Net sales at Amazon in the first quarter ended March 31 rose 9.4%, to $127.4 million, while net income was $3.2 billion, compared to a net loss of $3.8 billion in the same quarter in 2022.

Although the sales increase was small compared to many years in the past, Amazon's results were better than stock analysts expected, and the company's share price briefly rose 10% in after-hours trading yesterday. However, after the company revealed in a conference call that sales gains of Amazon Web Services have been tapering off so far in the current quarter--from 16% to 11%--Amazon stock retreated from its highs in after-hours trading and starts the day down 2.5%. The cloud services division has long been one of the most profitable parts of the company. In the quarter, advertising revenues were strong, up 21%.

But much of the rest of the news paled in comparison to Amazon's stronger years. As the New York Times noted, "Amazon, like other tech companies, did very well early in the pandemic when everyone stayed home but has had some troubles since. After expanding its retail distribution network to handle an influx of new business that did not stick around, management is paring back.

"Employment at the company has shrunk 10% since its peak in early 2022, or by 150,000 workers. Since November, the company has confirmed 27,000 layoffs in divisions including human resources, retail and cloud computing. But the warehouses and distribution network have dropped the most." And more layoffs may occur, Amazon said, as the company continues to cut unprofitable operations.

The Wall Street Journal observed that as sales in Amazon's online stores have slowed and its market share in e-commerce and Prime membership growth have "stalled," the company is "attempting to ignite production by investing in noncore businesses" that include "its international business, chip development, advertising, its grocery business, healthcare and satellite-internet business Project Kuiper.

"The company has recently been marketing its efforts in generative AI models, the technology behind the buzzy ChatGPT. Amazon recently announced new artificial-intelligence offerings which target corporate customers."

Amazon predicted that sales in the second quarter will rise between 5% and 10%, to between $127 billion and $133 billion.

The Nature of Reading Bookshop, a bookstore with a focus on seasonal reads and books about climate change and sustainability, has opened in downtown Madison, N.J., the Madison Eagle reported.

Store owner Hailey Brock held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the bookstore on Earth Day (April 22) that saw visits from Mayor Robert Conley and other town officials. The bookstore carries fiction and nonfiction that merge "the joy and wonder of the natural world with the knowledge and passion to fight for its survival." There are children's books and a rotating selection of seasonal reads, which celebrate the natural world and its cyclical changes.

Prior to opening the bricks-and-mortar store at 22 Main St., the Nature of Reading Bookshop was an online store and pop-up shop, with appearances at places like the Morris Winter Market in Morris Township.

Brock, who grew up in nearby Chatham, N.J., started working at Chatham Bookseller when she was in high school. Following her return to N.J. after studying in the U.K., she managed Chatham Bookseller, which specializes in used and rare books, for about 18 months. Now, the two bookstores are practically across the street from each other. They plan to work together to "attract book-lovers to Madison and to each other's shops."

Brock also launched a crowdfunding campaign to help her open the Nature of Reading, which has so far raised just over $14,000.

(via)

Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Miss., is closed after suffering extensive damage from a fire that broke out Wednesday night. 

Per the Northside Sun, no one was injured but there was heavy "smoke, fire and water" damage throughout the two-story building, which also houses Turnrow Cafe and Turnrow Art Co. The businesses are closed for the time being, with no further updates yet.

On Facebook, the bookstore shared a post from Turnrow Art Co. that described the fire as "heartbreaking" and read: "I don’t know what the immediate future holds, but I am very thankful to the quick- arriving firefighters, our neighboring businesses and my friends who have checked on us. We hope to see you soon."

Turnrow Books first opened in August 2006. Fred Carl Jr., founder and CEO of Viking Range, the high-end cooking company, owns the bookstore and over the past few decades has helped revitalize downtown Greenwood.

This past Wednesday, Shelf Awareness sent our monthly pre-order e-blast to nearly 940,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 937,016 customers of 225 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features 11 upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and a sponsored title. Customers can buy these books via "pre-order" buttons that lead directly to the purchase page for the title on each sending store's website. A key feature is that bookstore partners can easily change title selections to best reflect the tastes of their customers and can customize the mailing with links, images and promotional copy of their own.

The pre-order e-blasts are sent the last Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, May 31. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

For a sample of the April pre-order e-blast, see this one from the Boerne Bookshop, Boerne, Texas.

The titles highlighted in the pre-order e-blast were:

The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand (Little, Brown)
Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See (Scribner)
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
Pageboy by Elliot Page (Flatiron)
Everything's Fine by Cecilia Rabess (Simon & Schuster)
What an Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman (Penguin Press)
50 Pies, 50 States by Stacey Mei Yan Fong (Voracious)
And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu (Roxane Gay/Grove Atlantic)
Welcome to Beach Town by Susan Wiggs (Morrow)
Camp Sylvania by Julie Murphy (Balzer + Bray)
You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury)
Central Park West by James Comey (Mysterious Press)
Cosmoknights, Book 2 by Hannah Templer (Top Shelf)

Michael Denneny

Michael Denneny, "an openly gay editor at a major New York publisher who started a pioneering imprint that was devoted to LGBT literature and who helped found a magazine billed as a gay version of the New Yorker," died April 15, the New York Times reported. He was 80. For almost 30 years, Denneny "multitasked his way through a jampacked publishing career." His successes included Judith Thurman's biography Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller (1982); G. Gordon Liddy's memoir Will (1980); and Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On (1987).

In 1976, Denneny and Chuck Ortleb started Christopher Street, a monthly magazine that would publish fiction and nonfiction by gay writers for the next 19 years. "It was a risky personal move for Mr. Denneny, the rare openly gay editor in a publishing industry in which many gay and lesbian editors were still closeted," the Times wrote. By then, he was an editor at Macmillan, where he published a book version of Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, which had its premiere in 1976."

In 1977, Denneny was fired "when Macmillan's chief executive discovered that he had acquired The Homosexuals by Alan Ebert, which featured interviews with 17 gay men," the Times noted, adding that he "was rehired briefly to present the book at a sales conference when no other editors would. The book was published--but he was fired again, this time when his connection to Christopher Street became known."

While hunting for jobs, he presented his interviewers with a copy of the magazine and informed each prospective employer that he was gay. His only job offer came from the president of St. Martin's Press, Tom McCormack. Denneny said he believed there was a new market for gay fiction. 

One of his early acquisitions for St. Martin's was Edmund White's second novel, Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978). "Nocturnes was rejected by everybody," White said. "I couldn't get anybody to publish me again until my agent approached Michael. He was very generous, very smart and was very intellectual, but not in a show-offy way."

In 1987, Denneny started Stonewall Inn Editions, an LGBT trade paperback imprint at St. Martin's that republished many of the gay and lesbian books he had previously released in hardcover.

"Stonewall created a definition for gay books and gave a visibility that gay books had never had in the past, which were previously published by obscure houses or self-published," said Robert Weil, executive editor and v-p of the Liveright imprint at Norton. "Every gay man of that era knew Stonewall.... No one had the influence and vision... in spite of everything, to say that it was OK to be gay, and he made that mark through publishing."

Stonewall's paperbacks include Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog by Paul Monette (1988); Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of an AIDS Activist by Larry Kramer (1994); and Shilts's The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1988). 

Denneny left St. Martin's in 2002 to become a freelance editor. Over the past few years, he worked on his memoir, On Christopher Street: Life, Sex and Death After Stonewall, which was published by the University of Chicago Press last month. "And when the great disaster of AIDS overwhelmed us," he wrote in the book. "I thought I saw a heroic era in gay and lesbian history and an absolutely shining moment in gay writing, something truly worth remembering."

Eagle Eye Books, Decatur, Ga., got a visit this week from George R.R. Martin (center, with bookstore staff and [far left] a cardboard display of the author). Eagle Eye reported, "Martin likes to support local indies by signing stock. As you know, he has a bookstore himself so we love that he is one of us! He was very giving and had lots of great stories!" The bookstore was contacted ahead of time so they could have plenty of books in stock, which Martin signed.

At Valley Bookseller, Stillwater, Minn.

Independent Bookstore Day Spirit Week continued yesterday with Dress Up as Your Favorite Book Character Day. Among the booksellers participating:

Roundabout Books, Bend, Ore.: "Can Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy keep Thing One in check today?! Could be an interesting day at the bookstore.... Spirit Week has been so much FUN! This Saturday is the most glorious day, Independent Bookstore and the "Beaverland" presentation by Leila Philip. "

At the Family Bookshop

The Family Bookshop, DeLand, Fla.: "Pennywise and the Little Mermaid want you to come in for Independent Bookstore Day! Don't forget!"

The Haunted Bookshop, Mobile, Ala.: "And on Thursdays we dress as book characters."

Dragon Tale Books, Menomonie, Wis.: "Today for #bookstorespiritweek is Book Character Dress-up Day. Do I look like a character in a book you have read? Then I am that character or a modern Jane Austen-ish character. #independentbookstoreday is coming soon."

The Book Tavern, Augusta, Ga.: " 'Dress Like A Book Character Day' featuring Harriet, Lisbeth, and Kiki (and BadBoi, who makes an adorable stand-in for Gigi)."

Main Street Books, Davidson, N.C.: "These fits are killing it for Book Character Day today."

At the Gamble House Bookstore

My Sister's Books, Pawleys Island, S.C.: "A few years ago, we were delighted to participate in the Celebrate Stories event. Bess dressed up as one of her favorite characters... Pippi Longstocking! Today's Spirit Week theme is: Dress as your favorite character. Who will you be today?"

The Gamble House Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif.: "Just wanted to share another photo of our staff participating in Indie Bookstore Day Spirit Week: Favorite Book Character. Kelly is Rosie Revere from the Rosie Revere Engineer Series by Andrea Beaty. Heather is the cover character from How to Say Hello to a Worm by Kari Percival." 

For your entertainment pleasure, Loganberry Books, Shaker Heights, Ohio, presents the video: "You better not act like you're in a Wes Anderson movie while opening up the bookstore."

Flint Hills Books, Council Grove, Kan., shared a photo on Instagram of the shop's Independent Bookstore Day get-in-the-spirit sidewalk chalkboard message: "It's a book party! Come on in! Celebrate IBD."

How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves by Tristan Gooley (The Experiment).

Today:
All Things Considered: Camille Dungy, author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden (Simon & Schuster, $28.99, 9781982195304).

Science Friday: Tove Danovich, author of Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them (Agate Surrey, $27, 9781572843219).

New images have been released from Martin Scorsese's movie Killers of the Flower Moon, based on the book by David Grann and adapted for the big screen by Eric Roth and Scorsese. The Film Stage reported that the images, released by Apple just ahead of a Cannes Film Festival premiere, "feature Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, as well as the director himself on set." 

Grann recently told Vanity Fair: "One of the things that was really most impressive and important in the development process was less my involvement, but the involvement of members of the Osage Nation. And early on, the Osage chief, Geoffrey Standing Bear, appointed several movie ambassadors from the Nation, from the government, to work with the movie folks. From everything I've heard, they really worked with a commitment to working with the Osage Nation, developing a story, even shooting on location. Many Osage are actually acting in the movie....

"What I was struck by from Scorsese to the actors was the level of commitment and how much research they did to understand the parts and understand the history. They just seemed voracious, a little bit like historians, in their search for any knowledge, transcripts, documents, speaking to descendants, speaking with members of the Osage Nation."

The Mystery Writers of America has announced the winners of the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and TV.:

Best Novel: Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka (William Morrow)
Best First Novel by an American Author: Don't Know Tough by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime)
Best Paperback Original: Or Else by Joe Hart (Thomas & Mercer)
Best Fact Crime: Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation by Erika Krouse (Flatiron Books)
Best Critical/Biographical: The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)
Best Short Story: "Red Flag," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Gregory Fallis (Dell Magazines)
Best Juvenile: Aggie Morton Mystery Queen: The Seaside Corpse by Marthe Jocelyn (PRH Canada/Tundra Books)
Best Young Adult: The Red Palace by June Hur (Macmillan Children's Books/Feiwel & Friends)
Best Television Episode Teleplay: "Episode 1"--Magpie Murders, written by Anthony Horowitz (Masterpiece/PBS)
Robert L. Fish Memorial Award: "Dogs in the Canyon," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Mark Harrison (Dell Magazines)
The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award: A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers (William Morrow)
The G.P. Putnam's Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award: Hideout by Louisa Luna (Doubleday)
The Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award: Buried in a Good Book by Tamara Berry (Sourcebooks/Poisoned Pen Press) 

Special awards included:

Grand Master: Michael Connelly; Joanne Fluke
Raven Award: Crime Writers of Color; Eddie Muller for Noir Alley and The Film Noir Foundation
Ellery Queen Award: The Strand Magazine

Ivy Pochoda (These Women; Wonder Valley) unleashes a combination of raw energy and poignant loss in Sing Her Down, a ferocious, feminist western. After just a few years in prison, Florence "Florida" Baum is told she qualifies for early release because the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is endangering prisoners. But, Florida soon realizes there are two catches. First, she must stay in Arizona, despite desperately wanting to return to her home of Los Angeles. And second, violent and volatile fellow inmate Dios is getting out, too. Florida, born and raised in wealth and privilege, claims she's different from the other women she's been with in captivity, but Dios is determined to prove to Florida that there is as much darkness inside Florida as there is inside herself.

Pochoda's succinct, tense prose sets readers balancing on a tightrope from the start. Told in clipped, atmospheric sections from the perspective of Dios, Florida, an inmate named Kace who hears the voices and stories of others in her mind, and Lobos, a cop with her own troubled past that she wants to escape, Sing Her Down keeps readers destabilized, running from one haunted voice to the next. In this way, even as Florida and Dios chase each other across Covid-ravaged deserts and through the bleak streets of Los Angeles's Skid Row, the novel projects a shared but claustrophobic female psyche, characterized by desperation and anger. Kace declares from the start: "These women--their mistake was in thinking they burned with their own unique rage. Something deeper, darker than what the rest of us feel. Let me tell you--inside we all rage the same." 

As these combustible voices ignite one another, it is Florida's story that takes center stage, positioning her as the novel's troubled protagonist. But while the novel invokes the classic western showdown of the hero facing off with a villain both in its opening imagery and in its breathless conclusion, Pochoda refuses to make Dios--or any other woman in this blistering and uncanny world--an easy villain. Instead, like in any good western, the showdown is really a face-off between the protagonist and herself: between what she has been, what she could be, and what she chooses, in the face of all the neglect and violence she's endured, to become. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Shelf Talker: A gritty thriller with a fiery heart, Sing Her Down is a pulse-pounding western with a devastating message about the oft-forgotten explosions made by women the world tries hard not to see.

His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

--Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death"

I make plans (though not necessarily "bold and fiery") for this weekly column... most of the time. I'll know a few days in advance what I'm going to write about and then let the idea simmer. On Thursday mornings, I gather my forces and resources to start writing. And that was the plan this week until fate intervened at precisely 8:36 a.m. yesterday.

In his story "The Imp of the Perverse," Poe writes: "I felt then the consummation of my fate." 

At Shelf Awareness, we often run items under the header Cool Idea of the Day, and the news in yesterday's e-mail certainly qualified as one. In fact, I decided at the fateful hour of 8:36 a.m. that my plans would change immediately and the column become a Cool Idea of the Spring. The e-mail in question was a press release from Julia Fleischaker, owner of two Greedy Reads bookstores in Baltimore, Md. 

Inspired by Bloomsday, the annual worldwide celebration of Irish author James Joyce and his novel Ulysses on June 16, Baltimore is putting its own spin on the tradition with the second annual Doomsday 2023, a 24-hour livestreamed reading of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The National Edgar Allan Poe Theatre and Greedy Reads said they "are taking it up a notch with Doomsday," beginning at noon on Saturday, May 20, and ending at noon on Sunday, May 21, at the Greedy Reads location in Fells Point. The official text for Doomsday will be The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Vintage Books).

Doomsday will feature readings from noted Baltimore authors Brandi Collins-Dexter, Sarah Pinsker, Leslie Gray Streeter, Jeannie Vanasco, Jung Yun, and more. Several of the city's public figures will also participate. Confirmed readers thus far include Mark Edelson, Maryland State Delegate; Dr. Asma Naeem, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art; radio hosts Andrew Limbong (national NPR), Tom Hall (WYPR), and Dr. Kaye Wise Whitehead (WEAA); Shauntee Daniels, Baltimore National Heritage Area; Jocquelyn Downs, Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts; Enrica Jang, curator of the Poe House and Museum; and more.

The idea for the marathon Poe reading came to Poe Theatre founder Alex Zavistovich after being invited to a Bloomsday event. "It all came together in my head instantly," said Zavistovich. "Why celebrate an inscrutable work of Irish literature when Baltimore has its own inscrutable literary giant?"

Fleischaker noted: "As soon as I learned about Doomsday, I knew I wanted Greedy Reads to be a part of it. The event feels a bit like Baltimore itself: quirky, fun, a little scrappy, with impeccable literary credentials. Plus, it's always fun to gather with the amazing personalities who call Baltimore home."

"Viewers of our livestream last year challenged us to top it this year," Zavistovich added. "In many ways this is an endurance event. With the help and support of Greedy Reads, this year will be even more fun and a whole lot harder--or at least more challenging." 

Here's the plan: On Doomsday, when Greedy Reads closes for the evening, several readers will move into the store to continue reading, without a break and visible from the storefront window, before moving back outside the next morning.

Doomsday organizers noted that Poe worked in Baltimore for three years, during which time he wrote several of his notable stories, including "Berenice" and "Shadow--A Parable." His connection to Baltimore is much stronger than that, however. His wife, Virginia Clemm Poe, was born in the city, and his grandfather, the renowned military leader David Poe, was a co-founder of the historic First and Franklin Church. Poe's body is buried on the grounds of Baltimore's Westminster Hall.

Partners in Doomsday 2023 include Greedy Reads and Enoch Pratt Free Library. The marathon reading is a fundraiser to support the operations of the National Edgar Allan Poe Theatre, which is dedicated to bringing Poe's works to life onstage, on the air, and in the classroom in Baltimore and beyond. A Givebutter online campaign has been started to raise money for the Doomsday 2023 reading. 

As preparations continue to celebrate Poe's bookish house of horrors on Doomsday, I can't resist ending this as I began, with still relevant thoughts of plague and masques. As recently as April 3, Greedy Reads posted its most recent Covid era face mask policy change: "Shop update--as of this week, masks will be optional at both greedy reads locations. We will still have masks available at the door for anyone who wants one--and we encourage you to take and use them. We plan to continue requiring masks for certain, more crowded, events. As always, we thank you for your patience and good cheer as we've navigated some very confusing times, alongside all of you."

Edgar Allan Poe will always haunt us. Happy Doomsday!