Amazon.com

Amazon, if you're reading this, we need to talk.

There's been a flurry of blogging, largely from the USA, around the recent announcement of your new service, Kindle Unlimited (not yet available in the UK).  For $10 a year, Kindle users have unlimited access to 600 000 e-books and a couple of thousand e-audiobooks.

People have been asking "Why do we need libraries anymore?"

Some of the blogs have been looking at the possible impact on public libraries, with a couple taking the predictable line of "Hey! Why do we need expensive buildings

If you spend any time at all buying digital music, movies or other media, you get used to dealing with nonsensical rules about what you can and can't do with the things you bought. But every so often the digital media business surprises you and gets it right.

So here's one of those pleasant surprises: Both Apple and Amazon are going to let their customers share stuff they've bought from their digital storefronts with family members. Just like you can in real life.

Amazon released six new devices today with an eye on shipping them before the holiday season. The collection, which ranges from a new e-ink tablet called the Voyage to an 8.9-inch tablet that is lighter than the iPad Air and features Fire OS 4.0, an OS based on KitKat, is designed for reading, work and play.

There's also a new Kindle for kids that includes a $25 case and free parental control software and apps.

Amazon has a tendency to polarize people. On one hand, there is the ruthless, relentless, ferociously efficient company that's building the Sears Roebuck of the 21st Century. But on the other, there is the fact that almost 20 years after it was launched, it has yet to report a meaningful profit. This chart captures the contradiction pretty well - massive revenue growth, no profits, or so it would seem. But actually, neither of these lines gives you a good sense of what's really going on.

Amazon discloses revenue in three segments - Media, Electronics

It's been over 15 years since the first dedicated e-readers were released, and over seven since the first Kindle. Today, about 15% of consumer spending on books is electronic and about 30% of books sold are e-books. The majority of book readers still only read in print, and only 6% of readers read e-books exclusively. It's clear that e-books are here to stay, but it's less clear that the complete dismantling of the publishing industry is around the corner.

Amazon appears to be preparing to launch new Kindles. Several listings spotted on the German version of Amazon show a new "Kindle Voyage" e-reader with a 6-inch high-resolution display (300 ppi) and a release date of November 4th. An image of the Kindle Voyage has been unearthed from a user manual by allesebook, and the specifications suggest it will have a new page press sensor to turn pages by pressing lightly on the bezel, alongside "intelligent front lighting."

Following its letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on August 9, Authors United posted a new letter to Amazon's board of directors online Monday. Amazon's "sanctions have driven down Hachette authors' sales at Amazon.com by at least 50 percent and in some cases as much as 90 percent. These sales drops are occurring across the board: in hardcovers, paperbacks, and e-books," the letter states, continuing: "We find it hard to believe that all members of the Amazon board approve of these actions. We would like to ask you a question: Do you as an Amazon director approve of this policy

The estimable Clay Shirky has written a lengthy piece called "Amazon, Publishers, and Readers" on medium.com saying, essentially, that an Amazon-dominated world would be an improvement over the Big Five "cartel"-dominated world of publishing we have today. This is an apples to oranges comparison. The Big Five are not nearly as broad a cartel as Amazon - which reaches way beyond the consumer books they publish - is a monopsony. Amazon touches much more of the book business than the Big Five publishers do.

Like a played-out fiction series, Barnes & Noble's (BKS) quarterly reports are starting to get predictable -- and depressing. Its latest, which came out on Tuesday, was another stinker. Revenue slipped 7 percent to $1.24 billion, lower than analysts were forecasting. The stock opened higher on the report as a result of the superstore chain's loss clocking in smaller than expected, but a loss is still a loss.

The fading Nook business is a major reason for shrinking sales at Barnes & Noble, but it's hardly the only trouble spot.

he recent news of the opening of an independent bookstore on Manhattan's Upper West Side was greeted with surprise and delight, since a neighborhood once flush with such stores had become a retail book desert. The opening coincides with the relocation of the Bank Street Bookstore near Columbia University, leading the New York Times to declare, "Print is not dead yet - at least not on the Upper West Side." Two stores don't constitute a trend, but they do point to a quiet revival of independent bookselling in the United States. They also underscore