Book buyers love Amazon

Read all about it in this article by CNNMoney.com.

Summary for online book buyers: Book buyers love Amazon.It is by far the biggest book site and is growing rapidly. If you buy a lot of books from Amazon, consider joining Amazon Prime (free shipping on all orders for an annual fee of $79).

From this article, relevant points for book buyers:

"The popular online retailer is expected to have a huge fourth quarter - analysts expect the company's earnings to more than double and sales to increase 34.5 percent over last year."

"Amazon.com is "arguably stronger than any other company on the Internet other than Google (GOOG, Fortune 500)," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt."

"Amazon Prime, which gives customers shipping discounts for a yearly fee, gives customers more incentive to shop online instead of going to the store, wrote Jeffrey Lindsay of Bernstein Research in a report."

"To that end, even though net shipping costs rose 39 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, Amazon's revenue in the quarter increased by 41 percent."

"The company still is known primarily as a site to buy books, music and DVDs. Sales of media products accounted for nearly two-thirds of Amazon's sales in the first nine months of this year."

"Amazon.com has a lot going for it. But Wall Street already knows that. The stock is trading at 52 times earnings estimates for 2008. Top Internet auction site eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500), by way of comparison, trades at about 20 times next year's earnings estimates."

[Image source: Thomson Baseline & CNN Money.]