Amazon currently has 400,000 associates, though Patterson couldn't break out a percentage for religion associates. The dominant online booksellers' own religion and spirituality business continues to evolve. With features like these, Amazon continues to exploit the quintessential ability of the medium to sort and arrange data in meaningful ways. We had a lot of people going to our religion and Christian sites. The affiliate network is 300,000 strong and growing, though again no breakdown of specifically religious affiliates is publicly available.
Future plans are to follow subject sales trends and grow accordingly.
Bibles is an obvious one to break out and make it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. Much of the buzz at the winter Christian Booksellers Association trade show, CBA Expo, held in Nashville at the end of January, was about the exponential growth of the e-retail channel. The site has a commerce component, powered by the retail chain. It's cheaper to add a virtual page on a site than a paper catalogue page, so continually increasing the number of products available online is fairly simple, she points out. The site now has 70,000 products available, primarily books.