Amazon looks to Kindle as its No.1 Christmas draw

Amazon.co.uk vice-president of media Christopher North said: “We launched the Kindle on our UK site at the end of July and it fast became our best-selling product. We’re very confident it will be our number one product this Christmas.”

He said there was a “strong catalogue of launches” to complement Kindle, including Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom.

Sales of physical books “will also be strong at Christmas with cookbooks from the usual suspects such as Jamie and Nigella bound to be best-sellers”, he said. “We’re doing well in a tough economy because of our focus on value.”

Amazon reported a 16% rise in group profit to $231m (£145m) in the three months to September. Revenue rose 39% to $7.56bn (£4.77bn). It expects sales in the last three months of the year to be between $12bn (£7.57bn) and $13.30bn (£8.39bn), growth of between 26% and 40%.

In the third quarter Amazon launched its grocery and pets offer online. The grocery offer launched with 22,000 products and has been increased to 30,000.