479% — The bump in search traffic for the word "kindle" the day Oprah threw her support behind the product, according to Google Insights. It went up even more on Saturday.
-Ad Age
If Oprah can do that for the Kindle (which, even with a 400 percent increase in Google searches, is still only owned by the eight people who invented it), imagine what she could do for a presidential endorsement!
Oh, wait…
The fact that Amazon is now offering subscriptions 90% off the cover price. Seriously. 38 cents an issue for Newsweek. Like we said: These guys don't have very long to live.
IMDB, the definitive film information hub used by nerds to settle archaic bets with their friends, now offers a selection of shows and movies that can be streamed directly from the site.
Like parent company Amazon, IMDB uses this on-demand feature to lure potential DVD box set collectors in with single-serving episodes. Unlike Amazon, the IMDB episodes are free, but don't get too excited. The site may be IMDB, but the movie player is from Hulu, meaning that while the quantity of shows and films may be large, the quality can be less than stellar.
Meaning: Three rotating episodes The Office and House, but every season of The Partridge Family. As for the movie selection on IMDB, you can find your occasional Raising Arizonas, but they are stuck inbetween Master and Commander and The Scorpion King.
Guess print sales are really down: The Wall Street Journal and Amazon are launching online wineries in an effort to make more money trafficking in getting people wasted than they were by getting them to read. Amazon's site isn't up yet, but mosey on down to WSJwine to get all sorts of Sideways without ever leaving your small, dark apartment.
Sounds great. Especially if you're 16 and no one is checking IDs:
Taking a cue from the zombie-aliens in They Live, Amazon and TiVo teamed up to present to you the easiest way to become a mindless drone in a system of rampant consumerism.
Introducing Buy. It. Now.:
CONTINUED »
So, Oprah isn't the only natural force that can move book sales? Amazon.com, which commands 15 percent of the book sales market and has been marketing books for years through carefully selected homepage placements, gets credit today in the Journal for propping up books like David Wroblewski's 566-page coming-of-age The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which is now in its seventh printing. Other booksellers like CostCo and Barnes & Noble are moving more copies too.
This is a departure from the other "Amazon Force" story that was just told earlier this week, which focused not on how Amazon.com can move a book to blockbuster status, but on how it can totally screw a publisher out of sales, by disabling the Buy Now button and moving the book to its virtual dustbins (back pages that are harder to find), if they don't play by the retail giant's revenue-sharing rules.
But while we're on a happy note, it might be worth drilling down exactly how Amazon can send a no-name title to household name status with just a few clicks. CONTINUED »
When book publishers don't play nice with Borders or Barnes & Noble, the bookstores have a special ritual for their titles: Hide them. And that's if they're feeling generous: If you catch B&N chief Steve Riggio on a bad day, perhaps he just won't stock your works.
It's no secret publishers pay big bucks to have their high-profile titles get the best positioning at the major book retailers, with prominent placement up front and entire displays devoted to them. That, and the negotiations between publishers and booksellers, about who gets how much of a cut of book's sale, are what really determines what books might make it on to a best-seller list.
Then came the Internet, which was supposed to make everything more democratic, from political fundraising to selecting which movies to pirate. Amazon.com was a new business model, free from industry rules, and hopeful to get as many books in customers' hands as possible.
Or at least that was the thinking. Now, it's clear the Internet's (the world's?) largest book clearinghouse has the same standard operating procedure with publishers as the good 'ole boys. And while Borders can give a new book crappy placement in the back shelves if its publisher won't pony up a few more percentage points on the sale, Amazon has what some might argue to be an even more powerful tool: the Buy Now button. And the ability to turn it off. CONTINUED »
Fans of The Office, your $50 iTunes gift card is now useless.
NBC announced yesterday that it would be distributing its programming through Unbox, Amazon’s downloading video service, and has severed its ties with the iTunes store.
NBC decided to switch to Unbox—despite the fact that their videos are incompatible with video iPods—because the service will give them greater pricing flexibility. How this will affect Hulu was not mentioned, but it’s becoming increasingly possible that the whole concept is just a digital media red herring.
Apple’s control over pricing and packages was the main cause for the switch. Jean-Briac Perrette, president of NBC Universal Digital Distribution said, "Amazon is a company that understands the value we provide as content owners to its business."
If NBC had stayed on with Apple, the iTunes would have charged $1.99 for an episode of the Bionic Woman, which if anything, overestimates NBC’s content value.
• Dan Rather to make a cameo appearance as…Dan Rather! Quick, to the DVRs!
• CBS proves they're the hippest thing to embrace the internet since…Al Gore.
• Daily Candy hires execs away from NYT; NYT responds by poaching Perez Hilton to head up its Washington bureau.
• Amazon to sucker-punch iTunes by opening a digital music store that's really, really easy to manipulate.
• Vanity Fair gets "novel" treatment by the mag's deputy editor.
• XM listeners accustomed to Opie and Anthony's crudeness; appalled by Opie and Anthony's suspension.
CONTINUED »
Bookworm nerds sometimes use the internet to scour Amazon listings. And today, Galleycat, of the Mediabistro book nerd clan, discovers this interesting little factoid. James Frey's next book, My Friend Leonard, is not being classified as a memoir.
Because half of his first book, A Million Little Pieces was made up of lies, and Leonard isn't far behind, Penguin figured that "fiction" was a better category for the book, set to be released in May.
The kicker most definitely is the "Amazon Questionnaire" which includes a revealing Q+A.
Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?
A: No way I can answer that.
Nobody's really sure when this questionnaire was filled out, but we have a feeling he could probably answer that one now.
My Friend Leonard Officially a Novel? [Ron Hogan, Galleycat]
