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Amazon.com Books Announces Amazon Election Heat Map 2012

Amazon customers can now view political reading tastes by state, as well as top-selling red and blue political books

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--(NASDAQ:AMZN)- Amazon.com, Inc. today unveiled the Amazon Election Heat Map 2012 (www.amazon.com/election-heatmap), a map that's updated daily and allows customers to find the best-selling political books in the United States by state – separated into blue (liberal) and red (conservative) categories. Customers can click on any state on the Amazon Election Heat Map to see the percentage of conservative and liberal books sold in that state, as well as the top 5 best-selling conservative and liberal books per state. A state will turn blue, for example, if it has a higher number of liberal book sales for the month, taking into account both print and Kindle formats. When liberal and conservative are more equally represented in a particular state, that state will be shaded beige.

"Book sales by geography always have interesting things to say about our states, and an election season is a particularly good time to use this data to help customers follow the changing political conversation across the country," said Chris Schluep, Senior Editor, Amazon.com Books. "But books aren't votes, so a map of book purchases may reflect curiosity as much as agreement."

The Amazon Books Editorial team pulled extensive lists of best-selling books in relevant categories and vetted them using a variety of tools for clear partisan leaning, separating them into red and blue categories. Many books, of course, have no clear political bias, and therefore were not included. The top 250 titles in each list will power the Heat Map, based on customers' book-buying habits.

The Amazon Election Heat Map destination will also host two "Live Meters" that indicate the percentage split of red and blue book sales in the US for books by the two presidential candidates as well as their vice presidential running mates. Customers can also easily view the Top 100 best-selling red and blue political books in the US for both print and Kindle books.

To check out the Amazon Election Heat Map, customers can visit www.amazon.com/election-heatmap. As of today, 56% of books sold are red books. Watch the map to see how that changes leading up to the election.