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OLYMPIA, Wash. - Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, announced Friday that they are donating $2.5 million to the campaign to defend Washington's same-sex marriage law. With the gift, Washington United for Marriage has raised more than $5 million for its referendum campaign. "It's a game changer for us," said campaign manager Zach Silk in Seattle. "It puts us in unique position to win. " But his group is still the underdog, he said. In 32 previous elections nationally, same-sex advocates have lost.

NEW YORK - Filmmaker-actress Penny Marshall has a book deal with a fresh twist: The publisher is Amazon.com. The online retailer has been expanding its publishing operations. Marshall's agent, Dan Strone, announced yesterday that Amazon will release Marshall's memoir "My Mother Was Nuts" in fall 2012. Marshall starred in the 1970s sitcom "Laverne and Shirley" and went on to direct such hits as "Big" and "A League of Their Own. " According to Strone, Marshall will also write about her marriage to Rob Reiner, her friendship with John Belushi and her fight against lung and brain cancer in 2009.

Sotheby's, the 255-year-old auction house that in 1811 auctioned off Napoleon Bonaparte's library and in this century fetched $78 million for Renoir's "Au Moulin de la Galette," has gone on-line. Sotheby's and Amazon.com have joined forces to create a 24-hour cyberspace auction house to offer antiques and expensive collectibles at prices ranging from $100 to more than $150,000 at their sothebys.amazon.com address. The address is offering items in more than 100 collecting categories, among them fine oil paintings, jewelry, watches, silver, furniture, entertainment and sports memorabilia, vintage fashions, coins and photographs.

Amazon.com Inc., the biggest Internet retailer, said it will rent space to other merchants and create an online shopping mall with more than 500,000 products. Starting today, a company can list as many as 3,000 items on zShops, an area on Amazon.com's Web site, for $9.99 a month. Amazon.com, which until now has sold mostly books, music, and a few other products, will be paid a percentage of each zShops sale. The plan brings chief executive officer Jeffrey Bezos back to his original strategy of selling merchandise without the cost of carrying inventory.

The U.S. government outsold Amazon.com online last year, with most of the $3.6 billion in Web-generated revenue to federal sites coming from cyber sales of savings bonds and other securities, according to a new study. The federal government operates 164 Web sites that offer to the public such products and services as wild mustangs, oil-drilling leases, a mothballed Coast Guard cutter, and fancy sports cars confiscated in drug busts, according to the authors of the study. Amazon.

Amazon.com and other online book retailers are powerless to summon the owls that deliver mail to Harry Potter and the other wizards-in-training at Hogwarts School. So they are relying on planning and high-tech magic to make sure those who pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire find it on their doorsteps Saturday. (At 752 pages, the fourth installment in the wildly popular Potter series won't slip through a mail slot and may be too hefty to squeeze into a standard-sized mailbox used by Muggles in the nonmagical world.

Everyone's heard the standard story in this era of Borders and Amazon.com. Millions saw it on the big screen, too, acted out by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail. One minute a charming, independent bookstore is doing fine, doling out heartfelt recommendations and list-price books to loyal customers. The next minute, it's closing, its regulars shopping online or heading to the new megastore down the block. Everyone's heard the story, it seems, except Powell's City of Books.

The merger of CDnow Inc. of Fort Washington and rival Internet music retailer N2K Inc. of New York became official yesterday with approval of the deal by shareholders of both companies. The combined company - with a market valuation of about $550 million - will keep the CDnow Inc. name, but will have its headquarters in New York, where N2K has key ties to the entertainment, advertising and new-media industries. CDnow was founded in Ambler in 1994 by twins Jason and Matthew Olim, now 29. Jason Olim, who will retain the titles of president and chief executive officer of CDnow, said that despite the headquarters move, major operations will continue at the CDnow operations in Fort Washington, where the company employs about 300. Jon Diamond, cofounder and CEO of N2K, will become chairman of the board of CDnow.

Internet music retailers CDnow Inc. and N2K Inc. announced yesterday that they had reached a definitive agreement to merge in the face of stiff new competition in the online music market. CDnow, whose headquarters is in Jenkintown, will assume a 60 percent share in the new entity, tentatively called CDnow/N2K Inc. Other terms were not disclosed last night. The combined company will be based in New York, where N2K has key ties to the entertainment, advertising and new-media industries, said Jason Olim, chairman and president of CDnow.

Last year, Amazon.com was all about hunkering down and proving it could turn a profit. This year, the world's largest online retailer is back in the expansion mode that made it, well, the world's largest online retailer. The Seattle-based company debuted an ambitious clothing and accessories section last month that features merchandise from more than 400 retailers and brands - including Gap, Lands' End and Nike - in hopes of luring more customers during the crucial holiday season.