Amazon.com Releases 1998 Bestseller Lists with Reader Favorites from 9 Steps to Financial Freedom to 101 Nights of Grrrreat Sex
Network Anchors Brokaw and Jennings in Tight Contest
SEATTLE, Dec. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the Internet's No. 1 book and No. 1 music retailer, today announced that Tom Wolfe's saga of the contemporary South, A Man in Full, is the best-selling book of 1998, outpacing Tom Clancy's #2 anti-terrorism thriller, Rainbow Six.
"I'm immensely grateful to all the 'dot-commers' who have done this for me," Wolfe said, referring to Amazon.com's 4.5 million customers.
In addition to its overall 1998 list of 100 best-selling titles available at http://www.amazon.com/top-100, Amazon.com today also released its 1,998 Category Bestsellers - the top-selling books in 26 major categories and their sub-categories, ranging from sex to spirituality (http://www.amazon.com/1998).
"The Battle of the Toms" capped a year in which Amazon.com readers' choices for these lists demonstrated the size, breadth, and depth of the Amazon.com book selection.
"The problem with the average bestseller list is that it's average," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. "But people want better than average - they want exactly what's right for them. Backed by the power of the Internet and more than 4.5 million customers, Amazon.com bestseller lists help people discover the right books in the category they want - whether it's Antiques or Zoroastrianism."
In a year marked by the popularity of personal investment books, The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom by Suze Orman was the overall sixth best-selling title for 1998 and The Electronic Day Trader by Marc Friedfertig, George West, and George Piecznik is #11. At #13 is The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fool Beats Wall Street's Wise Men and How You Can Too by David Gardner and Tom Gardner.
The on-air ratings war between network news anchors Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings extended to the book world. At #17, Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, a riveting account of the men and women of World War II who built the post-war world, is barely ahead of Jennings' The Century, a sweeping photo-narrative that captures the 20th Century through the lives of ordinary people (#18).
Also as 1998 comes to an end, Amazon.com tomorrow will begin counting down its Editors' Choices for the 10 best books of 1998. Starting tomorrow with #10, the countdown will continue each day until the Best Book of 1998 is unveiled on Jan. 1, 1999.
"Our editor picks are just another way for people to discover books," Bezos said. "We've assembled a team of book enthusiasts whose insights and recommendations provide one more tool to help customers zero in on books that educate, inform and inspire."
Visit www.amazon.com to follow the countdown of editor picks. The bestsellers lists, however, are based on sales and reflect actual reader choices for 1998. Amazon.com's 1998 Category Bestsellers are:
| Category | Title | Author |
| Arts & Music | The Not So Big House | Sarah Susanka, Kira Obolensky |
| Audiobooks | The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical & Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying | Suze Orman |
| Biographies & Memoirs | Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. | Ron Chernow |
| Business & Investing | The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical & Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying | Suze Orman |
| Children's Books | The Emperor's New Clothes: An All-Star Retelling of the Classic Fairy Tale | Starbright Foundation, Hans Christian Andersen |
| Computers & Internet | Time Bomb 2000: What the Year 2000 Computer Crisis Means to You! | Edward Yourdon |
| Cooking, Food & Wine | How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food | Mark Bittman |
| Entertainment | Pure Drivel | Steve Martin |
| Health, Mind & Body | Sugar Busters!: Cut Sugar to Trim Fat | H. Leighton Steward |
| History | The Greatest Generation | Tom Brokaw |
| Home & Garden | If Only You Knew How Much I Smelled You | Valerie Shaff, Roy Blount Jr. |
| Horror | Bag of Bones | Stephen King |
| Literature & Fiction | A Man in Full | Tom Wolfe |
| Mystery & Thrillers | Rainbow Six | Tom Clancy |
| Nonfiction | Death of Outrage | William Bennett |
| Oprah Book Club Pick | I Know This Much Is True | Wally Lamb |
| Overall | A Man in Full | Tom Wolfe |
| Parenting & Families | The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two | William M. Sears, Martha Sears |
| Reference | Elements of Style | William Strunk, E. B. White |
| Religion & Spirituality | Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and the Last Great Lesson | Mitch Albom |
| Romance | The Loop | Nicholas Evans |
| Science & Nature | Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge | Edward Osborne Wilson |
| Science Fiction & Fantasy | The Path of Daggers (Wheel of Time Book 8) | Robert Jordan |
| Sports & Outdoors | Into Thin Air | Jon Krakauer |
| Teens | Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul: 101 Stories of Life, Love and Learning | Jack Canfield, Kimberly Kirberger, Mark V. Hansen |
| Travel Literature | A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail | Bill Bryson |
In the category of Health, Mind and Body, the top-selling sex instruction manual is 101 Nights of Grrrreat Sex: Secret Sealed Seductions for Fun Loving Couples by Laura Corn. The full list of category and sub-category bestsellers is available at http://www.amazon.com/1998.
About Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), the Internet's No. 1 music and No. 1 book retailer, opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and quickly became Earth's Biggest Bookstore(SM). Today, the Amazon.com store has expanded to offer more than 4.7 million books, music CDs, videos, DVDs, computer games, and other titles, plus secure credit card payment, personalized recommendations, and streamlined ordering through 1-Click(SM) technology.
Amazon.com operates two international bookstore Web sites: www.amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom and www.amazon.de in Germany. Amazon.com also operates PlanetAll (www.planetall.com), a Web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. It also operates the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web's comprehensive and authoritative source of information on more than 150,000 movies and entertainment programs and 500,000 cast and crew members dating from the birth of film in 1892 to the present.
This announcement contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, Amazon.com's limited operating history, the unpredictability of its future revenues, and risks associated with capacity constraints, management of growth, and new business opportunities.
More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1997, and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 1998.
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