Amazon.com Reports NY Times Bestselling Author Bill Bryson Shares Popularity with Rikki Lee Travolta

Added: (Fri Sep 12 2003)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Book and media retailer Amazon.com reports that New York Times bestseller "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson and "My Fractured Life" by Rikki Lee Travolta share popularity among the same audience of purchasers.

The Travolta book moved up 97,000 places on the Barnes & Nobel sales charts between the weeks of September 1, and September 8, 2003.

As reported in Publishers Weekly, the Bryson book is about "life, the universe, and everything" and is ranked number eight on the Time's nonfiction hardcover bestseller list as of September 7, 2003. Travolta's book tells the story of the price of fame for actors in Hollywood and on Broadway.

Amazon.com has also documented the popularity of the Travolta novel among those who also purchase best selling suspense novel "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown and the nonfiction best selling chronicle "The Kennedy Curse" by Edward Klein.

Barnes & Nobel documents the popularity of "My Fractured Life" among those who also purchase the fiction best seller "Bleachers" by John Grishman and nonfiction best sellers "It's Not About the Bike" by Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and "The Pianist" by Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman (portrayed in the Roman Polanski film adaptation by Academy Award winner Adrien Brody).

In a CBS. MarketWatch.com report, Amazon.com's traffic in the month of August was 35.4 million.

According to Bob Strauss, portfolio manager at the Icon Information Technology fund, at current prices, investors are anticipating that Amazon will grow its earnings by 45 percent annually for the next five years.

"My Fractured Life" continues to expand international distribution to Asia, Europe, and Canada through Ingram Book Group and Amazon.com's Internet retail outlets www.Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), www.Amazom.de (Germany), www.Amazon.fr (France), www.Amazon.co.jp (Japan), and www.Amazon.ca (Canada).

Online commerce sales year-to-date are up 17 percent to $30 billion. This compares to the 28 percent growth in online commerce during the same period last year and incorporates the figures of Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobel, Books-A-Million the U.K.'s Blackwells Bookstore.