Amazon.com Inc.‘s AMZN original book business has seen a resurgence, with sales reaching $16.9 billion in the first 10 months of 2022, according to a leaked internal document.
What Happened: Amazon’s original business of selling books, which dates back to its founding in 1994, has been thriving and surpassing its digital counterpart, e-books, Business Insider reported, citing a leaked internal document. It provides a detailed insight into Amazon’s book business and the wider publishing industry.
The document, marked as confidential and spanning 25 pages, was used for a weekly business review at Amazon. It reveals that Amazon’s book business has generated $16.9 billion in gross merchandise sales in the first 10 months of 2022. This includes the total sales volume of print and digital books, including e-books and audiobooks.
Amazon’s book sales in the U.S. alone accounted for about $9.5 billion in the same period, indicating the company’s sustained success in its original business over nearly three decades.
Despite the rise of e-books following the launch of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader in 2007, the document shows that print books continue to outperform e-books on the platform. The document also highlights Amazon’s “monopoly power” in the book business, a subject of antitrust scrutiny in recent years.
“Amazon has a written narrative culture, which means at any given time there are thousands of documents moving around the company, providing information at a point in time and with varying levels of review and accuracy,” Hamilton, the Amazon spokesperson said, according to the report.
“We’re on a mission to inspire customers to read more and get the most out of reading. We offer innovative, unparalleled reading experiences; the widest possible selection; options for our customers to read how they want, when they want; and a variety of affordable ways to read.”
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in July 1995 as an online bookstore, operating from his home in Bellevue, Washington.
Why It Matters: Amazon’s book business success comes amid a series of significant developments for the company. On Thursday, Amazon’s stock traded higher following the announcement that Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet became available in Amazon Bedrock.
This AI model, which outperforms competitors like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, underscores Amazon’s investment in cutting-edge technology.
Additionally, Bezos has been making waves with his ventures outside of Amazon. In May, it was reported that Bezos had entered the residential mortgage business, offering high-interest-rate loans to investors. This move highlights Bezos’ continued influence and diversification in various sectors.
Moreover, Bezos’ hands-on leadership style was evident when he called Amazon customer support to address discrepancies between customer complaints and company data, setting off a chain of events to improve customer service.
Price Action: Amazon.com Inc.’s stock closed at $186.10 on Thursday, up 1.80% for the day. In premarket trading, the stock edged slightly lower by 0.42%. Year to date, Amazon’s stock has surged by 24.12%, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
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This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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