CEO Jeff Bezos had this comment: “After 5 years, eBooks is a multi-billion dollar category for us and growing fast – up approximately 70% last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just 5%. We’re excited and very grateful to our customers for their response to Kindle and our ever expanding ecosystem and selection.”

According to CNBC, Wall Street analysts had predicted $22.26 billion in revenue for the quarter. At the same time, Amazon’s net income was down 45 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2011, falling to $0.21 per diluted share from $0.38 from the same period last year.

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As part of the award, James will get a cover story and interview in the magazine. She joins a list of winners that includes David Shanks, Larry Kirshbaum, Jeff Bezos and Len Riggio.

Co-editorial director Jim Milliot explained the choice: “From boosting sales of print books through bookstores to putting a spotlight on a genre that had received little publicity, E.L. James’ impact on various parts of the book business cannot be overstated … She is well deserving of our Person of the Year award.”

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the $119 Kindle Paperwhite WiFi eReader at a Santa Monica press conference today. The 3G edition will cost $179. AppNewser has more about the new Kindle Fire HD that was also revealed at the event.

It began with a television spot showing Amazon delivery boxes on a stoop. “We’re the people with a smile on the box,” it read, reminding this GalleyCat editor of a famous New Yorker cover.

Bezos explained: “People don’t want gadgets anymore, they want services. They want services that improve over time” and introduced Kindle Paperwhite. The reading device has 25 percent more contrast compared to the original device and 62 percent more pixels per page. It has capacitive touch and a new front light system that Amazon took four years to develop.

“It’s exactly light ambient light,” he said. It can get eight weeks of battery life, even when the device is lit. He demonstrated the tool with George R. R. Martin‘s best selling novel, Game of Thrones. The device also tells how many minutes of reading you have left in a book. You can also “x-ray” a title, seeing characters and key terms in the digital book.

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Amazon has scheduled a mystery press conference next week, most likely to reveal some new devices. According to AppNewser, some believe that Amazon will release several new Kindle Fire devices in different sizes.  Business Insider speculated that Apple has been developing the iPad Mini specifically to compete with the Kindle Fire.

Founder/CEO Jeff Bezos had this statement in the release: “This has been a big year for digital products on Amazon—all of the top 10 sellers on Amazon.com since Kindle Fire launched just less than a year ago are digital products. Kindle Fire is sold out, but we have an exciting roadmap ahead—we will continue to offer our customers the best hardware, the best prices, the best customer service, the best cross-platform interoperability, and the best content ecosystem.”

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AppNewser has more: “Aimed at fulfillment center employees and seasonal employees who have come in through CamperForce, employees who have worked with Amazon for three years or more qualify to have 95 percent of their tuition paid in courses for careers including, ‘aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, nursing, and many other fields.’”

In a letter addressed to customers, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos writes: “Many of our fulfillment center employees will choose to build their careers at Amazon. For others, a job at Amazon might be a step towards a career in another field. We want to make it easier for employees to make that choice and pursue their aspirations. It can be difficult in this economy to have the flexibility and financial resources to teach yourself new skills.”

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J.K. Rowling‘s major bestseller will join more than 145,000 books that Amazon Prime members can check out for free (a service without due dates). The books now available at this link.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos did the math for Amazon users: “Over a year, borrowing the Harry Potter books, plus a handful of additional titles, can alone be worth more than the $79 cost of Prime or a Kindle. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library also has an innovative feature that’s of great benefit for popular titles like Harry Potter – unlimited supply of each title – you never get put on a waiting list.”

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Bezos spotted the popular essay Park (pictured) wrote about her self-publishing experience called “How Amazon Saved My Life” and decided to spotlight it on the homepage. He also noted that 22 of the top 100 Kindle eBooks were written by self-published authors–follow this link to explore the ten bestselling authors on the site. Check out his letter:

“Did I cry over some of these rejections? Absolutely. Did I feel inadequate, untalented, hurt? Yes. Did I doubt my ability to craft a story that readers could fall in love with? You bet.” That’s Jessica Park, who hit road block after road block trying to get her book Flat-Out Love in front of readers. You can read her incredible blog post on IndieReader (also picked up by HuffPost) detailing her perseverance and how she finally succeeded by doing it herself with Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s heartwarming and tells a powerful story about what KDP makes possible.

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In his new book trailer (embedded above), author Andy Laties staged a Godzilla and King Kong-style battle between the founders of Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The action-packed video is for the upcoming book, Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Businesses Represent Everything You Want To Fight for, from Free Speech To Buying Local To Building Communities. An illustrated Jeff Bezos starred as Amazilla and  Len Riggio played Barnes Kong.  Rebecca Migdal directed and illustrated the trailer.

Here’s the plot of the trailer: “Barnes Kong is on a rampage! The simian chain bookstore monster could go on stomping on independent bookstores and kidnapping dead authors forever, but the fearsome Amazilla has other plans: he wants in on the action. As the two battle with their laser e-readers, they destroy every public institution in sight. Can the Rebel Bookseller save the day, rescue Emily Dickinson and bring back a community of books?”

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In this episode of “Cubes,” we take a behind-the-scenes tour of Audible.com. The Amazon-owned audiobook company is headquartered in the heart of Newark, NJ and its office has played host to Jeff Bezos and George R.R. Martin, among other literary luminaries, as well as a ton of top-flight voice actors who narrate Audible’s books in state-of-the-art studios.

For more videos, check out Mediabistro.tv, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

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Earlier this week, Amazon unveiled a special discount for customers who use their new price comparison app–a way to scan prices at brick and mortar stores but buy on Amazon.

Here’s more from the open letter (reprinted below): “We could call your $5 bounty to app-users a cheesy marketing move and leave it at that. In fact, it is the latest in a series of steps to expand your market at the expense of cities and towns nationwide, stripping them of their unique character and the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries.”

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had this statement: “We’re grateful to the millions of customers who have made the all-new Kindle the bestselling product in the history of Amazon — surpassing Harry Potter 7 … We’re seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet. Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions … Kindle’s $139 price point is a key factor — it’s low enough that people don’t have to choose.”

If you are looking to fill up your Kindle, follow these links to read sample chapters from the best books of the year–our literary mixtape collection: Best Novels of 2010, the Best YA Books of 2010, the Best eBooks of 2010, and the Best Nonfiction of 2010. If you are looking for larger gifts, eBookNewser has a holiday gift guide for eReaders.

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The open letter arrived one day after the The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure eBook was removed from the online bookseller’s digital catalog.  What do you think? Should Amazon remove other handbooks involving illegal activity? Where should the bookseller draw the line?

The complete letter (PDF here) follows below, but here’s an excerpt: “In light of Amazon’s recent decision to stop selling an e-book on pedophilia, I urge you to protect other vulnerable beings by ending sales of products that promote other cruel and illegal activities, such as dogfighting and cockfighting … Animals, like children, depend on us to protect them and put their best interests above profits. Please, don’t be complicit in cruelty to animals: Do the right thing and stop selling products that promote criminal violence against living beings.”

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UPDATED: eBookNewser has more Amazon news today–the bookseller has launched a Kindle Store in the UK, but UK publishers won’t get to set their own prices. In addition, the president of the American Booksellers Association has criticized Amazon’s deal with the Wylie Agency: “Diminishing the availability of titles and narrowing the options for readers can only harm our society in the long run.”

Finally, we live-blogged Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos‘ appearance on Charlie Rose last night–follow this link to read our coverage to learn more about the new Kindle (pictured above).

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He explained: “[W]hile our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”

The online bookseller put out a release today loaded with intriguing facts. Nevertheless, the company still has not released straightforward figures about total Kindle sales or total eBooks sold. Among the other details, the company revealed they have sold three times as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 compared to the first half of 2009.

According to the release (embedded below), five authors have already sold more than 500,000 Kindle books. eBookNewser has the complete list of these new digital all-stars.

Amazon also shared this statistic for paid books: “Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books.”

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In the interview, Bezos defended the Amazon Kindle as a unique device that will continue to captivate readers (despite one expert’s prediction that tablet computers will soon outnumber eReaders). In addition, Bezos issued a veiled warning to publishers about eBook pricing in the interview.

Check out his dramatic quote: “First of all, there are a bunch of publishers of all sizes, and they don’t all have one opinion. There are as many opinions about what the right thing to do is as there are publishers. So you’re seeing that some of them are being very aggressive on prices, pricing their books well below $9.99. Others are trying to do everything they can to make prices as high as possible. And what you’re going to see is a share shift from one group of publishers to this other group of publishers.”

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