of $7.13 billion, up a sizable 46 percent from a year ago and ahead of consensus expectations by over $140 million. Net income of $299 million increased even more, by 68 percent (at 66 cents a share also well above estimates of 61 cents a share). North American media sales were up a mere 22 percent, at $1.597 billion, now well exceeded by international media sales, which rose 29 percent to $1.833 billion. Growth in electronics is really driving the company’s overall gains. The Kindle store now officially […]
Sales Fall 4 Percent at WH Smith; Publishing Remains Soft for Courier
The UK’s WH Smith reported results for the six months ending February 28, with high street sales of 503 million pounds down 4 percent, both in absolute terms and on a comp-store basis. Books as a category were also down 4 percent compared to a year ago. The company says “the books market was soft during the key Christmas period, but performance varied by sub-category with the poor publishing schedule in non-fiction acting as a key driver behind the market decline.” Nonetheless, they insist that “we continue to implement our strategy to build on our authority as a popular book […]
Today's Amazon and Barnes & Noble News
Following Engadget’s report in early April, yesterday Target confirmed that they will start selling Kindle as of April 25. But they’ll start with just their downtown Minneapolis store and south Florida (which apparently holds 102 Targets), “rolling out to more Target stores later this year.” (Does that confirm that the target Kindle demographic is retirees?) Target has a total of 1,740 stores.Release As for Nook, Barnes & Noble will start airing television commercials for their ereader this week. The WSJ says it’s BN’s first television campaign in over a decade. Unlike Amazon’s whimsical/abstract Kindle ads, the nook spot actually talks […]
A New Source for eReader Data Says 5 Million eReaders Shipped in 2009
NPD’s DisplaySearch analysis subsidiary, which covers the entire display screen market, has begun tracking electronic paper display (EPD) shipments as a component of their quarterly reports on small and medium screens. In the recently-released report, they say EPD shipments worldwide in 2009 hit 5 million units, up from 950,000 units in 2008. By their count, Kindle comprised 66 percent of screen shipments last year, or 3.3 million units. That leaves about 1 million units for Sony, and 700,000 units for the other players. (Note that they are tracking shipments to the ereader vendors, not sales to consumers, which are presumably […]
People and Announcements
At Random House, Vintage Espanol publishing manager Jaime de Pablos will take over the position of director being vacated by Milena Alberti as she joins the company’s corporate development team. de Pablos will report to Vintage and Anchor publisher Anne Messitte. Milkweed Editions has received underwriting from Amazon.com for the publication Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon and Extra Indians by Eric Gansworth. OverDrive has launched their first audiobook for Apple devices, which allows library patrons to download audiobooks from participating libraries as well as purchase from retailers. (Library audiobooks expire automatically.) They already have BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile. Penguin […]
LBF Attendance Down By a Third
London Book Fair officials estimated that total attendance for the ash-stricken show declined by about a third. Given that typically 45 percent of attendees are from overseas, if you presume that UK-attendance was down slightly based on cancellations, that means international attendance was likely down by two-thirds. Show director Alistair Burtenshaw sent a letter to exhibitors dangling a vague promise of making some kind of amends to exhibitors because of the impairments to the typical fair experience but no further explanation was offered for how. He wrote: “I would not want you to be under the impression that we have […]