Amazon’s net sales reached $13.81 billion in the third quarter of 2012 and increase of 27 percent from the $10.88 billion net sales in Q3 2011, according to an earnings report released by the company today.

Amazon’s net loss was $274 million in the third quarter, which the company attributed to its share of the losses reported byLivingSocial. According to The New York Times, this was the company’s “first quarterly loss in four years,” and the earnings did not meet Wall Street estimates $13.9 billion.

The release has more details: “Operating cash flow increased 8% to $3.37 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with$3.11 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2011. Free cash flow decreased 31% to $1.06 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $1.53 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2011.”

The company also said that North America segment sales — which represents earnings from retail sales of consumer products including Amazon sellers Amazon Web Services subscriptions — were $7.88 billion which represents a 33 percent increase from the third quarter 2011. Read more

Barnes & Noble has been attacked by hackers and the PIN pads in 63 of its stores have been compromised. In response, the book retailer has discontinued the use of PIN pads in all of its stores nationwide. The company is recommending that customers who shopped in the affected stores in September should change the PINs on their ATM cards and check their credit card  statements for any suspicious charges. (Follow this link for a list of the stores affected).

The New York Times broke the news last night. Check it out: “The company discovered around Sept. 14 that the information had been stolen but kept the matter quiet at the Justice Department’s request so the F.B.I. could determine who was behind the attacks, according to these people.”

Barnes & Noble said in a press release that its customer database is secure and that Barnes & Noble.com, Nook and Nook mobile apps were unaffected.

New York City’s Strand Book Store operates used book stalls along Central Park, but its contract with the Parks Department is due to expire in May 2013.

The Parks Department is currently looking for bids for the site. The Strand will participate in the process. The bookstalls are located along the wall outside of Central Park on Fifth Avenue between East 60th and 61st Street. The site is a heavy with foot traffic.

The New York World has the story: “Because the bids are submitted in a sealed process, [Eddie] Sutton said Strand, whose main outlet on Broadway and 12th Street claims to carry ’18 miles of books’ simply tries to offer what it thinks it can afford. Sutton said he doesn’t worry about whether a competitor might come along and take over the tourist-attracting stalls. In fact, it has happened before.”

Canadian book publishing company D&M Publishers has filed for bankruptcy. The company said in a statement: “It is D&M’s intention to carry on its operations during this restructuring process.”

Earlier this year, the company restructured its management. In July, the company’s co-founder Scott McIntyre stepped down from his role as CEO, though he has stayed on as a board member. At that time, Rob Sanders, who founded and built D&M’s Greystone imprint, was promoted to SVP, new business development, international and publisher-at-large, and Jesse Finkelstein was promoted from director of operations and publishing services to chief operating officer.

The Globe and Mail has more: “The Vancouver-based publisher, which publishes under three separate imprints including Douglas & McIntyre, Greystone Books and New Society Publishers, says it will be working with financial advisory services company the Bowra Group to locate an investor or purchaser for its assets.”
Read more

Despite the popularity of technology among teenagers and twenty-somethings, Americans aged 16-to-29 have read more print books than eBooks.

AppNewser has more: “Interestingly, the study found eReaders and tablets are not the main way that these young Americans read eBooks. Among those surveyed under the age of 30 who reads eBooks, 41 percent read them on their cell phone, 55 percent read an eBook on their computer, 23 percent of them read the eBook on an eReader and 16 percent had read them on a tablet.” Read more

Publishers Weekly will begin publishing reviews of Canadian books as part of its book reviews content beginning this fall.

The magazine explained in a press release that it “expects to publish approximately 20 reviews a month of titles that originate with publishing houses in Canada, increasing the review coverage of all books to more than 8,000 per year.” Rather than separating these reviews into a Canadian section, these reviews will be integrated with PW’s regular review categories and instead will be categorized as fiction and nonfiction, for example.

Leigh Anne Williams, PW‘s Canadian correspondent will serve as the Canadian Adult Reviews Editor, where she will review general fiction and nonfiction. “I’ve enjoyed reporting on the Canadian book scene, and I look forward to being more closely connected with the new Canadian literature forthcoming,” explained Williams in a press release statement.

Amazon is making British publishers pick up the cost of value added tax (VAT) for eBook sales to customers in Europe.

According to a report in The Guardian, while VAT tax varies from country to country, Amazon expects publishers to cover a flat 20 percent fee on all eBooks, the cost of VAT in the UK. This is much higher than in other European countries, some of which only charge consumers three percent VAT. The Guardian has more:

The section that spells out the fact that Amazon’s starting price for discount negotiations is exclusive of 20% VAT says: “Base price is the digital list price exclusive of the standard statutory rate applicable to ebooks in the United Kingdom.” This means a publisher signing up with Amazon would have to agree to a starting price of £8.33 for an ebook retailing at £10 – the digital list price – to reflect the 20% VAT any UK-based ebook retailer would have to pay.

Read more

Penguin has signed the Olympic medal winning British athletes Alistair Brownlee and Jonathan Brownlee to write a personal training book.

The two brothers took the gold and the bronze medals for the Olympic Triathlon at the 2012 Summer Olympics, making them the first British brothers to win medals in individual competition at an Olympics since 1900. In Swim, Bike, Run, the brothers will give tips on training, psychology and performance interwoven with stories from their own lives.

Viking secured world rights to the book from Professional Sports Group. The book is slated for release by Viking in June 2013 in time for the triathlon season. The book will be released as an eBook and in print.

Romance publisher Avon Books is experimenting with eBooks without digital rights management (DRM) controls. The publisher is offering a DRM-free options on select digital titles from its imprint. The DRM-free files will be sold in Adobe ePub editions.

The publisher explained that the idea is came from reader demand. Author Tessa Dare explained: ”I know that DRM can be a frustration for honest, paying readers who just want to purchase and read books on their preferred devices.  Avon’s experiment will help me reach a new segment of the digital readership.”

Avon has also launched a new Facebook app, the Avon Social Reader, that lets users read excerpts from upcoming Avon releases and share this content with their friends. AppNewser has more: “Up to 20 percent of each book will be available to read. The content includes social media share buttons, and the app will connect to e-commerce links so that customers can buy the eBooks if they like them. Avon got the idea after doing a survey that found that  romance readers spend a lot of time talking about their favorite books in social networks.” Read more

When poet Eloise Klein Healy‘s new book A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings comes out in 2013, it will come with bonus audio files of her reading her work. But instead of these recordings coming with a CD or DVD, readers can access them with a QR code.

Readers can use a QR code reader app to access 35 audio files of more than a hundred poems in the collection.  (Readers who don’t have smartphones can access the content on the author’s website).

Healy’s publisher  Red Hen Press is not the first to experiment with adding QR codes to books. Simon & Schuster announced this past summer that they would begin adding QR codes to all books beginning this fall. The Simon & Schuster QR codes link to author pages which include things like videos of authors and details about other books.