Ebay-Yahoo partnership
In everybody vs. Google news, eBay and Yahoo! have chosen to partner on ad and search initiatives to help solidfy their positions in each respective field. (PCWorld news story)
Borders still in the red
Yesterday, Borders Group Inc. posted a wider than expected loss of nearly $19 million. That’s over 3.5 times deeper into the red than a year ago. There are some legitimate reasons for this, including the branding of Waldenbooks into “Borders Express”, but I continue to wonder why Borders has not invested in an online bookselling operation (currently the store “teams” with Amazon). Borders still has strong enough name recognition to leverage itself into the online book market - which is booming. I think any consultant weighing the investment in the Walden’s conversation and other strategic growth models and an online book marketplace would push the company toward the latter. (Reuters wire story).
See also: Barnes and Noble earnings
E-book sales flat
Statistics for e-books in 2005 showed no increase in terms of number of units sold. This is in spite of the fact that the number of titles available increased by 20%. On a positive note for the industry, revenues were up 23%. If you’ve been following the blog, you are probably aware that I was not surprised by these figured when they came out in May. There is a lot of buzz that the Sony Reader may change these figures for 2006. In all honesty, the numbers have nowhere to go but up, so I do expect a marginal increase in sales. (Source: International Digital Publishing Forum)
