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'Mr. Pine' sales grow on Bezos' endorsement
By John Kirkpatrick
Dallas Morning News. July 19, 2001.
Business section, page 1.
Jill Morgan owns a tiny publishing company in Keller, in Tarrant County. Jeff Bezos is the founder and leader of Amazon.com, the nation's largest online bookseller.
Last year, Ms. Morgan reprinted a charming children's book, Mr. Pine's Purple House by Leonard Kessler. It turns out that it was Mr. Bezos' favorite book when he was a pre-Internet child. On Tuesday, Amazon sent e-mails to some customers promoting the 1965 book. The promotion noted Mr. Bezos' fondness for Mr. Pine.
Before the e-mail, Mr. Pine's Purple House had peaked at about No. 4,000 on Amazon's sales list. At about 5 p.m. Wednesday, Mr. Pine was No. 15. "Oh my gosh. I can't believe that," Ms. Morgan said.
Ms. Morgan said she's sold roughly 3,000 copies of the book since September.
She'll ship another case Thursday to Amazon.
The particular success of Mr. Pine's Purple House, she said, is due to baby boomers who want to pass on the book's message about diversity and breaking fromt he norm.
Ms. Morgan, 39, discovered last year that the book had become a rarity, fetching $300 on the Internet. "I just thought it was a shame that it would sit in a plastic bag on a collector's shelf."
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