March 17, 1997-- Amazon.com, Earth's biggest bookstore and the leading Internet retailer, today announced twice as many titles, new pricing, and the first personalized book recommendation service on the Web. Already Earth's biggest bookstore, Amazon.com today more than doubled the number of titles in its Web-based store to 2.5 million, more than 14 times as many titles as the largest physical book superstores. In addition to the 1.5 million books in print, Amazon.com now offers one million of the most popular, but extremely hard-to-find, out-of-print books.
Amazon.com also announced dramatic price reductions, including:
- 40% off the Amazon.com 500 - 40% off every U.S. Bestseller - 40% off the Science Fiction 50 - 40% off the Mystery 50 - 40% off the Literary 50 - 40% off the Computer 50
The Amazon.com 500 includes not only current Amazon.com bestsellers but also titles that Amazon.com predicts will be future bestsellers; books that are accelerating up the charts or have been hand-chosen by Amazon.com's expert editors as likely successes. Each category has been developed by Amazon.com's editorial staff with the help of special algorithms that analyze current and historic sales velocities of books. "Selection and price are important. We just doubled one and slashed the other," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. "Unlike physical bookstores, Amazon.com has infinite shelf space and no expensive retail rent to pay. With these huge advantages, we can give customers the greatest selection and dramatically lower prices." Amazon.com today also announced MatchMaker, the first personalized book recommendation service on the World Wide Web. Each customer rates a group of books on a five-point scale. Then, MatchMaker, using sophisticated collaborative filtering technology, recommends books that the customer is likely to enjoy. MatchMaker joins Eyes and Editors, Amazon.com's e-mail notification services, as the latest addition to Amazon.com's personalized shopping services. These services make finding the "right" book easier and more fun for every customer. MatchMaker will be available in the Amazon.com store at the end of March. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, Amazon.com, Inc. is headquartered in Seattle and is privately held. Amazon.com is the leading Internet retailer, with Earth's biggest selection of books. Amazon.com offers a catalog of 2.5 million titles, features for easy searching and browsing, personalized shopping services, Web-based credit card payment and direct shipping to customers. Amazon.com's name pays homage to the Amazon River. Just as the Amazon River is Earth's largest river, Amazon.com's catalogue is more than fourteen times the size of the largest physical book superstore.
Amazon.com and MatchMaker are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc.