AmazonEncore to Publish Four Original Manuscript Submissions in Spring 2010

Four Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Submissions to be Published Through AmazonEncore SEATTLE, Jan 26, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that AmazonEncore, Amazon's publishing imprint, will be introducing four new books this Spring: "Page From a Tennessee Journal" by Francine Thomas Howard; "Greyhound" by Steffan Piper; "A Cruel Harvest" by Paul Reid; and "Crossing" by Andrew Fukuda. These books were all submitted for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, the international contest co-sponsored by Amazon.com, CreateSpace and Penguin Group (USA) that seeks to discover the next popular novel. This is the first time AmazonEncore has published original manuscripts. The AmazonEncore editions of these forthcoming novels will be available in print format at www.amazon.com and as wireless digital downloads from the Kindle Store in less than 60 seconds. For more information on AmazonEncore and upcoming titles, visit http://www.amazon.com/encore. "Now in its third year, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest brings in many worthy manuscripts," said Jeff Belle, Vice President, Amazon.com Books. "We've identified these four manuscripts as examples of authors whose work we think deserves a larger audience, and we're excited to help these authors find their readers." Author Francine Thomas Howard based "Page From a Tennessee Journal" on a well-guarded family secret. The debut novel is about the lives of two Southern farming families--one white, one black--and their interconnected lives set in racially oppressive Tennessee a century ago. The San Francisco Bay Area-based author left her career in pediatric occupational therapy to pursue her first love: writing. "Page From a Tennessee Journal" will be published in March 2010. Steffan Piper's "Greyhound" is set in the early '80s, and tells the story of 12-year-old Sebastien Ranes, who travels 2,000 miles across the country on a Greyhound bus, chronicling the lessons he learns and people he meets along the way. Piper, based in Los Angeles, had previously self-published one novel and three books of poetry. "Greyhound" will also be published in March 2010. "A Cruel Harvest" tells the epic tale of two young lovers who are separated in a pirate raid on their Irish fishing village and forced to face terrible danger at the hands of tyrants in order to be reunited. The novel, set in 1790, stretches from the windswept coast of Ireland to the sun-baked hills of Morocco. The author, Paul Reid, was born and raised in Cork, and lives on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Cork Harbour. "A Cruel Harvest" will be published in April 2010. Andrew Fukuda's "Crossing," a debut novel that explores the Asian-American immigrant experience in modern-day America, and exposes the day-to-day cruelty of life in high schools, was inspired by the author's time spent working with immigrant teenagers in Manhattan's Chinatown. The half-Chinese, half-Japanese Fukuda lives on Long Island, New York. "Crossing" will be published in May 2010. Announced in May 2009, AmazonEncore is a program which identifies exceptional books and emerging authors using information on Amazon.com, such as customer reviews and sales data. Amazon then works with the authors to introduce or re-introduce their books to readers through marketing and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, www.Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers. AmazonEncore is a brand owned by Amazon Content Services, LLC. Galleys of these titles are available for media and can be obtained by e-mailing encore-pr@amazon.com. About Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront. Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise. Forward-Looking Statements This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, Inc. Media Hotline, 206-266-7180