Online Sales

Eighteen months ago, as Redshirts moved from its hardcover era into trade paperback, I did an examination of its sales to the point, across all its formats, and chatted about what its sales meant, or didn’t mean, and what we could learn from the numbers. Last week, Lock In, my most recent novel (until tomorrow),…

Amazon wants to be a startup’s best friend. But it may have to make big changes to fulfill that promise. Late last month, Amazon unveiled a new online storefront dubbed Amazon Launchpad, where new products from startups and Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns are for sale. Shoppers will find new twists on familiar items such as…

“Word of mouth” is one of the hottest terms in marketing. Nothing works better than a personal recommendation from someone you trust. Every marketing expert loves — and wants — business through word-of-mouth, but nobody has figured out the perfect way to automate and digitalize this vital tool. At Written Word Media, a company that…

Penguin Random House Australia has sold its online book retailer Bookworld to Booktopia, bringing together Australia’s two largest online book businesses. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Booktopia, which will this year reach AUS$90m in sales according to its c.e.o., expects to take operational control of Bookworld in mid-August.

Joe Wikert looks five years into the future and sees an industry in which book buyers can choose from a variety of pricing models.

The Bookseller reported this morning that the UK sub for NewsCorp’s book publishing arm has inked a new contract with Amazon

When I broke the news on Monday that US publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt might have signed an agency deal with Amazon, I said that I didn't think it had happened _yet_, and I advised that this story was worth watching.

It looks like I was right on both accounts.

Authors and publishers have been selling books on Facebook for over six years now by setting up shops with 3rd-party services, and now Facebook wants to get into the act.

Buzzfeed reports that Facebook has finally woken up to the idea that commerce is possible any place where people congregate:

The company is building out shops within Facebook Pages, essentially mini e-commerce sites that give businesses a chance to set up second homes within its walls. The shops are still in the testing phase, but some already feature "buy" buttons that allow the entire shopping experience to occur within Facebook

It was originally billed as "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" and featured over one million titles. Twenty years later it boasts over 270m active accounts and claimsto have more than 2m third-party vendors selling millions of products through the marketplace platform. In that time it has been both lauded and vilified, most recently over corporation tax and staff working conditions but Amazon is quite clearly one of the biggest success stories of online commerce. So what has been its lasting impact? Can it maintain this growth or have we seen the best of it?

Authors United, the ABA, and other associations wrote letters to the DOJ, concerned that Amazon is controlling book prices.