Book titles representing the vast majority of sales from Simon & Schuster's catalog to be made available in 2008
SEATTLE & NEW YORK CITY, May 30, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Simon & Schuster, Inc. today
announced that Simon & Schuster will make 5,000 additional titles
available for Amazon Kindle in 2008. When added to books already
available on Kindle, including thousands of new releases and
bestsellers, these Simon Schuster titles represent the vast majority
of sales from the publisher's catalog. Committed to delivering content
to readers in digital formats, Simon & Schuster's latest eBook
initiative will more than double the number of Simon & Schuster titles
available on Kindle today. Kindle customers will be able to discover,
buy and read popular books such as Stephen R. Covey's "The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People."
"At Simon & Schuster, we are excited by how many Kindle books
we're selling and the feedback from readers who want to read our
titles on their Kindles. We have also learned that readers aren't just
looking for new or bestselling books, but also books that are older or
hard to find," said Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO, Simon &
Schuster, Inc. "These are the books that have proven themselves to be
of enduring interest, and we want readers to be able to find them
anytime, anywhere. We are pleased to take another big step toward that
goal by making this great percentage of our active backlist available
on Kindle by the end of 2008."
"Kindle is re-igniting a love of reading -- after purchasing a
Kindle, customers purchase, on average, just as many physical books,
and their total book purchases on Amazon increase by 2.6x. Kindle
books are also becoming a meaningful portion of Amazon's overall book
sales much sooner than we anticipated -- of the 125,000 books
available both as a physical book and on Kindle, Kindle books already
account for over 6 percent of units sold," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
Founder and CEO. "This commitment from Simon & Schuster moves us
closer to our vision for Kindle, which is to make any book, ever
printed, in any language available in less than 60 seconds."
The initiative represents Simon & Schuster's most concentrated
effort to date to provide quality content for the growing community of
eBook readers who now want a broader and deeper assortment of titles
to become available in eBook. The selection of titles for the
initiative was based on statistical analysis of physical books that
have been very popular backlist titles among Amazon.com customers over
the past 12 months.
Launched on November 19, 2007, Amazon Kindle is Amazon's
revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs,
magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a crisp,
high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like
real paper, even in bright sunlight. More than 125,000 books are now
available in the Kindle Store, including New York Times Best Sellers
and New Releases, which are $9.99, unless marked otherwise. Kindle is
available today for $359 at http://amazon.com/kindle.
About Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, a part of the CBS Corporation, is a global
leader in the field of general interest publishing, dedicated to
providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for consumers of all
ages, across all printed, electronic, and audio formats. Its divisions
include Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, Simon & Schuster Children's
Publishing, Simon & Schuster Audio, Simon & Schuster Digital, and
international companies in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
For more information, visit our website at www.simonsays.com.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc., (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in
Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers
Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most
customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover
anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its
customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers
offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories
such as books, movies, music & games, digital downloads, electronics &
computers, home & garden, toys, kids & baby, grocery, apparel, shoes &
jewelry, health & beauty, sports & outdoors, and tools, auto &
industrial.
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with
access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own
back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable
virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by
Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2),
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon
Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service
(Amazon FPS), and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including
www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp,
www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and the Joyo Amazon websites at
www.joyo.cn and www.amazon.cn.
As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms
include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context
indicates otherwise.
Amazon Kindle is sold through Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ
significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking
statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others,
risks related to competition, management of growth, new products,
services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating
results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and
claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial
agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange
rates, system interruption, significant amount of indebtedness,
inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud.
More information about factors that potentially could affect
Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings
with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual
Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, and
subsequent filings.
SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com
Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
or
Simon & Schuster PR
Adam Rothberg, 212-698-1132
adam.rothberg@simonandschuster.com