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Amazon announced Monday that it will acquire The Book Depository, a UK-based online bookseller that offers more than 6 million titles and shipping to more than 100 countries. The Book Depository claims on its site that it is the fastest-growing bookseller in Europe and the UK's largest dedicated online bookseller, with more than a million customers.

Barnes & Noble, the giant that put so many independent booksellers out of business, now finds itself locked in the fight of its life, with Amazon.com lurking in the background. 

Google may soon become the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers.

contributed by Carter Glass

Barnes & Noble, the leader in bookselling for 40 years, re-examines its business model." />

After weakening or eliminating the bookselling competition through aggressive tactics, Amazon raises prices  Go figure.

Chapter 1: You stumble upon an interesting book at your neighborhood bookstore. Chapter 2: You go home and order it from Amazon for half as much. Chapter 9: Your favorite bookstore is bankrupt.

Bookish is a new online service for discovering and purchasing books. It's a joint venture of three of the largest trade publishers: Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Penguin. (Penguin will shortly be merging with Random House.)

Small publisher stands up to Amazona

Seth Godin takes a novel approach to self-publishing - thinking about promotion and distribution at the beginning of the process - and finds funding through KickStarter.

Bookstore revival? Let's hope so. Perhaps some people like the personal touch after all.

An interesting hypothesis on how B&N is faring in the digital age.

Conventional wisdom says that entrepreneurs who start a Web-based business will do so with VC money. Read enough stories of Internet ventures that enjoy lucrative exits in the millions (in some cases billions) of dollars, and it's easy to assume that the only path to success is to begin by securing deals with investors who are far less interested in helping a start-up build a substantial brand as they are in realizing a return as quickly as possible. Bootstrapping simply isn't sexy anymore. But for many start-up publishers, bootstrapping is a way of life, and VC money isn't an option.

Powerful criticism of GBS and its mishandling of metadata.

Google discusses Google Editions

Not exactly news, but for those that haven't seen this yet through Publisher's Weekly it's a microsite called Book Life. Great resource for book blogs and reviews.