Notes: Amazon Sales Up, Income Down; Orange Shortlist
Sales at Amazon.com in the first quarter ended March 31 rose 20% to
$2.28 billion, slightly ahead of expectations, and net income dropped
35% to $51 million, the company announced yesterday.
Wall Street analysts expressed concerns that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "Amazon is losing market share amid increased online competition" and that its marketing and other costs, including promotions like Amazon Prime, which gives customers unlimited shipping for $79 a year, continue to hurt margins.
Steve Weinstein, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, told the New York Times: "The cost of feeding the growth engine here is too high to be sustained."
International sales were strong, rising 18% to $1.03 billion. If the unfavorable effect of currency exchange rates were excluded, international sales would have risen 29%. North America sales rose 21% to $1.25 billion. The company noted, too, that merchants and individuals who sell on Amazon accounted for 29% of unit sales, up from 27% in the same period a year ago.
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Kaavya Viswanathan's apology for unintentionally borrowing parts of Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty in her How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life has been rejected by McCafferty's publisher, according to the New York Times. Steve Ross, senior v-p and publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, told the AP: "We think there are simply too many instances of 'borrowing' for this to have been unintentional." In a statement, the company said, "This extensive taking from Ms. McCafferty's books is nothing less than an act of literary identity theft."
Reportedly Random House and Little, Brown lawyers have been talking. McCafferty's publisher would like the book to be pulled now; Little, Brown has said it would stop printing the current edition of the book but will keep selling it and issue a revised version in the future.
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Jane Jacobs, the urban thinker and activist whose work had a major influence on city planning and design, died yesterday in Toronto. She was 89.
Her seminal work is The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Vintage, $15.95, 067974195X), published in 1961. As the New York Times wrote, Jacobs's "enormous achievement was to transcend her own withering critique of 20th-century urban planning and propose radically new principles for rebuilding cities. At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism---in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble."
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The six finalists for this year's Orange Prize for Fiction, which honors work in English by women, have been named:
Krauss is American, Tiffany is Australian and the others are British. The winner of the $55,000 prize will be announced June 6.
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The Iron Rose bookstore opens in Danville, Pa., next Monday, the first book retailer in town since That Bookstore closed several months ago, according to the Sunbury Daily Item. The store is owned by Bob and Kathy McWilliams of McWilliams' Pharmacy.
Karen Hoyes, recording secretary of the Danville Business Alliance, welcomed the store, telling the paper, "We've had a lot of people stop in and ask where a bookstore is. You can't even send them to any place in the area. The bookstore in the mall is even closed. This will fill that void in Danville."
The Iron Rose is located at 306 Mill St., Danville, Pa. 17821.
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Dan Sheehan has been named v-p of national accounts for Ingram Publisher Services, the Ingram Book Group distribution company that now has 23 client publishers. Sheehan was formerly director of national accounts for Ingram Book Co. Sheehan will lead the company's sales effort to, among others, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Baker & Taylor and Borders Group as well as "continue to manage Ingram's relationships with college bookstore chains."
Before joining Ingram in 2003, Sheehan worked as national accounts manager for a children's book publisher. At Ingram, he has worked with national accounts in the trade, Christian, warehouse club, Internet and higher education channels.
---
From McGraw-Hill's first quarter report, quoting Harold McGraw III, chairman, president and CEO: "In the U.S. college and university market, we saw more students purchasing our texts through online vendors while sales through the still dominant traditional bookstore outlets were virtually flat in a seasonally modest quarter."
Wall Street analysts expressed concerns that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "Amazon is losing market share amid increased online competition" and that its marketing and other costs, including promotions like Amazon Prime, which gives customers unlimited shipping for $79 a year, continue to hurt margins.
Steve Weinstein, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, told the New York Times: "The cost of feeding the growth engine here is too high to be sustained."
International sales were strong, rising 18% to $1.03 billion. If the unfavorable effect of currency exchange rates were excluded, international sales would have risen 29%. North America sales rose 21% to $1.25 billion. The company noted, too, that merchants and individuals who sell on Amazon accounted for 29% of unit sales, up from 27% in the same period a year ago.
---
Kaavya Viswanathan's apology for unintentionally borrowing parts of Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty in her How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life has been rejected by McCafferty's publisher, according to the New York Times. Steve Ross, senior v-p and publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, told the AP: "We think there are simply too many instances of 'borrowing' for this to have been unintentional." In a statement, the company said, "This extensive taking from Ms. McCafferty's books is nothing less than an act of literary identity theft."
Reportedly Random House and Little, Brown lawyers have been talking. McCafferty's publisher would like the book to be pulled now; Little, Brown has said it would stop printing the current edition of the book but will keep selling it and issue a revised version in the future.
---
Jane Jacobs, the urban thinker and activist whose work had a major influence on city planning and design, died yesterday in Toronto. She was 89.
Her seminal work is The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Vintage, $15.95, 067974195X), published in 1961. As the New York Times wrote, Jacobs's "enormous achievement was to transcend her own withering critique of 20th-century urban planning and propose radically new principles for rebuilding cities. At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism---in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble."
---
The six finalists for this year's Orange Prize for Fiction, which honors work in English by women, have been named:
- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
- The Accidental by Ali Smith
- Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
- The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
- The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
- Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
Krauss is American, Tiffany is Australian and the others are British. The winner of the $55,000 prize will be announced June 6.
---
The Iron Rose bookstore opens in Danville, Pa., next Monday, the first book retailer in town since That Bookstore closed several months ago, according to the Sunbury Daily Item. The store is owned by Bob and Kathy McWilliams of McWilliams' Pharmacy.
Karen Hoyes, recording secretary of the Danville Business Alliance, welcomed the store, telling the paper, "We've had a lot of people stop in and ask where a bookstore is. You can't even send them to any place in the area. The bookstore in the mall is even closed. This will fill that void in Danville."
The Iron Rose is located at 306 Mill St., Danville, Pa. 17821.
---
Dan Sheehan has been named v-p of national accounts for Ingram Publisher Services, the Ingram Book Group distribution company that now has 23 client publishers. Sheehan was formerly director of national accounts for Ingram Book Co. Sheehan will lead the company's sales effort to, among others, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Baker & Taylor and Borders Group as well as "continue to manage Ingram's relationships with college bookstore chains."
Before joining Ingram in 2003, Sheehan worked as national accounts manager for a children's book publisher. At Ingram, he has worked with national accounts in the trade, Christian, warehouse club, Internet and higher education channels.
---
From McGraw-Hill's first quarter report, quoting Harold McGraw III, chairman, president and CEO: "In the U.S. college and university market, we saw more students purchasing our texts through online vendors while sales through the still dominant traditional bookstore outlets were virtually flat in a seasonally modest quarter."
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