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I'm an Amazon.com customer even though I love bookstores ("The Book on Amazon.com," by Jonathan Littman, July 20). My husband and I like to prowl the bargain tables. My daughter and I, on our annual "mother-daughter get-together weekend," always find a good bookstore. Once, in New Orleans, our hotel was overbooked, and we were prepared to spend the entire night browsing in an all-night bookstore. (We did finally end up with a room.) So why buy books online? For one thing, as a working professional, my hours are often longer than those of most bookstores, so online is where can I browse, or purchase authors of interest, or even buy gifts with efficiency.

Google Inc.'s YouTube announced the launch of a new channel devoted to women in advance of a presentation to advertisers and brands, concluding a two-week-long series of marketing pitches by the leading distributors of online entertainment. "Black Swan" executive producer Jon Avnet and "Albert Nobs" director Rodrigo Garcia joined together to create WIGS, a YouTube channel of original scripted dramas and short films about women. Avnet and actress Virginia Madsen, who is best known for her role as Maya in the 2004 film "Sideways," were expected to take the stage Wednesday at New York's Beacon Theatre to tout the partnership with YouTube.

Amazon.com is busy stocking its shelves with more programming and will soon offer streams of older CBS-owned television shows, including "Frasier," "Cheers" and "Star Trek," to its online customers. Amazon.com is busy stocking its shelves with more programming and will soon offer streams of older CBS-owned television shows, including "Frasier," "Cheers" and "Star Trek," to its online customers. The move, announced Wednesday, represents the online retail giant's most significant licensing agreement since launching its Amazon Prime subscription service in February to compete with Netflix.

Barnes & Noble Inc.'s prospects against rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. in the fast-growing digital reader business just got a big lift thanks to a $605-million investment from Microsoft Corp. For the nation's No. 1 bookstore chain, the infusion will help its Nook business better compete against the top-selling Kindle e-reader and iPad tablet computer and relieves some of the pressure on Barnes & Noble to turn a profit on the Nook. It's also a good deal for Microsoft, which is spending barely 1% of its $60-billion cash reserve to gain a bigger presence in the e-reader and tablet markets ahead of the widely anticipated launch of its Windows 8 operating software later this year.

First impressions last. So some people still think of Amazon.com as an online bookseller, the form in which it arrived on consumers' horizons in the late 1990s. But since then Amazon has been acquiring, expanding and diversifying at a dizzying speed. Jeff Bezos, its founder, chief executive and the owner of a wall-shaking laugh, has taken the company into shoes, diapers and flat-screen televisions, as well as cloud computing services and e-readers via its Kindle device. Amazon's non-retail dexterity reached a new level last month when the Seattle-based company unveiled a Kindle-branded tablet computer, the Fire, to rival Apple's iPad.

Question: I am a shareholder in Amazon.com Inc. and would like to know if the company's stock can keep up with expectations. Answer: The world's largest online retailer has a reputation for low prices and customer loyalty, but it must spend a lot of money to maintain its rapid growth. That's how high expectations can outpace reality. Amazon's new Kindle e-reader models, aided by price cuts, have proved popular. One downloads books using 3G cellular networks and Wi-Fi, while the other uses only Wi-Fi.

Amazon.com Inc. customers may soon be able to purchase their favorite Napa Valley wines through the Web. The Internet retailer has approached Napa Valley Vintners Assn. to help inform its 315 members about selling online, said a spokesman for the trade group.

Toy buyers caught up in a pricing problem at Amazon.com are reportedly turning to the Federal Trade Commission for help, charging that the online retailer deceived them. Because of a technical glitch two weeks ago, the Seattle-based company displayed some goods for a fraction of the regular retail price. The glitch lasted about 24 hours.

Longtime late-night advertiser K-Tel International Inc., makers of soundtracks such as "The 80s: Love Jam," announced last week that it has a new deal with e-tail giant Amazon.com. The problem is the deal is so new that an Amazon.com spokeswoman could only sputter that Amazon was "surprised" by the announcement. In a news release Thursday, the Minneapolis-based music seller said it has "become an Amazon.com Associate to outsource K-Tel's consumer order and fulfillment services on its www.ktel.

Lynn Manning Ross, author of a book about Internet business planning, got a shock when she checked reader reviews of her work posted on Amazon.com, the hugely successful Internet bookstore. None other than Jeff Bezos, Amazon's world-renowned chief executive, had posted a vicious pan of her book under the heading "Stupid Book . . . Don't Waste Your Time!" Or so it seemed. As Ross soon discovered, the pan had actually come from an anonymous individual who had, unbeknownst to Amazon.

SEATTLE -- For the city of Seattle, Amazon.com has long been the 500-pound gorilla. But it isn't on fine display at the zoo, where the city can preen and show off the $48-billion-a-year company to visitors. Rather, the company is more like King Kong in the jungle, a powerful, largely invisible and vaguely threatening presence. Started in 1994 in the Seattle suburbs, the online retailer is one of the city's biggest downtown tenants, spread across a dozen buildings in the city's up-and-coming South Lake Union neighborhood.

First impressions last. So some people still think of Amazon.com as an online bookseller, the form in which it arrived on consumers' horizons in the late 1990s. But since then Amazon has been acquiring, expanding and diversifying at a dizzying speed. Jeff Bezos, its founder, chief executive and the owner of a wall-shaking laugh, has taken the company into shoes, diapers and flat-screen televisions, as well as cloud computing services and e-readers via its Kindle device. Amazon's non-retail dexterity reached a new level last month when the Seattle-based company unveiled a Kindle-branded tablet computer, the Fire, to rival Apple's iPad.

The iPad, the heavyweight champ of the tablet world, has summarily knocked out every challenger it has faced since it debuted last year. The defeated include tablets with names including Xoom, PlayBook, TouchPad, G-Slate and Streak, none of which has grabbed more than a tiny sliver of the $10-billion tablet market over which the iPad reigns. But now a pair of new lighter-weight contenders are aiming to hit Apple Inc. where it hurts: the price tag. Amazon.com Inc.'s $199 Kindle Fire and the $249 Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble Inc. retail for less than half the cost of the lowest-priced iPad and are undercutting the prices of nearly every brand-name tablet on the market.

Barnes & Noble Inc. has unveiled its Nook Tablet, the bookseller's answer to rival Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet. The Nook Tablet is now available for preorder and will be shipped to Barnes & Noble stores and other retailers (Target, Staples, Wal-Mart, Office Max and others) late next week at a price of $249 — about $50 more than the Kindle Fire. Barnes & Noble Chief Executive William Lynch said Monday that for the extra $50, the Nook Tablet will offer beefier specifications that will add up to a faster, smoother experience when reading books, playing games or watching movies.

California's role as a pioneer of crucial social, political and technological movements — the Internet, clean air standards, property tax reform, Lindsay Lohan case law — is part of the legacy we teach our schoolchildren. In that context, it's not too early to ponder the state's role in putting Amazon.com in its place, even though the ink is not quite dry on the deal signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month requiring the giant online retailer to collect sales tax on purchases by its California customers.

DC Comics' effort to expand digital distribution of its graphic novels has ignited a nasty battle between two bookselling giants. Barnes & Noble Inc. said Friday that its stores will not stock hard copies of 100 DC books that the Warner Bros.-owned unit is making available exclusively on Amazon.com's Kindle platform — a direct competitor of Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader. Beginning with the launch of the Kindle Fire tablet Nov. 15, Amazon will have exclusive digital distribution rights for four months to books that include "Watchmen" and graphic novels featuring Batman and Superman.

Prudential Securities on Thursday uttered a word rarely heard from brokerages in reference to Internet retailing giant Amazon.com's stock: "sell." Prudential analyst Mark Rowen cut his 12-month price target on the stock to $9 from $20, citing "anemic" growth in the firm's core books, music and video divisions. He advised clients to sell the stock, which some may have done Thursday: The shares (ticker symbol: AMZN) fell as low as $13.50, just above the 52-week low of $13.

A coalition of health, welfare and social services advocates is calling for a boycott of Amazon.com Inc. until the Internet retailer drops a referendum to repeal a new law requiring it to collect sales taxes on Californians' purchases. At a news conference Monday on the steps of the state Capitol, the Think Before You Click campaign asked shoppers to cancel accounts with the Seattle-based company. The group has launched a website, ThinkBeforeYouClickCA.org . "The $200 million in annual revenue that California loses each year through Amazon's tax loophole would have been enough to prevent the $90-million cut from California's Adult Day Health Care program," said Nan Brasmer, president of the California Alliance for Retired Americans.

The race to snap up Hollywood content for online consumption is heating up. As Amazon.com Inc. bulks up its streaming video service with movies and television shows from 20th Century Fox, embattled market leader Netflix Inc. has closed an exclusive agreement to offer films from DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Both partnerships were announced Monday, underscoring what has become an increasingly competitive landscape for subscription Internet video...