As an Amazon affiliate, we get a wee percentage of sales from people who click through from our site to Amazon. But better than that, we get a report from Amazon about what people have purchased! (Don't worry, it's all anonymous: there's no information at all passed on about the purchaser's identity.) One thing we can guarantee: you people buy things online. Here are just a few excerpts from the year 2011, here with quantity, title, media and cost. READ MORE

Data from StatCounter. READ MORE

Hellzapoppin' in the world of intellectual property rights these days. Lawsuits, corporate flim-flamming, the claims of far-sighted academics and developers, furious authors and artists and the conflicting demands of a sprawling Internet culture have created a gargantuan, multi-directional tug-of-war that will inevitably affect what and how we will be able to read online in the future. Recent developments indicate, amazingly, that there are grounds for hope that the public will in time benefit from the results of this epic tussle. READ MORE

After pulling Neal Stephenson's ebook of Reamde off Amazon on Tuesday, early this morning, Amazon emailed to tell readers they could replace their copy. "The version you received had Missing Content that have been corrected," they wrote. (Or, apparently, their machines wrote. So glad the "Missing Content" "have been corrected.") And here's how it works: "If you wish to receive the updated version, please reply to this email with the word 'Yes' in the first line of your response. Within 2 hours of receiving the e-mail any device that has the title currently downloaded will be updated automatically if the wireless is on." It's a strange kind of revision, right? At some point, the book you're reading will be silently replaced with a new version of the book you're reading—AND GUESS WHAT, it'll force you to lose your place, so take a screenshot of your page or location number. Anyway, apparently some underpaid kids at HarperCollins did some really fast digital proofreading over the last 48 hours. (It's a big book! 1056 pages!) But what was the Missing Content! Did I read (past) the Missing Content already? Is Neal Stephenson super-mad? So many Missing Answers.

William Morrow/HarperCollins has pulled Neal Stephenson's brand-new book, Reamde, off Amazon after, one would guess, getting tired of hearing about just how many errors there are in the e-book production. (It's not clean.) Now the e-book version is no longer visible at all to U.S. visitors to Amazon, and appears as "unavailable in the U.S." to mobile viewers. (This was first noticed late last night by Macworld editorial director Jason Snell.) Reamde is #36 in books overall on Amazon this morning, so removal of the e-book, even temporarily, is a serious financial choice. (The Kindle version was #6 on the Amazon scifi list, while the print/audio was at #4.) This being a Neal Stephenson book, the criticisms of the e-book errors were not outraged all-caps freakouts but mild and literate complaints left on the Amazon page. READ MORE

Have you read the story about the Amazon warehouse outside Allentown? You should! It's not... good. In short, Amazon largely staffs that warehouse with temporary workers through an agency, dangling the prospect of being promoted to full-time employee. Then it parks ambulances outside for when they pass out from heat exhaustion. Then, when they don't make quota, what with all the passing out, they're often dismissed. (Yes, to be fair, some are promoted, and some do fine.) Hold on to your Kindles! READ MORE

Yesterday, Amazon made Nielsen Bookscan information from just the last four weeks of sales available to authors. (Bookscan tracks most booksellers, but not WalMart/Sam's Club, museum stores, etc.—the general disclaimer is they get about 75% of sales.) And, for the most part, it's killing people! If you had a book that just came out, the tool is maybe useful: you can see where it's selling, and then I guess you... could call that bookstore in Denver? And say "Hey thanks for hand-selling those five copies of my book"? For the vast majority of authors, whose books have been out for six months or three years, the live recent data is just upsetting. (Because people don't buy a lot of books!) And it's freaking out publishers, too—who we hear have scheduled emergency meetings to Discuss This Event and Then Do What Exactly, I Mean, It's Book Publishing, Let's Continue This Discussion Over Lunch and Then Maybe Some Drinks, Hmm, I Guess Maybe Authors Might Have Questions About Their Royalty Statements Down the Road, Oh Boy.

You know the panicky, paranoid manner in which the Tea Partiers appear to cling to their guns and religion, as if someone really were trying to take them away? For some of us, the same condition of ongoing nerves regarding the encroaching powers of the State comes instead from a V for Vendetta- or Fahrenheit 451-type terror of the State coming after our books. Various States have indeed come after all of these assets, from time to time, so it’s not like any of us is entirely making this stuff up. At this very moment they don’t let Chinese people or Cubans or Belarusians or many, many others all over this world read whatever they want, watch whatever movies they want, or have all the guns and/or religion they want. READ MORE

Everyone knows that Zappos sold to Amazon for $900 million human 2009 dollars which makes the schadenfreude super spicy and causes pancreatic cancer. So it was extra eye-rolly that this site that doesn't even carry Nicholas Kirkwood is so special now and can be "helpful" to where it suggests other things you'd be interested in based on your selections. You know, that annoyingly aggressive thing that Amazon does where it insists that EVERY Tamilee Webb thing EVER is up your alley because ONE TIME you bought a Bowflex. So you can imagine how thrilling it was to find that this pump-slinging zapateria's shiny new function was BROKE. Shit is incorrect! It's SHODDY. READ MORE