Odds and Ends

From USA Today here:

The post-holiday surge in sales of e-books continues. For the third week in a row, more than a third of the top 50 books on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list sold more e-book copies than print versions.

On Tuesday, Apple reported here on their blockbuster first quarter ended December 25, 2010:

The Company posted record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.68 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter ...

Apple sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 19.45 million iPods during the quarter, representing a seven percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter.

From Shelf Awareness here:

November bookstore sales rose 5.3%, to $1.09 billion, compared to November 2009, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. For the year to date, total bookstore sales have slipped 1.9%, to $14.4 billion.

The gain reverses a slide in sales compared to 2009 for the past half year: November marked the first time since April that bookstore sales were up compared to the same period a year earlier ...

E-books continued to be the strongest category, with sales up 129.7%, to $46.6 million, in November, compared to the same period in 2009, and sales up 165.6%, to $391.9 million, for the year to date.