Amazon Publishing VP Jeff Belle revealed some rare sales stats in an email sent to literary agents this week. PaidContent has a copy of the whole email.

Since December, Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint has sold more than 250,000 copies of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series. In addition, AmazonCrossing authors Oliver Pötzsch have both sold half a million books in their life-to-date sales with Amazon.

Journalists love to write about how Amazon Publishing will destroy the book business, but a Nation story about “The Amazon Effect” offered a more measured perspective.

In the essay, Yale University Press executive editor-at-large Steve Wasserman looked at the ways Amazon has already succeeded, as well as the places where it has yet to prove itself. The essay noted some publishers “professed little anxiety” about the bookseller’s publishing arm, headed by Larry Kirshbaum. Check it out:

It remains to be seen, however, whether spending a reported $800,000 to acquire Penny Marshall’s Hollywood memoirs is ultimately profitable; a number of the publishers I spoke with thought not and professed little anxiety at Amazon’s big-foot approach. They are not inclined to join the hysteria that largely greeted Kirshbaum’s defection, feeling that a recent Bloomberg Businessweek cover story depicting a book enveloped by flames had exaggerated by several orders of magnitude the actual threat posed by Amazon’s new venture. If Amazon wants to burn the book business, as the magazine’s headline blared, publishing books the old-fashioned way struck them as a peculiar way of going about it. Was there really a “secret plot to destroy literature,” as the magazine alleged? It seemed far-fetched, to say the least.

Country music star Billy Ray Cyrus will publish his memoir with Amazon Publishing in hardcover and eBook edition in spring 2013.

Trident Media CEO Dan Strone negotiated the deal alongside John Ferriter, Lo Bosworth and Stuart Dill from Octagon Entertainment. Strone also negotiated an $800,000 deal for Penny Marshall‘s memoir with Amazon.

Cyrus (pictured, via) had this statement in the release: “I learned early from The Book of Psalms that: ‘The Truth will be your shield and your buckle’. I’ve always loved that.  You only get one chance to tell your life story.  This is my chance to set the record straight.  I realized that over the years that there have been untruths and misconceptions about me, my music, my life, my family and our dreams.  I’m going to lay out the facts starting from August 25th, 1961 and work my way to the present, even if it stings a little.”

Amazon has struck a new deal to distribute its books outside of its popular online store. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s brand new New Harvest imprint will now publish “all of Amazon Publishing’s New York-based imprint’s adult titles in print and distribute them in North America outside of the Amazon.com platform.”

When Amazon Publishing’s East Coast Group launches its inaugural list next fall, it will include books by Tim Ferriss, Penny Marshall, Deepak Chopra and James Franco. Last year Houghton Mifflin Harcourt mounted a major restructuring.

Amazon Publishing’s East Coast Group publisher Larry Kirshbaum had this statement: “Our goal has been, and remains, to introduce authors to as many readers as possible … This new agreement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt enables us to broaden our distribution and get our books into more readers’ hands.”

Amazon is paying sizable advances as it prepares to publish 122 books in the next few months. The New York Times reported that Amazon paid $800,000 for a memoir from Penny Marshall, the Laverne & Shirley star and director.

Amazon announced the deal last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and My Mother Was Nuts will come out this fall. Trident Media Group CEO Dan Strone negotiated the deal, working with Shelter Entertainment manager Alan Iezman.

Here’s more about the book, from the release: “Marshall opens up about her childhood and family, including her relationships with brother and early mentor Garry Marshall and sister Ronny. How a decision to move to Hollywood—as a single, newly divorced mother and college drop-out—eventually led to her starring role on the classic sitcom Laverne & Shirley. And how her transition from on-screen star to behind-the-camera quickly led her to become the first woman to direct a movie that made more than $100 million at the box office, an honor bestowed upon Big, which Marshall duplicated just four years later with A League of Their Own.”