Amazon reports 31% net sales increase in 2018

Monday, 4 February 2019 Books+Publishing

Amazon has released full-year financial results, showing a net sales increase of 31% in 2018.

The retailer earned net sales of US$232.9 billion (A$321.3bn) this year, compared with US$177.9bn (A$245.4) in 2017. Operating income increased to US$12.4bn (A$17.1bn), up from US$4.1bn ($A5.6bn) in 2017. Net income increased to US$10.1bn (A$13.9bn), up from US$3bn (A$4.1bn) in 2017.

For books, authors earned more than US$260 million (A$359m) from the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select Global Fund in 2018, totalling more than US$840m (A$1.16bn) since the launch of Kindle Unlimited. Amazon said, ‘hundreds of thousands of authors have self-published millions of books through KDP since launching the service in 2007’. Amazon said that ‘thousands’ of authors earned more than US$50,000 (A$69,000) from KDP royalties in 2018, and more than 1000 authors earned over US$100,000 (A$138,000).

Category: International news