Kindle Review

A GUIDE TO THE KINDLE-COLLECTIONS FEATURE

2011-02-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

HOW TO USE KINDLE COLLECTIONS
This is a folders-like feature available for Kindle 2's, DX's and Kindle 3's (UK: K3's), implemented with 'tags' or category-labels (as seen with Google's GMail).

I'm placing here, into one blog entry, some excerpts from some earlier pieces on Collections and may modify it over the next week or two.

COLLECTIONS - BASICS
Modified from steps given us by Marc Miwords

. From Home, click on "Menu"
. Go to "Add New Collection"
. Name the Collection. Repeat as wanted *

. Go to your listing of books or documents on the Home screen
. On each title, push the 5 way controller to the right
. From that menu, click "Add To Collection"
. Using the 5 way Controller, scroll to a Collection label that you want to use for that particular book
. Click the 5 way controller
. One click ADDs it, another click REMOVES it -- from the collection but not from your device
. If you want to add a book to several collections, go down the Collections listing (alphabetized for the Add-Book-to-Collection process) until you see another Collection that should include the book and click on the Collection label to add the book. Repeat as wanted.
. Press Back button to get back to where you were in the Home screen books-listing.
. Repeat until you have all of your books in collections.
ALTERNATIVE Collections-creation method
* NOTE: You can, instead, create a Collection, name it, and THEN choose to
ADD books to it, and you will be taken to your book collection on the Kindle Home screen and you can mark the books that are to be added to the collection.
A book can be added to many collections. '

INTRO AND GUIDE - Main portion
The Kindle Collections feature was added with Kindle 2 and DX software version v2.5x and is a feature of the newer Kindle 3

Basic answers to most questions on this feature are in the online documentation.
So I've linked to the Amazon help pages that describe how this new feature works.

ALPHABETIZING KINDLE COLLECTIONS FOR THE HOME SCREEN
Amazon did not, for some reason, choose to show us our Collections-set in alphabetical order. It's as if they expected that anyone browsing a library shelf would prefer to see the book titles in the order they were last accessed by us rather than in alpha order.

So this is an introductory workaround for that.

The Home screen image starting this section is of my Kindle screen after I applied a workaround recommended by knowledgeable Kindle users from Kindleboards, including luvmy4BRATs who led an Amazon Kindle forum discussion on this, with some great ideas added by other ultra-creative people in those Amazon forums, ideas and examples which I'll use in another Collections blog entry in the future.

Using certain symbols such as '*' or '[' or '{' forces the Collections group-names into an alphabetical sort when using the "By Title" sorting-option, which people with many Collections will find more useful than the official and separate "Collections" sorting-option that is given us by the new software.

That official Collections Home-listing, as seen in the image at the right, sorts only by most-recently accessed Collection, making it quite difficult to find the right collection if you have many of them.

Note that the active Sort-type is shown at the top right and you can cursor up there to change it by moving the 5-way button to the right when you get there.

With 30 Collections and three pages of those on my Kindle 2 (U.S.), I had problems finding any Collection I knew held the book I wanted because I had to check each Collection name on the Home screens, which took forever.

Again, the image on the right displays the Default listing for sorting the Home screen books by Collections (rather than by Title, Author, or Most Recent).

Then note the image above that, at the left, for the workaround using the Titles sorting-option that I mentioned

"Drawback" and "Bonus" of using Titles Sorting-option:
Drawback: The individual books are shown BELOW your alphabetized Collections (which is why we'd make symbols prefixing the Collection titles -- to keep them above the listing of individual titles).
It should be easy to ignore the trailing list of book titles though.

Bonus: When you're viewing a Collections listing alphabetized via using the Titles sort, you can go directly to the Home screen section with the first letter of a Title if you want -- But ONLY THE FIRST LETTER because if you type two letters, the Kindle would start a Search of the entire Kindle for a word composed of those two letters. That takes an eternity, so keep it to only the first letter.

In other words, if you're looking for a title starting with the word "Nights," you'd type just 'n' and click the 5-way button, to be taken to a page with book titles starting with the letter 'n' -- this means that you can see your Collections in alpha order AND access a book title more easily when you want.

TIP
Periodicals - Amazon has a default Collection that holds your Kindle-edition subscriptions to newspapers and magazines when the issues are no longer the current ones.
When you're not using the Title/alpha sort (and instead sorting by "Most Recent" or by "Author"), you'll see Periodicals at the END of your Home Screen listing, along with the "Archived Items" Collection always created by Amazon for books you've bought from Amazon but don't have on your Kindle at the moment.
Tip2 - You can get to the last page of your home screen listing by typing the number of the last page and clicking on the 5-way button.

Following are some tips and examples from Amazon's help pages with tips I've added:

USING THE COLLECTIONS FEATURE
Information and Examples from Amazon's Online Help (all emphases mine)

* Collections: Organize your books and documents into one or more collections.

Sorting Content and Using Collections
As with earlier Kindle software, we still go up to the top of the HOME screen and navigate the SORT options, which now include (except for Kindle 1) "Collections," which are categories we create (except for "Periodicals" and "Archived Items" which are essentially Collections put in place by Amazon). The set-categories given us in earlier software (Personal Docs, etc.) are no longer offered, but we can roll our own.

The HOME screen looks the same as the Kindle 2's, but when we go up to the SORT options area at the top of the screen, we'll be able to choose to view the Collections we've created. You can see that the Collections are shown along with the number of books or documents in those Collections.
The default Sorting-option for the Home screen listing of books remains "Most Recent First" unless we arrow over, at the top, to Collections option (or Title or Author) and click to select another sort-order.
You can review the Step-by-Step for Adding Collections and books for them at the top of this blog article. You can then just use the 'Back' option on your web-browser to return here.
As you've seen, Collections are created from a Menu key option when you're at the Home screen, and Collections can be renamed or deleted later (see screen image below).
A book can be in several collections, but even if it is in only one collection, the deletion of that collection won't affect the book, which will still be shown on and accessible from the Home screen.

Collections can be transferred across registered Kindle devices and you'll be able to import collections from your other Kindle devices under the Archived Items page, using "Add Other Device Collections."
If you RE-download a deleted Amazon book that was once a part of a Collection you made, it will download to the Collection or category it was a part of before.

Except for no option for Alpha sorting of Collections, this feature is especially well thought out (except for the non-alpha order of the Sort-by-Collections listing), so it's intuitive, logical, and therefore easy to use after the initial intro to it. Collections have a tag-type structure, so that you can have a book in several groupings at any time. There is only one level of groupings though, so there's no sub-folder-like feature.

I have 30+ named Collections under which I want to find things. But it's still brought my list of 200+ books and documents way down and, as a result, it's now really easy to find the books I'm in the mood to read.

Kindle 3's (UK: Kindle 3's), DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

View the original article here

Kindles in schools - SRC Stock Charts on Kindle - Kobo2 Review - Colour Kindle

2011-02-26T04:44:00.000-08:00

A Story About Another School Trying Out Kindles

In fact, 200 Kindles. Nashville High School in Arkansas is using the Kindle in English classes, in hopes that it'll be possible to use them in other subject-areas as a replacement for paper textbooks.

School officials hope it'll encourage students to read more (this is likely, as it's a common experience for those who use e-Ink devices) and do their school work "more efficiently." For non-fiction books especially, the way the Search function works and also the way that Annotations are kept on both the device and the special password-protected Annotations webpage are a boon in my case.

The brief video (delivered by the tv newsperson with strange inflections) includes a response by one student, who's not only happy to be able to use a Kindle but she wants one when she graduates -- it'll be interesting to see what the e-reader field looks like at that time though.

Securities Research Company's Stock Chart Books Now Available On the Kindle
From their PRNewswire:

' Securities Research Company's Digital Division, SRC Digital (www.srcdigital.com), today announced that it has released its best-selling "The SRC Blue Book® 12-Year NYSE Stock Chart®" and five other titles in the Amazon Kindle Store using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.
Other titles released in the Kindle Store include "The SRC Orange Book® of 12-year NASDAQ Charts®", "The SRC Industry Book® of 12-year Charts®", "The SRC ADR Book® of 12-Year Charts®", "The SRC ETF Book® of 12-Year Charts®" and "The SRC Red Book® of 21-Month Charts®". Customers can download these publications from the Kindle Store and receive weekly or monthly updates depending on the title. Additional titles will be rolled out over the next few months until all of SRC's publications are available in the Kindle Store. '

The cost is not trivial, of course.

Kobo, now with WiFi - a Review
Adam Turner reviews the new Kobo and its online store at Borders, for smh.com.au. He finds the store slow-going and feels the Search option is where the Kobo "falls short" and makes him miss the QWERTY keyboard of the Kindle. The onscreen keyboard uses the 5-way rocker to move from one letter to the next and doesn't always detect presses unless you go slowly.

He's impressed that they squeezed in the WiFi features for the same price as the old model but says it has a "long way to go before it can rival the slick Amazon/Kindle user experience." He doesn't recommend the Kobo over the Kindle "unless you're determined to stick with the ePub format rather than Amazon’s eBook format."

Our First Year With Amazon Kindle as an Independent Publisher
FutureBook's very upbeat report on the first year with Amazon as an independent publisher is an interesting read. The main reason I'm mentioning it here, though, as a news bit, is what popped out at me in the paragraphs below written by steveemecz:

' Where is it going? My contacts at Amazon can’t share anything specific, but they did say that the customer experience, both for consumers and publishers is a key focus.
Well, in 2011 we expect to see Kindle device sales and follow on book sales go from strength to strength. Amazon themselves have big expansion plans and that will mean more footfall through the Kindle stores. We expect them to launch Kindle into new countries ... and of course there has been lots of talk around the colour Kindle device. '

There has? With their Amazon contacts? Or with others? (See earlier reports.) "Show me the ~~money~~ colour!"

View the original article here

Google eBooks change alert. Flip it! Hints page. Kindle Tic Tac Toe

2011-02-26T01:38:00.000-08:00

GOOGLE EBOOKS STORE UPDATE
The first item is to alert Google RSS users that the "A Million Free Google Books in ePub - for Kindle - UPDATE2" Google-book-conversion blog article was updated today due to changes in the Google eBookstore procedures for finding and downloading their eBooks.

FLIP IT! HINTS
Here is a requested page for Flip it! hints for the tougher levels of the 40-level game.

TIC TAC TOE - A 2-character game instead of a word game

The 7 Dragons group is at it again, after reaching Bestseller #5 status with their Flip it! game this week.

Released last night, Tic Tac Toe is an old favorite, now available for Kindle.

From the Product Description:

'Tic Tac Toe by 7 Dragons brings the simple but classic game of Tic Tac Toe to Kindle.
Similar to the pen-and-paper experience from the school days, choose your Xs or Os and try to line up three in a row. "Pass and Play" allows you to play against a friend, or choose to play against Kindle with three different difficulty levels. Game statistics allow you to keep track of high scores for each difficulty level.
Tic Tac Toe is good entertainment for kids, and a fun way to take a break! '

Also newly available (3 days ago) is Video Poker - People are forgiving its slowness, as it's free. That does go a long way. The Tic Tac Toe, at 99 cents, though, is worth a look.

View the original article here

Downloadable Bookmarks file. Revised 1/25/11 - Ongoing file

2011-02-25T21:06:00.000-08:00

UPDATE 1/25/11
This is to let readers know that the ongoing Kindle Bookmarks file ("Mobiweb WebLinks") has been revised.

I've added the download-link for this file + upload-date to the reference column on the right side of the website so that people can check the date of the latest one.

I'll continue to add more sites as I go but won't be announcing revisions for smaller changes, so check the file every now and then.

TIP: You can bookmark pages in this 'book'-like file.
A Kindle-3 user wrote to ask about skipping past the Kindle-2 section. To do that make a bookmark with alt-b (this key-combo toggles a bookmark on and off for the page you're on -- check the dog-ear at the top right to see if it's "taken" when you do a bookmark).

To get to any bookmarks you've made in a book file, press Menu button and select "View My Notes & Marks" while that book is open.

But Kindle 3-users won't need to go further than the Kindle 3 section now, as I've added, into each weblinks listing, the individual Mobile Website-Downsizer sites (which emphasize text portions of pages to increase loading speed on the Kindle).

These include Skweezer, Cantoni, Reading the Net (new) and Web On Your Cell.

Until Amazon revises how the web browser works, I've kept in the Google-features advice on workarounds for problems accessing versions of GMail or other tools with the Kindle 3.

See the basuc information on using the file in the earlier and main Bookmarks article that explains more.

In the meantime, let me know if you have any trouble getting the file. Thanks!

Photo credit: petittscreations.com.

View the original article here

Kindle News 2/15-17, including costs of putting out a newspaper Kindle edition - UPDATE for Borders-Aus. & Lendle

2011-02-25T17:03:00.000-08:00

KINDLE NEWS SNIPPETS actually. Saw a few interesting articles and just want to mention them and give links for those interested in reading any of them at the source. There are more than a few, so I'll keep these relatively brief.

UPDATE - 2/17 to include the new Lendle book lending site and to note that Borders Australia is telling customers that gift cards there can be redeemed only if customers buy double the amount of the card.

BARRONS: "Amazon Is Smoking With Kindle"
Barrons says they are raising their estimates for Amazon and taking their price target to $230 [from $195]. Reasons are higher unit shipments anticipated or assumed (for both models of the K3) and Amazon's web services (AWS "gaining traction much faster than expected.") It's not just a shopping place anymore. They add that:

'In our view, Kindle remains the best ebook reader in the market and competition is unable to dent its market share.
... As far as the influx of tablets is concerned, there is no doubt that reading ebooks is one of the dozens of features offered by the tablets, but we believe that for the core book readers the value proposition offered by Kindle remains unmatchable (i.e. selection of ebooks, battery life, no backlight and glaring screen, free 3G, overall form factor, convenience to buy new books, etc.). '

A lot more detail at the link, of course.

"E Ink Holdings reports record-high earnings"
Amy Su, reporting for The Taipei Times, writes that "E Ink Holdings Inc, the world’s biggest e-paper display supplier, yesterday reported record-high quarterly net earnings, aided by the global uptake of e-readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle series."

"Fourth-quarter net income grew more than seven times to NT$1.92 billion (US$65 million)..."

This is happening despite the flood of color tablets with e-reader capabilities flooding the market.

CNN: "Best business decision of decade: Kindle app?"
CNN Money's David Goldman writes that:
"AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson called Amazon's Kindle e-reader app the 'gutsiest and savviest business decision of the past decade' during a keynote address on Tuesday."

"At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the wireless giant's CEO said Amazon's decision to put its application on every conceivable kind of device -- even though it sells its own e-reader -- made the company 'the poster child' of the cloud computing movement."

"When Amazon met the iPad challenge by giving users a chance to buy a competitors' tablet over its own [probably knowing they are so different and complementary that they would be co-existing devices for most], analysts called it a brave and bold move. But Stephenson said it is now clear that Amazon's decision was incredibly intelligent."

The article discusses the cloud-computing aspect, which Stephenson considers "the path forward."

Computer World's report on Stephenson's talk, including opinions on Apple
There is also an extremely detailed report by Matt Hamblen on Stephenson's entire talk and his mentions of Apple policies, at Computerworld.

KindleLendingClub renamed BookLending Club
The size of the Kindle Lending Club seems to have caught Amazon's attention and it's been "rebranded" at Amazon's request. The estimated 20,000 members going to the site will be automatically redirected to its new home, BookLending.com.

LendInk - Lending club for Kindles and Nooks
The Next Web's Martin Bryant reviews a new e-book lending club, LendInk, which offers a lending hub for Kindle and Nook users. He considers using the site "as simple as could possibly be" and "the best-looking solution we've seen," adding that LendInk’s interface is "a little more streamlined and is targeting a wider audience with support for the Nook in addition to the Kindle." Obviously, there's no reason why Kindle owners interested in using the feature would not use both. While publishers might be concerned, it also creates even more interest in e-readers and e-books (though the large publishers seem queasy about e-book interest).

Update - 2/17 (Original posting 2/16, 3:40 AM)
Lendle - New lending club, this one for Kindles only
The Guardian (UK) has a story on the new lending site "Lendle" (lendle.me).
Note to publishers: Lendle founder Brian Ericford posts that, in the first week, they've actually sold more books than they've lent.
The availability of these lending sites for Kindle books should be especially useful for those lamenting the lack of public library loaning.

BORDERS and bankruptcy filing - Giftcards
One story had an interesting last thought:
"One possible upside? The demise of superstore booksellers could revitalize the neighborhood bookstore."

Update continued - 2/17
Borders did file for bankrupcy and the U.S. offices said they will honor giftcards and try to do business as normal while shutting down hundreds of stores and losing 75% of their value, with the stock at 23 cents. However, Borders in Australia announced that their customers will have to buy double the amount in order to use their gift cards. This is not going over well, per the Sydney Morning Herald.

Another story cautions those holding giftcards to use them before the bankruptcy filing sometime this week. Often they're not accepted after that, though Circuit City did honor mine.

"The True Cost OF Publishing on the Amazon Kindle" (in the UK)
PC Pro (UK explains the various costs involved with the distribution of newspapers and magazines in Kindle Edition format, in the UK -- why there are few photos (if any) in some editions (photos increase the size of a file by quite a bit relative to pure text), and the calculation of delivery costs of an issue sent over 3G wireless there (no delivery costs involved when/if delivered over WiFi).
Notes in Brackets are mine.

' Amazon charges 10p per MB [about 16 cents per MB U.S.] for delivery of newspapers and magazines in the UK.
By Amazon’s own estimates, a “typical newspaper” with 100 articles and 15 to 20 images would have a file size of between 0.5MB and 1MB – or around 10% of the overall revenue [16 cents per megabyte], considering most newspapers sell for 99p [$1.60 US] per day.
It [distribution costs] would be an even greater share of the publisher’s profits if users signed up for a cheaper subscription.
For a magazine like PC Pro those costs would be significantly greater. Each issue of the magazine has somewhere around 75 new reviews – each with a picture – plus dozens more articles and features. An issue of PC Pro with around 150 separate articles, and 100 photos would likely incur delivery costs of 50p-60p [80-97 cents) an issue. We can pop a magazine in the post to subscribers for significantly less than that. '

To make things worse -- in the UK, Value-Added Tax is charged on e-magazines but not on paper
Read more, including calculations for revenue sharing. They point out that Amazon sets the pricing of the periodicals, just as they do for the blogs. Too low a price means PCPro would "take a hit on the delivery costs" and could "severely undercut" their print edition, and if Amazon pushes for maximum profit, that can create extreme unhappiness with a newspaper's subscribers.

View the original article here

A Million Free Google Books in ePub - for Kindle - UPDATE4

2011-02-25T13:19:00.000-08:00

UPDATE2-4, 2/6/11 - Original posting was 8/27/09, Update1 was made 4/22/10.

Google has combined its free Google books with ones they sell now, and the earlier instructions (below) on how to find downloadable, free files no longer apply.
The rest of it is the same, however.

Google seems to have combined the free books with the paid books and now may require you to (1) have a Google account for downloading Google e-books as well as (2) a credit card even to download a free book *IF it's not a public-domain book* (corrected information from @mikecane).

I had a credit card with Google already because I had experimented with buying a web-version of a paid Google Book when the Google web Bookstore was launched, and I was asked for it when I tried to download "The eBook Insider" - which is free but is NOT a public domain book.

I used it today to 'buy' this $0.00 Google eBook to test whether these are still easily convertible to Kindle format AND uploadable to Retroread (see details below), who will convert free *public-domain* Google files for the Kindle community, at no cost. If someone else has already requested a particular free Public Domain Google eBook, it'll be listed on the Retroread site as downloadable by everyone else for their Kindles.

The basic steps when I 'bought' this currently-free NON-public-domain book:

. Click on a book you want and it'll give you the option to 'buy' it even if its $0.00 AND if it's NOT a public-domain book. It'll give you the option to "Get" it if it's in the public domain, and you can then click to download it.
. After 'buying' it, I received these alerts:
"This book has been added to My Google eBooks" and
"Access all your Google eBooks at books.google.com"
. After clicking on "My Google Books," you can see the books you've downloaded, both paid and free.
. Click on the book you just received and you're given options to
"Read now" (which would be in web-browser version) OR
"Read on your device" (Nook, Sony, Kobo etc but not Kindle)
Google then offers you the following choices to be able to read the new book:
1. Installing a Smartphones app (Android) or a Tablet app (iPhone & iPad)
2. Laptop and computers (reading in web browser)
3. eReader and other devices
a. ePub
b. Adobe PDF (*IF* included)
Choose "ePub"

*NOTE*: Retroread could NOT convert my free Google book because it isn't a public-domain book and is therefore not successfully searchable on their site. I then converted it via Calibre as described below.

Again, when a Google eBook IS public domain and free, you are given the option to "GET" the book without purchasing it. When you click to accept that option, the eBook winds up in your Google library.

The earlier section below explains how to get and use Calibre to easily convert any free ePub Google file to Kindle format or use Retroread site to have it done for you if the book is in the public domain.

UPDATE1, 4/22/10 - Original posting was 8/27/09 (Kindle model info updated)
I've added, at the bottom of this post, a section about a new service that will convert a Google Book FOR you (using the method below) and send it to your Kindle if you want (Amazon charges 15 cents per megabyte of a file if Whispernet delivery of a file) OR to the email address you use for correspondence with Amazon (no cost involved).

Original Posting on How to Convert free Google ePub books to Kindle format

Aug. 27, 2009 -- Yesterday Google offered over a million free e-books in EPUB format as well as in PDF format.

These are easier to work with because they involve text-reflow instead of keeping a page exactly as originally laid out and therefore with words too small on e-screens. Also, Google has done that text-reflow for us, which should bring more reliable to-MOBI conversions for files that had originally been among the more-complex PDFs.
This will also allow highlighting, note-adding, font-size adjustments, and will be included in search results when the full Kindle is searched for key words. We just need to convert them to MOBI files.

Some newspapers are reporting the million+ free Google files are not readable on the Kindle.
They are. They just need a simple conversion.

There are currently at least three popular free tools that can convert ePub files to Kindle-compatible MOBI files: (1) mobigen.exe (not intuitive); (2) Mobipocket Reader 6.2 (loses some of the styling); and (3) Calibre, which has a nice interface, is easy to use, works with pc's and Macs, and gets the best results.

So, Calibre it is. Many use it already for organized computer records of their Kindle files or for retrieving combinations of newspaper feeds for their Kindles (not as easily navigated as the paid subscrptions).
This blog article focuses only on converting the ePub file-format to a Kindle-readable one.

If you don't already have this free software, created and maintained by Kovid Goyal, download Calibre here.

GET A FREE GOOGLE BOOK OR TWO
To get a free Google book (most written before 1923 but there are some nice older magazines there as well), go to Google's book site.

~~To find a free book (they are all mixed with $$$-books), click on "Full Preview" as those tend to be the free ones. Then do a search for what you want.~~

~~At the top right, once you choose a book, you'll see "Download" which will be a pull-down menu showing a choice of PDF or ePub.~~ (See update of Feb. 6, 2011, above.)

If you have a Kindle DXG, you might prefer to just get the PDF. If the words on the PDF are too small though, then get the ePub file. IF you download an ePub file, then:

CALIBRE
Open and run Calibre. On the LEFT will be your choices for set-up when you're converting a document. Hovering over anything will usually bring a help tip.

Accepting defaults is fine. The ability to change the "meta information" is nice - so you can have names and authors as you like them. If there is no Table of Contents you can 'force' Calibre to create one.

At the top are choices to "Edit meta information: as well as "Convert E-books." Follow the instructions, and then press the 'OK' button and the conversion will take a few minutes. I did one and moved it to the Kindle DX and it looks great.

Oh, Calibre gives you the option to optimize your converted file for the Kindle 2 or the Kindle DX.

So, yes, those million+ free Google books are fully useable on the Kindle - it just needs this added step, but it's also great to be able to customize so much of the layout if you want. Play with the software a bit.

THE BOOK STORES - MASHABLE'S POINTS
The report by Mashable's Stan Schroeder makes some good points:

"... the first major difference between the Kindle and this Google-Sony open book strategy: while Amazon only offers 300,000 titles, Google’s million books aren’t, for the most part, the most attractive ones, and Sony’s own ebook library doesn’t offer a choice as good as Amazon – at least when it comes to modern titles.
Sure, if you’re interested in an oldie, such as the Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Google’s library is a good choice, but if you’re looking to buy a digital copy of the latest bestseller, you’re more likely to find it on the Kindle than in Google’s library and Sony’s ebook store combined. You can sometimes buy an ebook online and then transfer it to your Sony ebook reader, but on the Kindle it’s simpler and easier to do.

Also see:
Read foreign-language Google-books in English online
Google describes the book conversion process
How to download any of the 30,000 Project Gutenberg books to your Kindle, direct.

UPDATE 4/22/10 - RETROREAD'S AUTOMATED GOOGLE BOOK CONVERSIONS
RetroRead (BLTC Press) offers free conversion of any free ePub Google Book to Amazon Kindle format for delivery to your Kindle or to your computer via your normal email address. As RetroRead's David Eyes describes in his Blitzes at BLTC blog you will be able to create an account through which you may upload any free Google ePub book (but ONLY Google book files), and have it converted and forwarded directly to you. He adds that the quality of the converted book can vary greatly depending on the quality of Google’s optical character recognition (OCR) conversion. The site is self-explanatory.

Once you've registered and read the Terms of Use, you can go to http://books.google.com and choose a free Google book to read, downloading the ePub version to your computer, at which point you're given the option to have that downloaded file automatically uploaded to Retroread for immediate conversion to Kindle format (using RetroReadhelper -- Windows for that though) and then either sent to your Kindle* or to your email address or linked at the Retroread site where you can download the converted file and then move it to your Kindle via the USB cable.

* If you do want the direct-to-Kindle option, you need to have created earlier a special address for files to your Kindle -- [you]@kindle.com ...
So be sure you've set up a [you]@kindle.com address first. This setup is done at your Amazon "Manage Your Kindle" page. Here's a guide for using that management page.
This would involve letting RetroRead have your [you]@kindle.com address and, as mentioned, the Amazon fee for whispernet delivery would apply (15 cents per megabyte of a book -- with most ePub books under 1 megabyte -- but the one I uploaded tonight was over 2 megs because some pages were image scans). However, you can also choose to just get the converted file and move it to the Kindle yourself. Read his blog for the additions he's made to the site's capabilities. Lots of good things.

You can also choose recently converted Google books that are listed as available for download on the left side of the RetroRead page.

For those looking for interesting less-seen free books, it's hard to do better than David's list of the Latest Converted files.

At any rate, this is a quick intro. I tried it last night and it works well. The book I converted for this blog article was used at Retroread, and the results were the 99% the same, since RetroRead uses Calibre also, although the last half of the final page, which happened to be the Table of Contents page at the end, was missing.

Many will find this service very convenient. But the service is not offered for any ePub books other than the Google books. However, you can use this blog guide to do that yourself as needed. Your own conversion from ePub to Amazon format should take about three minutes after you've had a chance to work with it.

Kindle 3 (UK: Kindle 3), DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers.
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

View the original article here

Update v2.6 for Kindle for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad - Real page numbers etc

2011-02-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

The Kindle for iPhone (also for iPod Touch and iPad) app has been updated with version 2.6 with the following new features:

Real page numbers for thousands of books in the Kindle Store. Now you can make proper citations in the classroom or follow along with people reading print books in a book club.View your percentage completed while reading [new for iPhone/iPod Touch].Home screen now shows your progress through books in list view.Look up words on Google and Wikipedia without leaving the app.Instant word lookup on included dictionary with 250,000 entries and definitions

You can see full details and download the new update by clicking the top image at the Kindle for iPhone/iPod Touch app page. You'll get the same info at the Kindle for iPad app page except that it doesn't include "View your percentage completed while reading" as a new feature for the iPad (it may have been included before).

Thanks to Golf11 (Randall) again for the alert Sunday.

View the original article here

Amazon's 4th Qtr Results: Reactions, Kindle Profitability

2011-02-25T05:19:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal Blog's Dan Gallagher, after Amazon's 4th Qtr report Thursday, writes that while the Amazon Kindle is "far and away the most popular of the dedicated e-reader devices on the market"..."it remains unclear just how much profit – if any – the company is able to realize from the device and its associated e-books business."

It's an interesting angle because most of the stories are about how Amazon sold 115 e-books (not counting free ones) for every 100 paperbacks sold, during the first quarter of this year so far and that includes paperback books for which there is no Kindle edition. This would include a spurt of e-book buying after Kindles were opened during the holidays, but it's not unlikely that the new Kindle owners would continue to buy e-books more often than they'd bought printed books, as that is a common report.

Retail Gazette in the U.K. pointed out that Jeff Bezos remarked:

' Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected - and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales. '

I won't quote all the details of the dollar stats, as you can just read them in any of the financial articles, including the ones linked here, but the WSJ's Gallagher brings up an interesting point, re profitability on the Kindle.

Although the company reiterated that it has sold more units of the Kindle 3 than the final book in the Harry Potter series, making it Amazon's top-selling product ever, Gallagher continues:

'...the revenue boost may not be flowing to Amazon’s bottom line; in fact, it may even be weighing it down.
For one, it looks likely that Amazon makes little to no money on the device itself. A study by market-research firm iSuppli last year estimated the total cost of materials for the 3G Kindle at $155.56 – about $33 less than the $189 selling price for the device.
Since iSuppli’s estimates do not include the cost of software, licensing, royalties, manufacturing expenses (Amazon outsources production of the Kindle) and a cut for the wireless carriers, analysts suspect Amazon likely sells the Kindle at a slight loss. '

When asked about this during a conference call with analysts Thursday, Amazon's financial officer, Tom Szkutak, "refused" to give specifics about the Kindle's profitability.

Many have brought up the razor-razorblade model for the Kindle and Amazon's e-books. But Ben Schachter of Macquarie Research feels that "lack of profits from the device, along with Amazon’s move to sell more lower-margin electronics and general merchandise, is keeping pressure on the bottom line" and therefore there is frustration that "margins are not improving."

" 'That's why people are frustrated that margins are not improving,' Schachter says. 'Any margin improvement from e-books is being hurt by spending, the [cost of] Kindle hardware and the shift into [electronics and general merchandise] categories. Amazon is willing to push margin on that to make money over the long term.' "

Even though Net Sales increased 36% to $12.95 billion in the 4th Qtr and Net Income increased 8% to $16 million, there was "unfavorable impact" from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, and shares sank 9% after hours Thursday.

It's all about high expectations -- and even then Amazon's net income beat expectations, hitting 91 cents per share while analysts had expected 88 cents per share, per Factset. However, they'd "expected" more than 36% net sales and Amazon also "warned that operating profit could decline as much as 34 percent [AB here: or as little as 2 percent] compared with the first quarter of 2010" as they invest long-term in building the company.

Other highlights:
. It was Amazon's first $10 billion quarter.
. The U.S. Kindle store now contains 810,000 books, including New Releases and 107 of the 112 books on the New York Times best-seller list. About two-thirds of the books cost $9.99 or less, the company said.
(Barnes & Noble, as well as Sony, count the ~1.5 million free public domain Google books in their totals.)

In its SEC 10-K filing dated January 28, 2011, Amazon has to set out all the possibilities, especially the negative ones, and it's an interesting read. Of note for us customers, Authorlink.com writes:

' The company plans to rapidly and significantly expand global operations, including increasing product and service offerings and scaling infrastructure to support retail and services businesses. This expansion increases the complexity of its business and places significant strain on management, personnel, operations, systems, technical performance, financial resources, and internal financial control and reporting functions. In assessing the risks of its growth, the company said "We may not be able to manage growth effectively, which could damage our reputation, limit our growth and negatively affect our operating results," the filing said. '

That's par for the course with SEC 10-K filings.
The PR release says it, of course, more positively: "Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, such as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer spending, world events, the rate of growth of the Internet and online commerce and the various factors detailed..."

The SEC 10-K filing continues on in the vein quoted by Authorlink and they end the article with, "Despite these risks, the company expects significant growth next year."

View the original article here

NY Times: Web paywall soon, Kindle versions. Kindle DTP now Kindle KDP

2011-02-25T00:34:00.000-08:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES PAYWALL RISES AGAIN

According to Bloomberg's Brett Pulley, a person "who declined to be identified" has told Bloomberg that the New York Times Co. will begin charging readers "less than $20 a month for full access" to the newspaper on the Web when it introduces this plan sometime this quarter. The timing was mentioned by Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson last month at an investor conference in New York.

The price would be less than the $19.95 price for special daily delivery of the NY Times on Kindle, but people accessing the web via computers have not been likely to pay that kind of price and in a previous 'exploration' of the paywall idea, they had to remove the wall they put in place for access to their popular opinion columns.

Pulley adds that Robinson also said there would be a "set number of articles for free each month, and heavy users will have to pay a subscription fee" No details were given at the time. Print subscribers will get full access with no extra charges. The print edition is $11.70/week or about $50/month.

The article has a lot more on what several newspapers have been or will be trying with web pay models.

KINDLE SUBSCRIBERS TO THE NY TIMES
As many have heard, the subscription cost of a Kindle Edition of the NY Times was raised a few months ago to $19.95 per month; this includes the Sunday Edition, with the magazine included.

For awhile, Amazon has had an extended free trial on the NYT -- instead of 14 days, it's two months and the offer expires Feb. 15.

The monthly cost is too steep for me, even with the nicely organized navigation relative to the free methods of access on the Kindle to the text (none of the pictures, usually). For those on a print subscription currently, the Kindle Edition is lighter, both physically and cost-wise, relative to $50/mo.

And now we have the NYT Crossword puzzles as Kindle games.

Sunday Edition of NYT
However, those interested in getting the Sunday edition of the NY Times can download it each Sunday (no automated delivery) for $1 per issue. That's true for any day's issue but the Sunday one is large and packed with special features, including the NY Times Review of Books. I do tend to get the Sunday edition when I remember and I just press alt-Home, select Newspaspers, US and download a copy.

NY Times - Latest News "blog" edition
The subscription I have had for 2 years though and which I think is the best deal in the shop is the "blog" edition of the New York Times Latest News, which sends fast-breaking headline news updates to your Kindle through the day, usually 8-10 stories in full (some are quite long and detailed), as they happen. The cost is $1.99 a month. Many don't know about it because it's under the "blogs" area rather than the 'newspapers' section.

This seems to be updated 5 or more times a day. Probably more but I don't leave my wireless On all the time. EACH edition overwrites the last one, so if you don't have time to read one of the updated sets, you may not see one of the stories if it's not included in the next update.

That does tend to have me deciding not to download the latest update until I read a story I'm particularly interested in, but the news stories do also overlap of course. You can 'clip' a full article for the "My Clippings" file on the Kindle, to read later, but that loses the special formatting and is seen as streamed text.

Each update has something new but will drop an older story or two.
There's a 14-day free trial on this also. I highly recommend it for news addicts who aren't around their computers all the time. This is one area where 3G cellular wireless comes in handy, as you can download the latest headlines almost anywhere you are.

AMAZON'S "DIGITAL TEXT PLATFORM" (DTP) IS NOW "KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING" (KDP)
That's a good change, as "DTP" always seemed to mean DeskTop Publishing to me, and "Digital Text Platform" seemed very vague and was hard to remember.

Anyone can self-publish e-books for the Kindle store. There's no charge for that. There's also an option to make print versions.

Here's the sign-in page to explore or try Kindle Direct Publishing

Amazon announced the change yesterday while releasing the news that Amazon's self-publishing feature with the newer 70% royalty program is now extended to books sold to Canadian customers.

' Books self-published through KDP can participate in the 70% royalty program and are available for purchase on Kindle devices and Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, Mac, Blackberry, and Android-based devices. With KDP, you can self-publish books in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian and specify pricing in US Dollars and Pounds Sterling. You will also find useful information on our active community forum. '

THE 2011 AMAZON BREAKTHROUGH NOVEL AWARD
Amazon's Createspace asks:
"Do you have an unpublished or self-published novel you know Amazon.com readers will love? Enter your novel in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for a chance to win one of two $15,000 publishing contracts with Penguin USA and distribution of your novel on Amazon.com."
Details here.

View the original article here

Library E-book feature overrated? New Lending site: eBook Fling

2011-02-24T19:38:00.000-08:00

GETTING FREE E-BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY MAY BE OVERRATED?

LibraryCity.Org reports on a blog article by Nathan Groezinger of The eBook Reader blog, opining that since more and more "people are turning to the library as a source for ebooks, the limitations of the service has [sic] become much more obvious."

He lists five problems he's noticed with this, and I'm just quoting the heading for each point and you should read the details there

(Kindle-edition readers can now follow any article link and, after the article comes up, Kindle-3 users can click on Menu -> Article Mode to get rid of the non-article side-links) and read in larger fonts, with better contrast.
Kindle-2 and DX users should use Basic mode to get larger fonts with better b&w contrast.

He gives personal experiences as reasons for his doubt, and the commenters to the page's premise make interesting points on both sides. The five problems listed (with his article-summary following the headings here) are:

#1. Limited number of copies and waiting lists
#2. 21 Days
#3. No library ebooks
#4. Fees for library cards
#5. Poor selection and random selection '

While access to library books is a real plus and the Kindle doesn't offer this feature (though the new lending sites are helping), Nathan G. wonders if libraries will be able to keep up with the demand, "especially with many publishers and authors feeling uncomfortable about library ebooks to begin with."

ANOTHER KINDLE-BOOK LENDING SITE AND THE EFFECT IT MAY HAVE
The L.A. Times's Alex Pham writes about eBook Fling as a "Netflix Instant Watch for digital books."

Their official Kindle-book lending/borrowing site opens officially today, though it was up and running yesterday, Pham says.

' Here's how it would work. Users can list any digital book they've purchased. When another member requests to borrow it, EBookFling sends the book owner a message with step-by-step instructions for lending it. Each time the user lends a book, they earn a credit, which can be used to borrow other members' books.... Each lending period lasts 14 days... [AB: because that is the time limit the publishers chose for this feature at Barnes and Noble and at Amazon.]
At the moment, the site is only registering new subscribers and letting them submit the titles they're willing to lend. Users won't be able to start borrowing for a month or so while the site ramps up to a full launch, according to Nick Ruffilo, chief information officer for EBookFling. '

Its backer is BookSwim, "a profitable, privately held book rental service that operates much like Netflix. The service lets subscribers borrow physical books via mail for a monthly fee ranging from $23.95 for 3 books checked out at a time to $59.95 for 11 books."

How will they make money in the case of e-book borrowing? Advertising?

An important point Pham makes is:

' Still, the service needs some cooperation from publishers, which ultimately get to decide whether they enable the lending feature for Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If lending eats into sales, publishers may reduce the lending period or opt out of the feature altogether. '

However, the extremely limited terms the publishers made (14-day loan, maximum, and a book being loanable only once ever) should allay publisher-anxiety in that the positive aspects (more people aware of and reading the author) will likely make up for the negative (any loss in sales). And we can, in a way, see why they placed such heavy restrictions on the loaning feature. It can become a bit like a multi-player game.

View the original article here

"Kindle Singles" are now available and look interesting

2011-02-24T15:53:00.000-08:00

AMAZON SINGLES FEATURE READY TO GO.
Amazon announced today that the first set of "Kindle Singles is ready, and can be seen at Amazon's KindleSingles page.

What are they?
Below is what I wrote on October 13. Essentially, they're shorter works not forced into the expected size of a regular novel, and, as a result, they're not as expensive either. Pricing is between 99 cents and $4.99 and include original reporting, essays, memoirs and fiction.
There are some really interesting looking offerings there, at good prices, and you can still get samples first.

When I first saw the PR release at MarketWatch, I thought Amazon was expanding into the Dating-Services area, but instead:

' Less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000: that is the choice writers have generally faced for more than a century--works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the "heft" required for book marketing and distribution.
But in many cases, 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages) might be the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated--whether it's a business lesson, a political point of view, a scientific argument, or a beautifully crafted essay on a current event.
Today [Oct. 12], Amazon is announcing that it will launch "Kindle Singles" -- Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book. Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book.
Today's announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world.
"Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. "With Kindle Singles, we're reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we're excited to see what they create." '

Nick Bilton of the NY Times points out that

' This medium-length format has traditionally been difficult for writers to sell to publishers as it doesn’t fit into the mold of a printing-press distribution model.
In a digital distribution system, those pricing structures no longer exist, and a digital price can be adjusted accordingly.
By promoting this new format, Amazon can also avoid upsetting publishers who were frustrated with the company when it introduced its own self-publishing product, allowing writers to price and directly sell their content on the Kindle platform. '

Engadget's Joseph L. Flatley refers to these as "really, really short books"

To Engadget's mostly tongue-in-cheek analysis - "It looks like Amazon has finally admitted what we knew all along: most books are too long. And boring.
We need more e-publications that reflect our torn jeans, frayed hair, coffee swilling, ca. early-1990s slacker lifestyle.
Kindle Singles, as announced by "the man" in an ironic blast of "PR," are described as e-books anywhere from twice the length of a Maximum Rock'n'Roll feature article to a few chapters in a typical book...."

In the Engadget comments area, Nick Sweetman writes:

' Have you ever heard of this thing called attention span? It's when you actually get to '

IMHo predicts:

' Mark my words: in 2020 they will come out with Kindle Fractions, for page-and-a-half publications, because by then singles will be considered long and boring :) '

And, on a more serious note, jtnoel adds:

' Amazon is one of Dime Novel Publishing's distribution channels. In fact, we currently have close to 30 titles published (although Amazon does not provide publishers the ability to offer texts for free...unless you are one of the big guys).
The issue is about getting noticed. Publishers pushing short/serialized content through Amazon are, in short (no pun intended), lost in the shuffle. By breaking this out into its own model, there is a great opportunity for authors/publishers like us to get some real marketing push from Amazon. '

Dingus is amusing:

' The "Amazon Singles" name is all about branding. Because calling them "Amazon Short Stories" sounds like a comic from the '50s.
Also the acronym might not fly. '

And, on a note that might please Amazon and Singles-authors, Mark points out why this might work:

' There are probably a lot of awesome short stories by authors I love, that I don't read. Why? Because I don't want to buy compilations with other short stories I am not interested in reading. '

zippycart.com makes some good points:

' ...Others view Kindle Singles as a new revenue source [for writers]. Writers can now take a different approach, and create smaller books that have a more narrow focus.
It might take a year to write a traditional book, but Kindle Singles could be easily produced in two weeks to a month. This quick turn around time could allow writers a chance to sell more digital work, so they can have the money to allow them to spend time focusing on bigger books.
Other writers, on the other hand, may look at this as a new opportunity to carve out a unique niche, where they produce dozens of 30 to 90 page books. Either way, this new addition to the Kindle Store provides a great deal of opportunity for many. '

Technorati's Laura Zavelson writes:

' If viewed through a magazine/newspaper lens, this could be the first step in letting journalists and writers produce their own work rather than having to be on staff or go through the tedious pitch process. While the press release did not discuss the business model, there is also the possibility that writers might even be able to earn more for their work by going straight to distribution and bypassing the publishers.
... The newsstand price of a top consumer magazine runs about $5. What if you could spend less and just buy the articles you're interested in? Would you do it? '

TODAY'S ANNOUNCEMENT - January 26, 2011
Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content, said "This first set of Singles was selected by our team of editors, and includes works by Rich Cohen, Darin Strauss, Ian Ayres, and the first-ever books published by TED. We think customers will be riveted by these stories that can take them to a Swedish bank heist or to the Mexican border town of Juarez, or to consider a new way to think about happiness."

The new Kindle Singles section of the Kindle Store is now available at Amazon's kindlesingles page and are available to both Kindle device and app users.

View the original article here

Google subscription terms vs Apple's / Kindle for Android's subscription access

2011-02-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

The New York Times's Claire Cain Miller reports on Google's announcement of their own periodical subscription offerings via its Google One Pass system.

Timed to contrast it against Apple's set of rules detailed in a much discussed press release Tuesday about Subscription-content apps for Apple devices, it offered the following:

' Publishers have control over how users can pay to access content and set their own prices. They can sell subscriptions of any length with auto-renewal, day passes (or other durations), individual articles or multiple-issue packages. Google One Pass also enables metered models '

There is a link on that page to their FAQ, which promises that, unlike conditions of Apple subscription apps:

"Publishers decide the price and terms of the content they choose to sell through Google One Pass."

Also, "Google One Pass will enable users to access content on connected, browser-enabled devices and from mobile apps where the mobile OS terms permit publishers to access the web via the app for Google One Pass transaction or authentication services."

In other words, this describes a WEB-subscription, which some columns yesterday said is more similar to a newspaper with a paywall. As the New York Times reports:

' When publishers use One Pass, which for now is limited to online newspapers and magazines, Google will keep 10 percent of the sale price and share the customer’s name, ZIP code and e-mail address unless the customer specifically asks Google not to. '

That sharing of customer information is important to publishers. Apple will share it with publishers only if the Apple customer permits it.

Q&A from today: How to find past appearances of a character in a book - Update

2011-02-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

FROM THE KINDLE FORUMS, A QUESTION TODAY

Saw the following question on an Amazon Kindle forum today and thought it might be good to post the Q&A here as well. There are also good answers to new customers' questions on a number of common puzzlements in that thread.

Q: I have a kindle but I was wondering if there was a quicker way to go to the beginning of a book you are reading to review names from the previous pages. I have been using the back button but it takes a long time to find what you want to know. With a book you can just turn the pages. This happens frequently when you may not get back to what you are reading for days...

A: [There were several good answers at the forum. The one below was mine (slightly modified for the blog), but you might enjoy reading the other ones on that page too, and you can click on the forum link to see them.]

Update - The answer is for a Kindle 3 as there were several million new owners of these in the last few months. The steps for Kindle-2 and DX are on an earlier, separate page. End of Update

Here are the steps:

1. RIGHT on the page you're reading -
Start typing the the name of the character
whose previous appearances you
want to see again.
The searchbox will come up with your
typed name in it.
You then cursor down one step and then
cursor right one step to get "find"
as an option.
Click on that and wait for the usually
several results,
each surrounded by context and with
a link to the page that holds it.

2. If it's a complex name to type, then
Start a highlight on it instead.
Click on the 5-way button at the
beginning of the name, word or phrase
to start a highlight, and then
go to the right with the 5-way button until
you get the last letter of the name,
but -don't- click the 5-way button as
you might for an actual highlight.

Instead, press the spacebar to end it, and
that'll put the name into the
search box for you, and you can
go down one step and
go to the right one step
to get the 'find' option.

As CLS10, Bufo Calvin and others show, there are many different ways...

Getting back to the beginning of a book
As for how to get back to the beginning of a book, one can just -- as was pointed out in the forum thread -- press the Menu button and the default option will be "Go to..."

Click on that and you'll get the "Go to" box where you can cursor down one step and then cursor left to choose either "beginning" or even "cover."

Any tips you may have are always welcome in the Comments area.

View the original article here

Apple's Deadline for In-App $. European publishers alarmed. Booker Prize Judges to use Kindles.

2011-02-24T02:44:00.000-08:00

WSJ quotes March 31 Apple deadline for newspaper and magazine apps to take payments through the iTunes store

The latest WSJ article, By Yukari Iwatani Kane and Jessica E. Vascellaro, is about a deadline that Apple has set for some digital editions.

People are wondering if the following will pertain to e-books as well, as seems to have happened with Sony this past week.

' ... Yudu, a U.K. developer of digital editions for publishers, said it recently was informed by Apple that newspaper and magazine apps that don't take payments through the iTunes store will be rejected, beginning March 31.
The company was alerted to the impending change when it applied for a new app and received an email outlining Apple's plans, Yudu Chief Executive Richard Stephenson said. '

Stephenson's company already meets the conditions and won't be affected but he said that others could be affected and that "The implications are fairly serious."

"European Publishers Plan London Summit To Discuss Apple’s New Subscription Rules"
The Cult of Mac website's John Brownlee wrote yesterday that several publishers across Europe are planning a summit in London to discuss "the threat."

' Describing themselves as feeling “betrayed”, the head of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (a body which represents almost 5,000 members in 80 countries worldwide) are planning to meet with the European Online Publishers Association to “compare notes” on Apple’s new rules.
Why are they so upset? Simple: they have already set up their magazine and newsreader apps to go through their websites, because Apple was refusing to offer an iTunes in-app subscription service. Now, Apple’s introducing such a service… while simultaneously threatening to kick out anyone who doesn’t use it. '

Gregorz Piechota, European resident of the INMA, explained that "Some say they feel betrayed. They believed that it would be a great way to access content from newspapers and magazines. So they hyped the iPad, and many of them invested in apps for it.”

“By promoting these apps, they promoted the device. Publishers in fact helped to make the iPad successful on the market.”

Brownlee can see their point. When all along, they'd clamored for an iOS subscription service but Apple wouldn’t comply, they built their digital businesses around external website payment options. "Now Apple has changed everything and is playing hardball with these same publishers who embraced the iPad and iOS despite some of the operating system’s drawbacks. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out."

Booker Prize Judges will Test Drive Kindle
I found this an interesting development.
The Independent's Arifa Akbar writes today that this year's Booker Prize judges will be given the Amazon Kindle, to help them read the ~130 titles they'll be judging for the Fall awards. They'll get the paper copies also.

' Ion Trewin, literary director of the Booker prizes, who had the idea to send out Kindles along with a physical copy of the submitted books, does not dispute that the e-read will be different from a paper one.
"I want to help the judges who have an awful lot to read. If it helps that they want to read the entries electronically, we should make that possible for them. I will be very interested once the judges start using them, whether they like them or don't like them," says Trewin.

The article examines the many possible pitfalls of using an e-reader this time.

Trewin and others feel that the look and feel of a book has an important impact on the reading experience and that a book loses a certain allure when it's in digital format.

"The judges will receive their books in both forms this year, but there is a fear that the Booker's hailing of electronic reading might set the ground, in years to come, for an eventual replacement."

Book-prize administrators, Akbar writes, are

' not leading the way in reading habits. They are responding to the sea-change which has seen Amazon sell more books for its Kindle (UK: K3) device in America than paperbacks in the last three months of 2010.
"E-readers are being spawned every day and only a Luddite would suggest that Kindles are detrimental to literary culture: it is a great thing to have people reading books – in whatever form. Yet a convenient read does not necessarily equate to a better, more thoughtful one, as this year's judges may discover. '

It always amazes me how little faith many who are wary of the trend toward digital editions have in the WORDS of the author. The distractions of a nice cover, the type of paper, and the smell of ink seem to take on more importance for them than what the author was thinking and hoped to convey while writing the book.

That doesn't mean I don't prize paper books; I do, for the books that mean the most to me. It's natural to want to touch a book that has so much to say to you, but I don't see why paper and digital versions can't co-exist, though there'll be relatively fewer print versions than we have now.

View the original article here

Kindle forum discussions. Also, an article about a first novel at age 86

2011-02-23T23:39:00.000-08:00

KINDLE FORUM TALK AND AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ON A NEWISH KINDLE AUTHOR

Forum message-thread loading problems
Since there will be links to Amazon Kindle forum conversations here, I'll repeat a note I've been adding recently when pointing people to the Kindle forums.

NOTE: If your web browser (Firefox, IE, or Chrome) drops you onto the Amazon forum list of topics instead of bringing you to the forum thread, click on Refresh or Reload to get the message thread itself -- or click on the link again. I don't know why a 'retry' is often needed, but it is.

I found out that the above IS a problem for others on the forums, as a message thread was made about it last night and a regular, Dragi Raos, who's involved with the very thorough Unofficial Kindle Support website, mentioned he'd made an earlier discussion topic on that oddness in November. Other regular helpers on the forums such as ShirleyKat have been seeing the problem, so I guess we'll let Amazon know via feedback email. It's merely very annoying, but when a reader clicks on a link here to a recommended Kindle forum discussion and people are just left at the topic-list page (where the topic may not even be showing on the front page), that's awkward.

So the note in red above should be remembered. Just reload or refresh the page and you should ultimately get the discussion text.

Kindle and unexpected effect on young people with reading problems
A discussion on how the Kindle had unexpectedly helped young family members with reading difficulties caught my eye. It had been started some time ago, and the latest posters had not realized they were adding to an older thread. But the information remains helpful for some.

News article on the Kindle leather cover without built-in light
Attention was brought again yesterday to the fact that an Amazon Kindle cover (the non-lighted one sold for $35) has been responsible for problems with the Kindle 3 over the Winter. Some have thought it was due to the winter cold and static discharges while others have felt it was a problem only for certain batches of the cover. I've seen discussions on this at Facebook also. The problems and Amazon's response were explained here in mid-December.

Amazon Kindle Forum thread with questions on choosing the cover with a light
Many have wondered about which cover to order then, and a recent forum thread discussed whether or not getting the lighted Amazon Kindle-3 cover is a good choice.

Aside from that, those seeking a less-expensive one or an interim one until making a decision can try the Acase cover for considerably less cost or take a look at other options.

First novel at age 86
A happier item is seen in an article written by Megan Lea Buck for the Midland Reporter-Telegram. Here is the item which tickled me:

' Fern Crume admits she is not familiar with the latest technology. Sitting on an airplane last November, she watched as the woman sitting beside her pulled a small, tablet-like computer out of her bag. Curious about the gadget, Crume watched the woman turn on her Amazon Kindle and flip to the front cover of a new book.
At this point the woman noticed Crume's gaze and asked her if she had read the book, a romance novel entitled, "Love is Never Late."
Crume laughed and, much to her neighbor's disbelief, replied "I wrote that book."
Published in October, "Love is Never Late" is the 86-year-old Midlander's first novel. '

Buck started writing the novel while caring for her late husband. Finding it difficult to find a book that was 'uplifting' she felt she could do better. Later on, she completed a manuscript in just three weeks and submitted it to Tate Publishing, which she found online. She was offered a contract and then another for the next book.

"Love is Never Late" is only 124 pages long and she had intentionally gone for a length that wouldn't take more than two hours to read, as that's what she'd wanted earlier. It's fiction although it's based on her experience caring for her husband of 63 years after he was diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer's disease.

I liked the newspaper story about her first novel being published at 86, but I have to say that the price chosen is very high, for a 124-page book. Maybe quality trumps quantity. It may be worth getting a sample anyway. There are no reviews on the book yet.

View the original article here

Notion Ink Adam Tablet vs Kindle & an LCD tablet in sunlight. Kindle for webOS.

2011-02-23T19:14:00.000-08:00

NOTION INK'S ADAM, WITH PIXEL QI, VS KINDLE AND PANDIGITAL NOVEL IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT

The long awaited Adam Tablet by Notion Ink has a combo display of LCD switchable with an E-Paper display, with backlighting Off.

Good E-Reader Blog has a report and VIDEO and I've linked you to the larger YouTube one.

Here's an image-link to another, separate video, by Charbax, that also shows the e-paper display with backlight off. When the backlight is On, the display is a sort of light blue-gray in the videos. Nevertheless, both videos show reflections from the glass from the lighting above.

The first video gives you an idea of how the Adam looks in direct sunlight and how it compares with the e-ink and LCD displays.

They were disappointed to see that the dual layer of glass that it uses was "highly reflective in the sun, and even the matted screen protector is pretty useless."

' Our first comparison is with the Amazon Kindle and the Notion Ink Adam in Pixel QI mode. We give you a great visual example of how the Adam ranks against one of the premier e-ink based electronic readers. We have to give the advantage in this test to the Amazon Kindle.
The next comparison we show is how the Notion Ink Adam ranks with the Pandigital Novel 9 inch edition. This test is mainly ... to show how Pixel QI in the Adam compares to the standard LCD based tablet and e-reader combination found in most competing devices. We have to decide this contest in favor of the Adam, as the LCD was unreadable in direct sunlight. '

AMAZON ANNOUNCES KINDLE FOR PALM's webOS IS COMING
This is in connection with HP's Palm webOS press conference today.
Of special interest was the last part of the following statement:

' "We're working with Amazon to bring HP customers the free Kindle app and, along with it, the largest selection of the most popular books," said Jon Oakes, director, TouchPad Product Marketing, HP. "TouchPad's beautiful, fully featured Kindle app supports the Kindle features users already know and love, and it's one of the first Kindle applications to support the latest Kindle features like Collections." '

Collections. That last is key and I hope it shows up soon in the Kindle for PC and for Mac etc.

View the original article here

The Amazon Trade-in Program - 3 stores - Update

2011-02-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

THE AMAZON TRADE-IN PROGRAM
This includes Movies & TV, Paper Books and Textbooks, Video Games

In general, the program enables customers to send in items to a third-party merchant in exchange for an Amazon.com Gift Card.

Amazon's Trade-in Program enables you to send in items to a third party merchant in exchange for an Amazon.com Gift Card and includes DVDs, Blu-ray discs, or HDDVDs; eligible used books and college textbooks matching editions wanted and which are in good condition; and video games in good working condition.

USED BOOKS (Paper)
Plus a side note on the book highlighted in Amazon's current ad for that

I personally didn't realize Amazon has a trade-in program for used paper books. The current Amazon used-book ad (see image at top left here) happens to show a more unusual book that I actually bought (there is no Kindle version): Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940.

This was during the years when The Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect.

There are side-notes explaining references made in most of the poems (translated to English), interesting historical photographs, and some memories from some who made it through and later became citizens.

For the few who might be interested in what that era and place was like for those getting off the boats and onto the West Coast's equivalent of Ellis Island, I made a recent photo gallery (Intro here)

of a day spent visiting Angel Island's newly restored Immigration Station detention barracks, where the Chinese immigrants were, by design, held much longer (weeks or months or even two years, instead of 2 days) until they could answer questions satisfactorily or be sent home, and it was found that many of the men carved poems of dispair on the walls, which were often painted over.

Some of the carvings (discovered one night in an inspection by Park Ranger Alexander Weiss touring the barracks with a flashlight) are now on display, with many of them reproduced and translated in this book along with history of the time, place, and of some of the people involved. The intro to my photo-set, linked above, leads to the full photo gallery, for those interested in the exhibition of life in the barracks.

The detention areas were restored only a couple of years ago as a historical exhibition of the immigration station, which was on, ironically, a quite beautiful island. At least one current docent in his 80s entered the U.S. as a child during that time when relatives of many of us arrived at the Station with their parents.

The rated "Most Helpful" customer review of the book gives a good synopsis, while the first poem he cites reminds me of how many of us use our Kindles today.

BACK TO THE AMAZON TRADING PROGRAM
For more information, see the Help pages listed on Trade-in Program home page and visit the following Trade-In stores for:

. Movies & TV
. Textbooks and
. Video Games.

Here's the Trade-in Program FAQ

STUDENTS AND TEXTBOOKS
I'm not sure many students and parents are aware of this program. Amazon recently sent out an email on this that included: "Students, no matter where you bought your textbooks you can get up to 60% back when you sell them at Amazon.com's Book & Textbook Buyback Store."

IF ONLY
If only Amazon and the publishers would add a trade-in program for Kindle books...
(Coming to my mind from a ~~Beatles~~ John Lennon song right now:
You can say, I'm a dreamer... but I'm not the only one...)

(Thanks to Stuart for the correction.)

On-topic note about the Kindle
In the meantime, you might enjoy the latest online newspaper column of the "No Kindle for me!" type. Laura Moyer rightly worries about the effect of the Kindle on brick and morter bookstores.

View the original article here

New Kindle game: Flip It! and Apple iStore rejects Sony E-books App - UPDATE2

2011-02-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

FLIP IT!, a new Kindle app.

Flip It!, a new Kindle game by 7 Dragons, was released yesterday. Watch for more from them. p See UPDATE below

It's a brainteaser of a puzzle that reminds me, actually, of how e-Ink works.

In the game, you're presented tiles that are either black or white. Click on one to flip the color.
Goal 1: Flip the tiles so that all of them display as white.

As with other Kindle games, there are several levels of play and 7 Dragons's product description tells us that the puzzle seems simple in the beginning but gets more challenging as you go, exercising your mind as you "enjoy solving various patterns and puzzles."

The twist: "When clicking on a tile to 'flip' its color, all tiles touching the selected tile's four sides will also flip their colors." As you move to the next level, you're given more squares and patterns.

Goal 2: Beat your earlier "times" or complete a puzzle with fewer moves and complete all levels with the fewest number of flips.

UPDATE - Feb 3, 2011 - 12:49 PM - Just received this info from Abhi of 7 Dragons: Hints:
"If anyone gets stuck at a particular level they can go to http://kappreview.com/flip-it-hints/ for hints and walkthroughs. And can leave comments for help if the walkthroughs don't solve their question."

APPLE REJECTS SONY'S E-BOOK APP - HOW DOES IT AFFECT KINDLE & NOOK APPS
The New York Times reports, in an article by Claire Cain Miller and Miguel Helft, that Apple has actually rejected Sony's iPhone app, which as the Kindle and Nook apps do, lets people read e-books bought from the e-reader company's store.

The NYT report further says that Apple has told other application developers the same.

'...they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps, or let customers have access to purchases they have made outside the App Store ... from now on, all in-app purchases would have to go through Apple, said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division. '

Obviously, as the NYT points out, this could affect the Amazon Kindle app. ~~Apple's~~ Sony's Haber explained:

' "It’s the opposite of what we wanted to bring to the market,” Mr. Haber said. “We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store." '

Currently, if a company app has the customer purchasing e-books or other products within the Apple app itself, Apple gets 30% of the revenue, something Amazon and B&N would not be willing to do. Instead, the apps are used to browse their stores and then the the apps are closed and customers' web browsers are opened so they can do the purchases, apart from the Apple application, at the company's own e-book store.

It's been seen that the iBook store has only about 30,000 non-public domain books and 30,000 free public domain ones. Amazon has over 810,000 titles, 16,000 of which are free public-domain books. Barnes and Noble's total counts Google's 1.5 million free public domain books (which are easily convertible to Kindle format). As a result, most iPad owners are reported, in studies, to be using the Kindle app to buy e-books at Amazon than are using the iPad's own iBook Store.

I don't see how not allowing Amazon's app will help sell iPad 2 when all the Android tablets being readied for release will let customers use ALL apps from online e-book stores (except Apple's of course, since Apple's will run only on its own products).

But if Apple doesn't allow other e-bookstores onto its iPhone or other products, without a revenue kickback, but allows the Kindle and Nook apps to stay on their devices, won't the other online bookstores be able to pursue action against what they'd consider a form of business favoritism that's not justifiable if the rules are different for each online bookstore?

Miller and Helft point out Apple has made more money selling hardware than music, e-books or apps and that the current attraction of access to more content from more sources sells more Apple devices.

They find the move surprising, as "Apple has indicated recently that it would be more collaborative, not less, with magazine publishers and other content producers that want more control over how to distribute content on the iPad."

James L. McQuivey, a consumer electronics analyst at Forrester Research, is quoted on this: "...Maybe the new thing that everyone recognizes is the unit of economic value is the platform, not the device.”

So, Apple moves to an ever-more closed system? I don't see this working with the myriad of Android devices coming to market. The draw was the humongous number of apps available for the Apple devices. But if the e-bookstores with the best access to e-books are shut out, how does that make the iPhone or iPad attractive as a non-dedicated e-reader in the now intense and fast-growing market for e-books?

Maybe, Apple will set a 5% or 10% take for themselves on other online-ebookstore purchases using their devices, and the online e-bookstores accepting this would have an advantage with the number of customers able to access their stores on the millions of iPhones and iPads. But at 30% for Apple? Not likely! Or, it would eventually be another method by which Apple will help raise e-book prices.

UPDATE - February 1, 2011, at 12:22 PM (Orig'l posting at 11:30 AM)
MyKindleStuff posted an ArsTechnica article quoting Apple on its new policy toward other online e-bookstores and it doesn't look good. In the article, headlined: "Apple responds: we want a cut of Amazon, Sony e-book sales," Jacqui Cheng reports that Apple replies:

' "We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines," Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller told Ars. "We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.
. . .
Many feared that this supposed change in Apple policy would take their e-books away from their iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches.
Apple's second statement indicates that this is indeed the case—sort of. If an app lets users access content that they purchased via Amazon's website, for example, then that same app must also let users buy the same book via Apple's own in-app purchase system. If the app developer doesn't want to use Apple's in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can't access content purchased elsewhere either.
. . .
' Amazon has already gone all-in with its "Buy Once, Read Everywhere" tagline, so it probably can't afford to back out of the iOS platform now. The alternative appears to be a user interface nightmare: re-structuring its sales mechanisms in order to allow customers to buy from both Amazon and Apple (a move that will chafe Amazon execs) or from Apple alone (even more chafing).

Apple is saying that other stores' e-books apps must "ALSO" allow its users to buy the same book via Apple's own in-app purchase system.

However, Big5 publisher pricing, that Apple encouraged, would be the same at all online e-stores (also known as fixed-pricing), but Apple would get 30% of the purchase price when the e-book is bought via their devices. This is a rule made after Apple had helped bring about non-competitive pricing that the other online e-bookstores must follow.

Again, for a history of that see Apple/Big5 history.

Loyal Apple customers would buy from the Apple store, of course, as it's easier to just buy it from within the app and the pricing would be the same. I don't see that as acceptable to the other online book stores. Ars Technica says Sony has tried to negotiate a "more equitable solution" but Apple's not moving.

Upshot: Apple would be devaluing its own devices as non-dedicated readers at a time when Android devices are overtaking the Apple ones already.

This may be a reason Apple has made this decision, though I don't see it as a real plus for them; it'll drive people from iOS *to* Android devices.

View the original article here

Web-based e-books. Macmillan & Amazon will pay Lost Royalties.

2011-02-23T07:03:00.000-08:00

The new Android Market and reading your e-books on any device

ABI Research released a study on Friday which said the market for digital content will not be tied to the success or failure of any single gadget, despite the widespread misconception that a single tablet or e-reader could "win" the market.

Betanews' Tim Conneally adds that the study indicates that the market for digital content won't be tied to the success or failure of any single gadget, despite all the predictions of which tablet or e-reader will 'win' the market.

Google finally launched a "renewed" web-based Android Market that is integrated with a user's Google account, which lets the customer shop for apps, sending them to the various Android-powered devices linked to that account.

' Amazon's Kindle store was the first major shopping outlet to take such a step. Users can shop for Kindle-formatted e-books on Amazon.com, and push their purchases to their Kindle device, regardless of whether it's a dedicated e-paper reader or a software application. '

And that includes reading Kindle books just on a PC or a Mac, as well as reading Google Web eBooks via the Kindle's web browser.

Larry Fisher, research director of NextGen, ABI Research's emerging technologies research incubator, said, "The variety of applications that allow people to buy this digital content reassures them that they won't be tied to a single store--or device--for content." Well, with the possible exception of Apple's iBookStore books, as those can't be read on non-Apple devices currently.

With the new Web-based applications (Google's as well as Amazon's coming Kindle for Web), "developers can post bigger photos and even videos of their applications in action, and the browsing experience is superior to the native Android Market app."

Macmillan and Amazon pay Lost Royalties, and Macmillan increases author percentage
This is also being called "The Amazon Kindle Outage Adjustment, Locus Online reports.

' In a letter accompanying royalty statements, Macmillian CEO John Sargent told many authors they will receive 25% of net receipts in e-book royalties instead of the 15% most contracts called for, citing 25% as the emergent industry standard.
Macmillan will also pay royalties on sales “lost” when Amazon removed the “Buy Now” buttons on all books published by Macmillian during their contractual dispute over switching to the agency model. ...Amazon has agreed to split the expense with Macmillan. '

View the original article here

Kindle software v3.1 Preview Ready - PAGE numbers! Other Features also. UPDATE

2011-02-23T02:30:00.000-08:00

REAL PAGE NUMBERS ARE FINALLY POSSIBLE

Golf11 (Randall), who stays on top of everything, alerted me earlier today (while I was engrossed in the New Yorker story on Scientology) to the MSNBC article on Kindle's new software available for preview already, which will "grant books with 'real' page numbers, corresponding with pages of popular print editions." Kindle books, of course :-)

MSNBC's senior writer Wilson Rothman writes:

' Amazon says they've already started adding the page numbers to the most popular books, assuming they have "matching print editions."
It's probably easier for new releases; don't expect all those cheap classic lit editions to get the same pagination any time soon (unless perhaps there's an Oprah recommendation or movie adaptation that propels it to the top of the bestseller list).
...
People who use the popular iPad, iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 Kindle apps will get access to the page numbers in "the coming months." '

The Version 3.1 preview page has Amazon's info on the new changes, which include -- in addition to the long-requested page numbers -- extended features for sharing annotations and a new layout for magazines and newspapers on the Kindle. Click the last link for examples.

It's best to read the general v3.1 info first, but here's a direct link to the software preview-download.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE NEW FEATURES

' * Public Notes -- This feature lets Kindle users choose to make their book notes and highlights available for others to see. Any Kindle user -- including authors, their fans, book reviewers, professors and passionate readers everywhere -- can opt-in to share their thoughts on book passages and ideas with friends, family members, colleagues, and the greater Kindle community of people who love to read... '

The private, password-protected Kindle Annotations Page which I wrote about earlier, with examples, has been expanded and has a somewhat different look.

Our highlighting and notes made are all there but formatted somewhat differently, with more focus on the current book and a lot more options, including adding notes, editing and deleting, which I assume are then sync'd with the Kindle's annotations.

' * Real Page Numbers -- Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class. We've already added real page numbers to tens of thousands of Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle Store that have matching print editions and thousands more of the most popular books.
Page numbers will also be available on our free "Buy Once, Read Everywhere" Kindle apps in the coming months. If a Kindle book includes page numbers, press the Menu key in an open Kindle book to display page numbers. '

Here are are their examples of how Page Numbers will appear.

' * Before You Go ... -- When you reach the end of the book, you can immediately rate the book, share a message about the book with your social network, get personalized recommendations for what to read next, and see more books by the same author. '

That is of course an advantage for publishers, authors, and booksellers, but it's the type of social interaction that is very popular today.

' * New Newspaper and Magazine Layout -- We're introducing a new and improved layout for newspapers and magazines. This new layout gives you a quick snapshot of the news and helps you decide what you want to read first. '

As noted above, here are examples of the new layout, and it's definitely more intuitive than the previous columns of Sections alongside a 'NUMBER of articles' heading which acted as a link to the listing of articles, a function not obvious to many Kindle reviewers and owners.

All emphases above in the quotes are mine, of course.

HUGE QUESTION FOR AMAZON TO ANSWER *** SOON ***
The preview is only for Kindle 3 models.

Kindle 3 owners (which I am) will be very happy about these changes.

But WHEN is the KINDLE DX GRAPHITE, which has the same display properties or capabilities as the Kindle 3's screen and which costs A LOT MORE going to include these important changes, especially for the academic world, in which PAGE NUMBERS and ANNOTATIONS are extremely important?

Obviously, the 2nd question is when will the KINDLE DX Graphite get PDF CONTRAST ADJUSTMENTS? and the added PDF note-taking features given to Kindle 3 users.

Also, is Amazon thinking at all about the Kindle 2 and earlier-DX owners when it comes to these changes?
Will Software v2.5.x for these earlier models GET any of these changes eventually?
SOMETHING TO REMEMBER: Kindle 2's did receive native PDF support very late in the game, but they did eventually get a delayed update for that, although Amazon had been silent on the possibility, always, before finally just releasing the updated software for the Kindle 2 (many months after the initial DX received it).

AMAZON FORUM ANNOUNCEMENT
Here is the announcement page for this software preview.

Forum message-thread loading problems (repeated, because it's still needed).
NOTE: If your web browser (Firefox, IE, or Chrome) drops you onto the Amazon forum list of topics instead of bringing you to the forum thread, click on Refresh or Reload to get the message thread itself -- or click on the link again. I don't know why a 'retry' is often needed, but it is.

The DX Graphite
The content covers only what is said on their official pages online, but I'm concerned that they seem to be limiting the models for which these features will be available. Most of all, the expensive DX Graphite, with Pearl Screen, really should be getting these new features if Amazon is interested in the Academic market.

The lack of mention of the DXG (at $379) makes me wonder if they could be readying some newer version of the DXG (with WiFi?) AND/OR a much-mentioned Kindle Android Tablet (probably larger) sometime this year. Mainly -- While I can see why the many changes cannot be made for the severely technically-restricted Kindle-1 display, it's harder to explain why they can't be made for a current DX model or even for the Kindle 2 models, which are still plentiful in the Kindle base of users.

There are already over 500 customer notes at the message thread for the announcement. And these questions are often mentioned in the postings there.

Kindle 2 users don't seem to care as much about the page-number changes or the annotations and periodical-layout ones, but those who have paid for the DX Graphite with the new screen are asking and have waited somewhat patiently for software version 2.5.x to be upgraded for some of the v3.x Pearl-screen features.

It seems most of the focus on Kindle programming gives first priority to the latest Kindle model and to all the apps which must sync on all the devices used, which makes sense but it would be better for them to communicate something is pending for other models where that makes sense.

UPDATE - Other information from Amazon noticed later:

' Kindle books that include page numbers will list "Page Numbers Source ISBN (the print book identification number)" for the matching print edition under "Product Details" on the detail page at Amazon.com...
Because Kindle books allow you to change font size and other features, you may be able to view more than one page on your screen at once. Only the corresponding page number for the text displayed at the top left of the screen will be shown. '

HOW do you get the updated page numbers for e-books you already own?
(for e-books with page numbers added currently)

It occurred to me that you might have to go to your ManageYourKindle page and re-download those books.
However, it seems all you have to do is, via the Menu button, turn your wireless ON (to make sure you can access the Amazon servers) and then click on "Check and Sync" to get your e-book features synchronized.

The expanded Notes-Sharing feature
Actually, this feature may be quite useful for book clubs.

SIDE NOTE: I mentioned The New Yorker story, as I was fascinated by it when I got the Kindle real-page-numbers news. I gave the web address for access to the story, but it's a magazine I do subscribe to in the Kindle Edition, as it's fully searchable, with excellent content, so it's one Kindle subscription I highly recommend.

View the original article here

The Kindle Chronicles interviews KindleLending founder. Kindle Notepads.

2011-02-22T22:54:00.000-08:00

THE KINDLE CHRONICLES Podcast for this Friday
The Kindle Chronicles host, Len Edgerly, interviews Catherine MacDonald, founder of Kindle Lending Club this week.

Len's text intro for the interview that begins at 16:22 of the podcast:

"Catherine MacDonald, who lives on the island of Gozo in the nation of Malta in the Mediterranean, spoke to me on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, by Skype about how she and her husband came to create the Kindle Lending Club. It’s one of several startups taking advantage of the Kindle’s new lending capability to put borrowers in touch with lenders. Their Facebook page already has more than 8,000 'likes,' and you can also follow the action on Twitter. "

American Consumer News distributes a Press Release about the new KindleLending site's function as a free website providing a "crowdsourced virtual library for Kindle" connecting e-book borrowers and lender via its current 7,000+ membership which has seen 2,500+ book loans in the past couple of weeks.

Taking Notes on your Kindle
On that podcast also: "Hunter Davis provides a creative solution to last week’s query about how to take notes on your Kindle." and Len suggests you try the free, downloadable Kindle Notepad from Will DeLamater's EduKindle.

View the original article here

Panda Poet 50% off thru' today, 2/13. Newer: Chess, Word Search

2011-02-22T19:19:00.000-08:00

CATCHING UP ON RECENTLY RELEASED GAMES
Apologies to non-US readers that Amazon is not offering these outside the US yet. They say they plan to. Could be we're the guinea pigs and you'll get the ones that were updated after much feedback.

I've added, on the web blog, some extra links for eBooks if that might help.

Oak Systems Leisure Software released Chess for Kindle this week after some anguished waiting by a few members of the Amazon "kindle active content" forum.

Forum message-thread loading problems (repeated, because it's still very needed).
NOTE: If your web browser (Firefox, IE, or Chrome) drops you onto the Amazon forum list of topics instead of bringing you to the forum thread, click on Refresh or Reload to get the message thread itself -- or click on the link again. I don't know why a 'retry' is often needed, but it is, including Comments to Customer Reviews. Forum threads seem to be prevented from loading at first try by some boxes that are drawn for info or ads. This continuing problem has been discussed by members of the forum.

Back to Chess: The authors write: "Choose between 10 levels of difficulty and choose whether you want to play with an optional time limit to increase the challenge. You can also take back a move if you have made a mistake, as well as save your game at any time."

The Customer Reviews are mixed, with some more knowledgeable chess players missing important options normally used while others are very pleased with it.

WORD SEARCH
Word Search, released 9 days ago, has quickly become the most popular puzzle in the Kindle store. In fact, it is #1 in Kindle eBook paid "Non-Fiction" currently and is #2 Bestseller in the Top 100 Paid "eBooks" as I write this (the rankings change quickly). :-).

Has anyone else noticed the changed spelling recently, from "e-books" to eBooks, used by many? It seems more permanent and less apologetic. No longer non-real books, in a way.

Oak Systems Leisure Software (Creator of the first Kindle Chess) is the company behind Word Search also.

In their product description, they write: "Locate and mark off words in the grid using the 5 way controller. Each word appears in a straight line, horizontally, vertically or diagonally in the grid - but be careful, sometimes the words are backwards! Play at your own pace or against the clock and see who can get the fastest time for each puzzle. Pause partway through a puzzle and return to where you left it. You can reset each puzzle and try it again as many times as you like. If you get stuck on a more challenging puzzle then you can give up and see the correct solution.

Fun for all ages, with categories from Animals to Best Movie Oscar, there are 50 themed 13x13 puzzles included in Volume 1 covering a wide variety of subjects..."

PANDA POET - 50% OFF THROUGH SUNDAY FEB 13 (Sorry I didn't notice the sale)
Spry Fox, creator of "Triple Town released Panda Poet in November. It has 24 customer reviews and 4-1/2 out of 5 stars.

Product description: "Discounted 50% off for a limited time (offer ends February 13th)...

With Panda Poet you use the letters on the game board to form words. Words formed from letters in open spaces create pandas. Words formed from letters near pandas make existing pandas grow.

The goal is grow the biggest panda possible. You get the highest scores from either creating the biggest possible panda or from forming the longest possible words.

To add to the challenge, each letter is only available for a fixed number of turns. Each time you enter a word, all the letters on the screen come one step closer to expiring. When a letter expires, it is replaced by a skull, which prevents you from growing your pandas in that direction. This makes playing Panda Poet a delicate balancing act: you must consider where a letter is located on the grid and how soon it will expire, not simply spell the longest word you can."

View the original article here

New Kindle for PC Update w/ Real Page Numbers & Touch for Win7 Tablets

2011-02-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

The Kindle for PC page has again been updated (see features of original, basic Kindle for PC) with the following new features:

Download the new version to enjoy these new features.
Real Page Numbers
See real page numbers for thousands of books in the Kindle Store. Now you can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class.Popular Highlights
See what our community of Kindle readers think are the most interesting passages in your books. If several other readers have highlighted a particular passage, then that passage will be highlighted in your book.Touch for Windows 7 Tablets
Enjoy a touch-friendly interface on Windows 7 tablet computers.As with all of our services, we plan to continue improving Kindle for PC. Below are some features we are thinking about bringing to Kindle for PC in the near future:
Library Management
A new way to manage and organize your content

Here's an image of how they implemented the Page numbers display that are included with Locations display for the computer version of Kindle.

The PREVIOUS big update in November added these features:

* Use the built-in dictionary to seamlessly look up the definitions of
English words without interrupting your reading.
* Read in the standard one-column mode or take advantage of a larger screen
with a multi-column view, which will automatically adjust
according to your screen size. [ Very slick. ]
* Choose whether you'd like to browse your library in a tile view or in a list view.

Examples of normal one-column book page mode and the multi-column view:
By the way, in the November changes that allow us to view by covers or by a detailed text listing, we have new sorting options:

1. TEXT listing: Sort by TYPE (New or Sample, at the top or bottom)
2. TEXT & COVER: Sort by LENGTH of book.

UPDATE, later same day
Les Bell posted in the Amazon forum the following:

' ... the problem seems to have been resolved - I just downloaded the latest version of K4PC [1.4.1 (31629)] and it seems to be displaying math & Greek characters correctly - albeit the book (Modeling and Reasoning with Bayesian Networks...) is displaying in a sans serif font, rather than the serif font I believe it was in previously. '

As before, the Kindle team says they'd like to hear from Kindle for PC users.
"You can send them to the Kindle team at kindleforpc-feedback@amazon.com or via the feedback form available in the application - we'd love to hear what you think"

View the original article here

Apple enforcing 30% take on e-reader apps for Amazon/B&N ? Not likely. - Update3

2011-02-22T11:05:00.000-08:00

WHAT WOULD APPLE BE SMOKING? (That image to the left applies only if they'd actually do what is described below.)

See also, UPDATE to include online zines that noted the stress on subscriptions today

As I write this blog article, I see that AppleInsider is quoting ONLY Apple's wording to publishers of *SUBSCRIPTION* apps and so far I see nothing new, especially anything saying the 30% wording applies to non-subscription legacy apps such as e-reader apps. At the time I wrote on Feb 1 and Feb 4, Sony had not detailed yet what the billing plans they submitted actually were.

30% of a bookseller's transaction would be 100% of bookseller's take via Apple's Agency Plan, and the e-reader-app bookseller would get nothing. That makes no sense.

Would Apple want to guarantee that those interested in reading e-books on a portable device will not choose the iPad for that? Would they be trying to help Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Android tablet makers sell their devices?

Why would I buy an iPad 2 when I know that Android tablet makers will not be charging e-reader vendors 30% of a sale when that is ALL the vendors and e-book sellers will be getting before an Apple fee, thanks to Apple's encouragement of the Agency Plan now used by the Big5 and responsible for raising e-book prices by about 50%?

In other words, as I said, the online booksellers make 30% on a sale, and Apple would want 100% of that. That's not possible. AppleInsider's Slash Lane writes that "Legacy apps must comply with Apple's App Store subscription rules by June 30" -- that's the headline. And the interpretation is:

' Software currently available in the iOS App Store that does not comply with Apple's newly enforced in-app subscription rules, such as the Amazon Kindle or Hulu+ applications, have until June 30 to comply or they could be removed. '

As I wrote February 4, Apple sent the following to subscription publishers and there was concern the policy would be extended to online-bookstore e-book reader apps:

' "For existing apps already in the App Store, we are providing a grace period to bring your app into compliance with this guideline," the letter to publishers from Apple reads. "To ensure your app remains on the App Store, please submit an update that uses the In App Purchase API for purchasing content, by June 30, 2011." '

So, that is old news. Apple Insider also uses the Digital Daily's interpretation:

' That means applications like Amazon Kindle, Hulu+, and Netflix now have less than four months to add an in-app purchasing option to their App Store software. And for those content providers, Apple will take a 30 percent cut of all sales made within the application. '

Apple Insider and Digital Daily are applying subscription "30%" rules made for subscription publishers to non-subscription e-book seller apps As I said before, I think most might understand attempting to dun Sony/BN/Amazon 5% for space in a highly-traffic'd area for one's sales-stand, and even that might be questionable to online booksellers where book-sales margins (expenses etc) are small.

Such a move would probably hurt Apple in many ways. Would Apple allow books sold through their device to be priced higher to take care of that 5% or 30%?
30% (100% of e-book profit) would ensure that all e-reader apps would leave the Apple store. Maybe Apple wants that? That's pretty doubtful.

Would loyal Apple users pay the premium just to get an e-book on the iPad? Would the booksellers get customer data from sales?

At any rate, there's little doubt that Steve Jobs's Apple would try to get all that it could, but 30% of e-bookseller transaction (100% of seller-profit) would be just irrational.

We'll see. The main question from today's articles would be, "Is Apple Suicidal?" because that's what they'd be, but I think that the percentage-rules cited for subscription-publishers in early Feb are being applied by the article writers to non-subscription e-booksellers.

Again, might Apple enforce an in-app iBookstore fee for other-vendor e-books? Sure. But not 100% of the bookseller's take -- and the wording cited today is still from early February communications.

Most of us had already said back then that there's a concern that the Sony e-book app rejection and in-app buying option (which differs from the subscription language) will apply to Amazon, B&N, and Sony et al.

UPDATING AS I GO
STEVE JOBS from TODAY
Steve Jobs in Press Release from today (prefaced by purpose of Apple statement:

' Apple® today announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store?, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. This is the same innovative digital subscription billing service that Apple recently launched with News Corp.’s “The Daily” app...
...
“Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app.
We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers.” '

TRUDY MULLER ON SONY AS E-BOOK SELLER FEBRUARY 1
In response to the Sony rejection on its e-reader app, Trudy Muller said:

' "We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines," Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller told Ars. "We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase." '

TRUDY MULLER IN RESPONSE TODAY TO COMPUTERWORLD ON SUBSCRIPTION MODEL
Computerworld *interpreted* a response from Trudy Muller today as applying to Amazon/B&N e-book sales through their device-apps.

' Apple today unveiled the details of its App Store subscription plan, and confirmed that it will demand its usual 30% from publishers who sell content within their apps. '
[Note the word 'content' for subscription content, later interpreted as e-book content.]
...
[Computerworld goes on, below, to describe what subscription-content providers must do and then interprets it as a general requirement for Amazon's general content (the current Kindle apps don't yet do blogs or periodicals but someday may and would likely be separate apps that are subscription apps, and subscription rules would then apply to them at that time though not precisely the 30% for publishers, who are not re-sellers and who still 'earn' the other 70%).]
[Computerworld goes on to interpret the Apple statement about subscription-apps to include one-time e-book apps situation too.]
'Publishers and content sellers must remove any links within their apps to outside-the-App Store purchasing options, Apple said, a requirement that means Amazon.com must eliminate the link to the Kindle Store that it currently provides in its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad apps.'
[Later on, Computerworld reports on Trudy Muller's response to their questions about today's press release on subscription content. ]
' Later Tuesday, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller confirmed that those rules apply not only to newspaper and magazine publishers, but also to content sellers like Amazon.com, which offers a Kindle app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.'
[ All emphases mine. ] '

The concern today has to do with interpreting "content sellers" to mean e-book content sellers as well as "subscription-content sellers" in connection with a press release focused on subscription-apps.

Now, Apple's Trudy Muller may have meant e-book apps too, but she answered in the context of the subscription-content press release. If she does mean Amazon and B&N e-books also, it contradicts what she said about the Sony e-reader app two weeks ago and it means that the e-reader apps will leave Apple or charge 143% on top of the book price (if Apple allows) and no one would use Apple's iBookstore for these other vendors' e-books unless they were iPad loyalists in the extreme, willing to cover Apple's added fee for the books.

UPDATE - 5:40 PM same day (Original post 2/15/11, 2:41 PM)
Mashable's Christina Warren does draw attention to the fact that the focus of today's announcement was on subscriptions. Here is her take on that aspect:

' Earlier this month, the Sony Reader app for iOS was reportedly not accepted into the App Store because it violated some of Apple’s policies. At the time, it was unclear if the cited policy violations would extend to other e-book applications like those from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Because Apple’s latest remarks concentrate on subscription content, it still isn’t clear to us if these new provisions also apply to other types of apps. We don’t know if this means that applications — like Amazon’s Kindle app that sell purchases a la carte — must now remove links to outside web stores.
The Kindle app for iOS received an update Monday and, for the record, the link to the Amazon Kindle website is still in the app. '

UPDATE2 - Here's another way to look at some differences that must be taken into consideration for any vending-stand fee coming down the pike.

30% of an EBOOK SELLER's transaction is 100% of the seller's take/
30% of a PUBLISHER's transaction is 30% of the publisher's take.

Also, read Mike Perry's thoughtful analysis in two parts in the comments area

UPDATE3 - Here's The Telegraph (UK) on Subscription vs "One-Off"
Shane Richmond, Head of Technology for Telegraph Media Group, writes today:

' ...That has led to speculation about what this will mean for an app such as Amazon’s Kindle app, which provides a link to purchase from Amazon’s website. It may be that Apple intends to force ebook retailers to offer ebooks for sale within their apps and take 30 per cent of thosee sale. That would force ebook retailers to raise their prices or lose money. Maybe that’s what will happen.
However, that’s not what Apple has announced today. This is about subscription not sales of one-off products. If you’re a publisher and you want to allow people to subscribe to your publication then you must offer the same subscription price within your app as you offer on your website and Apple will take 30 per cent of the in-app subscriptions. '

View the original article here

Kindle Book Recommendations: Science Fiction Staples

2011-02-22T06:40:00.000-08:00

This shouldn’t come across as much of a surprise to anybody, given my admitted love of high tech reading and the tools associated with it, but I’m a fan of the SF genre. Yeah, I know, I’m playing to a stereotype by implying you can make the assumption there, but I don’t care. Now, having made that declaration, on to the Kindle-related stuff. That’s what we’re here for, right? Here are a few things I’ve picked up recently on my Kindle that I can honestly suggest you also grab when you get a chance.

This one won’t come as a surprise for many people. From what I know, it’s one of the most popular Science Fiction titles ever written. I finally picked it up, with high hopes after having loved Cryptonomicon for years, and I was not disappointed.

Without giving too much away, it’s an adventure in a dystopic America in the near future after the collapse of the dollar, and the government with it. You’ve got sword fights, social commentary, impressively nuts religious leaders, an intriguing early view of the potential embodied by the internet as a stage for social interaction, and much more. Most of all, it’s one of those books that you have so much fun reading that you lose track of time. To me, that’s the best mark of a great title. Did I mention that it’s got a main character named “Hiro Protagonist”?

The Kindle Edition is $8.10

You’ve heard of Dune. Ok, I can’t be 100% sure of that, but let’s face it…you’re heard of Dune. Between the movie of the same name, the mini-series, and the countless sequels (both those made by the original Herbert and the many horrible new ones his son keeps coming up with), it would be more than a little surprising for somebody to have never at least heard the name.

How many people have read it recently, though, if they ever have at all? This is a genuinely great SF novel that has held up perfectly. Besides the story being genuinely interesting in its own right, it’s good food for thought. On the one hand, I can’t really think of much I could say that isn’t right on the Amazon page without giving away details. On the other hand, I couldn’t describe it in ten times as much space as I have to work with. Really, if you like good serious SF reads, grab it. Heck, even if you’ve read it before, I’ll bet it’s been a while! Give it another go.

The Kindle Edition is $15.99

You know, I have more that I want to recommend here that I don’t have anything I can usefully say beyond “Here, check these out!” For the most part they’re so enmeshed in the genre that there’s nothing I could add productively to the discussion anyway.

Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card Kindle Edition: $5.99

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams Kindle Edition: $9.99

Hyperion – Dan Simmons Kindle Edition: $6.39

Really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course. I hope you all enjoy as much as I do and have. As always, feel free to send me suggestions for future recommendations. That’s where this idea came from and it’s always a good time. It’s times like these, going through what I consider some of the basic components of my library that I most love having made the move to the Kindle. Never have to worry about finding that paperback you put down ten years ago and haven’t seen since!

View the original article here

Did the Rise of Amazon(and its Kindle) Doom the Brick & Mortar Book Store?

2011-02-22T03:34:00.000-08:00

These days there is a lot of talk about how, though it’s great that the Kindle is taking off and eBooks are becoming ubiquitous, it’s really a shame that the local bookseller is becoming a dying breed as a result. It is definitely a little bit sad to have so few options when you want to go out shopping. I miss the smaller stores. What brings all this to mind today is the news that Borders(NYSE:BGP) is filing Bankruptcy this week.

Now, admittedly you can’t call Borders a small retailer anymore, but that is how they started. The fact is, book stores in general just aren’t doing as well since websites, specifically Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN), became the go-to retailer for all your reading needs. As much as many stores, Borders in particular but others as well, try to diversify their product in addition to doing everything they can think of to attract readers, it’s hard to maintain the local face of a company in spite of declining sales. Even Barnes & Noble(NYSE:BKS), pretty much the big name in books for as long as I can remember, isn’t exactly doing as well for itself as it needs to be in spite of their efforts (and successes) with the Nook.

Given my own enthusiasms, I would like to give credit to the Kindle. It’s great hardware, has an impressive platform behind it, and the selection that we have available as a result is second to none. In many ways it’s like you’ve got a book store in your pocket, assuming you prefer garments with slightly over sized pockets.

Much as I’d like to place credit there, though, the trend began before the Kindle was more than a thought and a hope. Maybe not even that. This year is the first time the eBook is competing with the paperback on equal terms from the start, and it’s definitely the first time we can expect to see any comparable numbers between Kindle book sales and the print medium as a whole. eBooks are a big deal, but they’re just now realizing their potential.

What changed the game for the Brick & Mortar crowd, the way I see things, was the convenience and the successful marketing of the Amazon.com website. It wasn’t the first place to buy books online, but it has had a great selection from the start and the best selection anywhere since fairly soon after it got moving. Add in the functionality as a used book vendor, the inclusion of other media (and non-media) options besides books in the same purchase without there being any effect on your dedicated book browsing, and the decent review system that lets you improve your chances of getting the most for your money and there are options that no book store, small or large, has been able to keep up with.

So yeah, in a very real way I think that it is Amazon’s work that we see when book stores close down left and right. But they did it by giving people what they wanted and doing a better job than the stores that closed. Sure, I’ll miss being able to walk into a Borders when they’re gone (as most of them will be soon), but given the choice I know I’d rather shop through Amazon most of the time anyway. Apparently most people feel the same way.

View the original article here

Twilight Series for Kindle: Featuring Twilight

2011-02-21T23:02:00.000-08:00

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer that has been a huge book and movie box office success. You can get the whole Twilight saga on your Kindle or Kindle DX for $36.99. This is a great deal considering individual Kindle Bestsellers usually run about $9.99 or up each.

The first book in the Twilight series: Twilight, introduces Bella Swan, who moves from Arizona to Washington State. There, she falls in love with Edward Cullen, a vampire. After showing up out of nowhere to save Bella from getting hit by a bus, Bella and Edward form a deep bond. Jacob Black, a Native American who gains the powers to morph into a wolf, competes with Edward for Bella’s love. He only had a minor role in Twilight, but takes on a much larger one in the later books in the series.

Meyer on Jacob’s character:

“Jacob was my first experience with a character taking over—a minor character developing such roundness and life that I couldn’t keep him locked inside a tiny role….From the very beginning, even when Jacob only appeared in chapter six of Twilight, he was so alive. I liked him. More than I should for such a small part…“

The Twilight series has captured the attention of teenagers and adults alike, and has rivaled the success of Harry Potter. Vampires have been a really popular theme in recent years due to the success of the Twilight series. The romance element, particularly the love triangle going on between Bella, Edward and Jacob, adds another twist that readers of many ages can relate to.

A few helpful reviews about the series as a whole:

H.K. Sidhu “reading goddess”

“The story arc draws you in and captures you to the point where you can not put the books down wanting to know what is going to happen next and whether Bella and Edward make it together as a couple and to see how they get through all the hurtles that are thrown their way by the antagonists within the story (who by the way are so interesting on their own that you want to know more about them and the world of Stephanie Meyer’s vampires and their evolution). Suffice it to say, by the time I finished reading this series I felt bereft that there was no more books and that the series and come to its end…”

K. Foster “K. Foster, M. Msc” provides a good list of the themes in the series:

“Besides the obvious romantic theme in this series there are many other messages. Such as: acceptance of others, family relationships, getting over prejudices, spirituality, and following your dream.”

John

“The story of Edward and Bella is the story of true love. a story I can relate to… she writes of the love they have for one another in such a way that it grabs you by the hand as she takes you for a walk thru Forks, WA and the humor, jealously, anger, heartbreak, and extreme love of two young kids looking for what all people around the world are looking for…”

So, question: Are you Team Edward, or Team Jacob?

View the original article here

Is the Kindle a Money Maker for Amazon?

2011-02-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

Ever since Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) released their 2010 4th Quarter Financial Report on Thursday, I’ve been seeing a lot of speculation on the profitability of the Kindle eReader itself. Mainly, I think, owing to the language of the report itself, which is definitely open to closer examination.

The language used avoids commenting on the success or failure of the device itself beyond reiterating the previous announcement that the Kindle has sold millions of units this quarter. Nothing really to object to there, just no real useful information. There is the implied connection between their sales of the third generation Kindle and the eBook pushing past paperbacks in sales numbers in the declaration that “after selling millions of third-generation Kindles with the new Pearl e-ink display during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com”, but we all know that correlation does not necessarily imply causation.

We know that the Kindle units are selling pretty impressively and that Kindle books are doing the same, but only Amazon has solid information on whether the Kindle device is really responsible for the prosperity of the Kindle platform as a whole. When you can access your purchases on pretty much any device with a screen you might own, as in this case, there is some question as to whether or not a single purpose device like the Kindle can have a huge impact in the eyes of many.

A few even take their speculation a step further and claim that due to discrepancies between the reported increase in net sales(up 11%) and a decrease in projected profit(down 2%), there is reason to believe that Amazon is taking a loss on every Kindle unit sold. Now, I’m not a financial guy at all. I am not going to claim to be, so I can’t directly address this argument. What I can do is look at it coupled with the language that I mentioned before and draw some potential conclusions.

Again, don’t trust my numbers or anything about them. I’m drawing more from people making a big deal about them than I am making use of any primary information. That said, if it is true that profits slightly lessened in spite of sales numbers on Amazon’s eBook distribution system hitting new and impressive milestones, it is definitely possible that there is some degree of subsidization of Kindles going on. The implication that goes along with that, however, is that the Kindle device is a primary, or more likely the primary, source of users for the Platform as a whole.

Can we assume that we’re actually getting the hardware for less than it’s worth? Sure, nothing’s stopping you. Amazon is unlikely to ever release hard numbers on the topic anyway. If they are, though, then I think that they know something we can’t be sure of. Namely, that the Kindle apps don’t play quite as large a part in the success of the venture as many people like to think. Then again, maybe the differences in the numbers have nothing to do with the Kindle and Amazon is just expecting somewhat lower than usual dishwasher sales this quarter. Again, I’m just a layman trying to apply my own reasoning to the situation and even then I don’t know what side I come down on, but it’s interesting to consider.

View the original article here

Kindle Books Hit New Milestone: Beating Out Paperbacks

2011-02-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

So, as I recall it was last summer when Kindle books began beating out purchases of Hardcovers on the Amazon site. This was a big deal because it illustrated for people that eBooks were pretty clearly here to stay in a way that previous announcements of numbers (not that Amazon was the company making any involving numbers) and vague statements about the future of the industry couldn’t do. Now, Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) has issued a release announcing that in addition to achieving their first ever $10 Billion quarter, Kindle books are now outselling paperbacks by a fair amount.

Specifically, there are 115 Kindle Editions going out for every 100 paperbacks. There’s really no way to significantly top that as a milestone, that I can think of. From here on out, it’s all going to be iterations of the same. “Twice as many as paperbacks” and that sort of thing. A similar bit of info was put into the press release to tell us that over the same period as that being measures for that comparison with paperbacks, Kindle books outsold hardcovers by a factor of three. So, yeah. Big year.

Now, Amazon has a reputation for only giving us rather fuzzy numbers when it comes to anything having to do with the Kindle. We know that Kindle device sales numbers for the most recent generation are in the millions, but no more than that other than that they’re a bigger seller than the ever popular Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Nice to have some sort of reference point, of course, but hardly anything you can do specific analysis with.

Overall, good news, but it’s hard to say how good. We know that Kindle sales, and therefore almost certainly Kindle book sales, are up. The apps that they release for practically every possible platform with a screen, portable or otherwise, are ever more available and easy to use. This is good news for Kindle Edition sales as well. The only thing that we’re vague on right now is how good. No word if part of it involves a decline in paperback sales, or if half the sales for the year were immediately post-Christmas. There’s simply no way to determine if there was something huge making this possible. Was it, however unlikely, the announcement of Kindle for Windows Mobile 7 that put sales over the edge? The world may never know…

Regardless, some other points of fun information were included as well. There are now over 810,000 Kindle Editions for sale through the Kindle Store(and that excludes all free books, since that would bring it up into the millions). Of those books, over 670,000 are available for under $10. While I would love to have solid numbers on the Under $5 range, that’s still encouraging. Wider acceptance means better selection and hopefully more opportunities for readers. Maybe next year, Amazon won’t have any reason to point out that their sales number comparison didn’t exclude books with no Kindle Edition counterpart because that will be so rare as to not be an issue. Ok, yeah, that one’s probably a good way off yet, but it’ll be nice when we do see it.

View the original article here

Free E-books on Malay Archipelago in Sejarah Melayu Library

2011-02-21T10:21:00.000-08:00

This source for free e-books, articles and academic papers will probably be appreciated by very particular type of readers. Sejarah Melayu Library’s resources focus on Malay Archipelago (also called Indonesian Archipelago) and surrounding areas. All e-books, articles and academic papers are available for your Kindle for free and in .PDF format.

Basically the library has seven sections:
General section contains miscellaneous materials on Malay Archipelago that (I am guessing) do not really fit into other categories.
Histories and Other References focuses on history and geography.
Travelogue is self-explanatory: travelers’ notes about Malay Archipelago.
Language section contains dictionaries & free grammar e-books.
Fiction consists of novels, fables, poetry and other literary materials that have connections to Malay Archipelago.
Papers and Articles section has journal articles and academic papers available for downloading.
News and Dispatches has historical newspapers, gazettes, chronicles, and reports.

The layout and navigation for Sejarah Melayu Library is straightforward. Notice that you need to press the tiny plus signs in the menu, instead of the titles. There is no registration required to use these materials. All documents I checked out were in good quality PDF.

I think, this is a precious source for the scholars doing a research on Malay Archipelago; intrigued travelers planning to visit the area; and those hungry for information polymaths.

In addition to Sejarah Melayu Library’s resources, Amazon offers somewhat outdated, but free Kindle Books on this topic:
The Malay Archipelago, the Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise; a Narrative of Travel, With Studies of Man and Nature Volume I by Alfred Russel Wallace (Volume II is also available for free); Through the Malay Archipelago by Emily Richings; and Blown to Bits The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne.

Happy researching!

View the original article here

Kobo’s Reading Life is Interesting

2011-02-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

At a time when the bigger names in eReading like Kindle and Nook are probably a little bit nervous about the future of their place on Apple’s devices, Kobo comes along and introduces an interesting and fun new set of features specifically for them that might be exactly what they need to attract new users. Reading Life, as they have named the feature, is a combination of social networking and a game-like achievement system that should provide an interesting contrast against other similar platforms and their offerings.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, and I’ll assume that’s most of you, you do have the same ability to share passages from your current read over Facebook that you get with the Kindle and Kindle apps. You also get to share, in detail, when you start reading a book, when you buy a book, when you annotate a book, etc. You also get some measure of progress withing the book in terms of progress in the form of both percentage completed and total page turns.

What I found most intriguing, however, were the introduction of “awards” that you earn by reading and discovery of things within the substance of the book. In Reading Life enabled books (making the untested assumption that you don’t get completely similar experiences from just any book you buy), you can keep track of where the action is taking place, or when you meet a character for the first time, and post these to your Facebook page as you read. Sometimes this even results in coupons, to judge by what I’ve seen so far. Coupons are always good, right?

Anyway, I like this as a general trend. The big problem I see, however, is the heavy insistence on Facebook as the medium of choice. I get that it’s pretty much the default for everybody wanting to do anything in any way with anybody these days, but that still means that the whole system is reliant on a single service that is completely outside the control of the app developers. Now, I really don’t think Facebook is going anywhere any time soon(and whether or not that’s a good thing is up to every person to decide for themselves), but this strikes me as limiting. I would prefer to have some degree of linked networking inherent in the Kobo service that just piggybacked on existing Facebook features where applicable. This would have the added benefit of making it easier, one would assume at least, to integrate the actual Kobo eReader along with any other apps all into a cohesive system.

Depending on how things go in the current Apple vs Amazon/Barnes & Noble/Anybody who sells eBooks situation in the near future, I can definitely see something similar popping up on the Kindle and Kindle apps as well as the Nook line. If there’s anything that the gaming community has learned over the years, it’s that people love to be able to look at tangible progress and compare notes on who has achieved what and when. I could honestly see this being used as a teaching tool under the right circumstances. Let’s hope it takes off in some form.

View the original article here

Hanvon Color eInk Reader Revealed

2011-02-21T02:30:00.000-08:00

One of the things that I failed to mention in my previous post on CES Goodies was the announcement and demonstration of the first ever Color E Ink eReader. I’d like to say that this is the beginning of a trend that will eventually lead to a Kindle with color of some sort, but there are concerns to be addressed yet. Here’s where things stand so far.

Hanvon, a company primarily focused on handwriting recognition and OCR software, known in the eReader marketplace for their WISEreader line of eReading devices, had a demo model for their new 9.7? color eReader. There are any number of videos of it floating around the net. This new eReader is expected to be released in May to a Chinese audience at around $500. For what is effectively a first generation device, not a bad price, I suppose.

The device will have a resolution of 1200×1600, the usual E Ink lack of constant screen refresh (this being what makes the battery life so much better than your typical screen options), and a resistive touchscreen capable of handling handwritten annotation and sketching. On paper, looks pretty good, right? The problems that I see at this point are two-fold.

First, the screen is badly washed out compared to what users will be accustomed to. The lack of back lighting makes this somewhat inevitable, of course, but it’s more of an impediment to new users than it is a selling point right now. It could just be that Hanvon was not able to display the device to show off its best side, but you almost get the impression that the color will only be noticeable either up close or under truly bright light.

The second problem is the refresh rate. I know I’ve been the first to tell people that complaining about that on an eReader is silly, but this seems to take it a little far. Average page turn time comes in noticeably over 2 seconds for every push of the button, including navigating the simple black and white menu. I do not get the impression that this is a product of the screen, from what I’ve been able to find, but rather a product of the GPU that Hanvon chose to go with for this model. I get that it’s a big screen and they’re trying to conserve as much battery life as possible and all that, but consumers have just started getting used to E Ink screens in their products now that the refresh rate is comparable to a page turn in a book. Nobody really wants to go back this far.

Basically, I don’t see this one being competition for even the existing Kindle devices, and I can kinda see where Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) is coming from in not jumping on the color bandwagon the second a viable screen comes along. Sure, I’d love to be able to get color on a Kindle, or whatever they decide to call the new one when it comes out, but quality should take precedence over speeding to the release date. This will only be cool if it’s done right.

View the original article here

Apple Issues Kindle an Ultimatum

2011-02-20T21:34:00.000-08:00

Since pretty much the start of the Kindle platform, it’s been all about the availability. Sure, you can get yourself a physical Kindle and it’s amazing, but part of the convenience is knowing that whether you’re at work and have a free moment at the PC or on the subway with nothing but your iPhone, you can pull up your book and pick up right where you left off. It’s always nicer to read on your Kindle, but the apps are what makes the eBook stand out for many people as a worthwhile purchase.

Unfortunately, and whether that is unfortunate for Amazon or for iOS users remains to be seen, Apple has decided that eReading apps are far too popular for them not to take a cut if they can manage it. Sony’s Reader app was just denied a place in the App store and others dealers, including Amazon, will have until March 31st to bring themselves into line with the newly enforced policy related to that denial. Namely, users are no longer going to be allowed to view purchased material from outside sources unless that same material is available for purchase directly through the app that would be used to view it. Which means, basically, that Apple is wanting a 30% cut of all eBook sales.

What happens next is still up in the air, but the ball is in Amazon’s court, so to speak. It’s possible that we could see them do nothing. Judging entirely by the few iPad users I know, many would be outraged by the removal of the Kindle app and bought it for very little besides its capability as a reading device. Frankly, I gather that iBooks has proven disappointing.

It’s also entirely possible that Amazon could cave in and put a convenient purchase option in their Apps, with a markup for the convenience. I don’t know how that would square exactly with the Apple rules in the long run, but at least there would be some way to buy besides the Amazon website’s Kindle Store. Maybe some people would even use it, not knowing better or because it’s quicker than flipping over to a web browser.

The one thing I absolutely cannot see happening is Amazon just letting Apple take a 30% cut out of existing purchase prices. One of their biggest pushes in the last year has been to attract new authors interested in publishing cheap eBooks directly through the site. The big push is the 70% royalty option, of course. Does anybody really believe that Amazon is willing to give up their cut in its entirety? Or that the attraction for authors would be nearly as great if they knew that they would only be getting 49% instead of their supposed 70% on any iOS purchase(($1 *.7)*.7=$0.49)? I don’t.

When you sum all this up, it seems like the only people that Apple can hope to hurt with this move will be their own customers. I get that they feel like they deserve money since it’s their device being used, but it’s a bit late to start pulling that. Call having the app a value adding opportunity for your hardware sales and leave it at that. The Kindle vs iPad comparisons and debates are only fun when they both do the same job still!

View the original article here

Reactions to Free E-books

2011-02-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

Lately, I can’t help myself but notice a new emerging movement of free e-books haters. Mind you, I’m not talking about the pirated free e-books haters. That emotional response to copyright infringement is congruent. I mean a group of people, who dislikes the fact that:

1) free e-books exist;

2) free e-books are popular among readers.

Where do I see these people? Well, they tend to hang out around Kindle-related websites leaving vehement anti-free e-books comments here and there. You probably know what I’m talking about.

To my astonishment, I discovered a common trait among the free e-book haters (how about I just call them FEH): they tend to be authors themselves. So, why would the wise writers be so against the fact that their fellow writer decided to offer his/hers work for free?

It appears that FEH perceive readers as ungrateful, evil crocodiles who only want to consume free stuff and never pay for the literary labor. Well, that’s just silly! A thankful reader, who enjoyed a freebie will always go looking for more books by the author he/she enjoyed.

So, I have a theory. You see, FEH usually are recently sprouted authors with one e-published work, with some useless subject matter, say How to Choose Your Paper Mate Pen Wisely: a Very Thorough Guide (sponsored by Paper Mate). So, if they put their sole literary child out there for free, then how would they make their first billion? And that’s how we get “Free e-books spoil people! Let’s close all the public libraries!” (© imaginary FEH).

Of course, this theory relies on a completely hypothetical situation, which is most likely absurdly inaccurate. However, the point is that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) influenced publishing towards making it more accessible. As a result, the modern literary world not only expanded, but also became more commercialized. There are many emerging authors, who write not for the love of writing, but for the chance to “win” a lottery in publishing business. And the concept of free books is just standing in their way.

I hope I’m wrong about it. Although, if I’m somewhere close to the truth – dear FEH, your chances to make a fortune on a useless guide will come true only in case if a million of e-book shoppers will stumble and fall on “buy this guide” button. Or, it might be one unfortunate shopper – stumbling and falling a million times. Perhaps, you might need to reconsider changing a profession from a pure business person to a business person, who writes well. And very possibly, the hostility toward free e-books will somewhat diminish in its proportions.

Yours truly,

- one (e-)book(/guide) author

View the original article here

An Interview With the WOWIO CEO

2011-02-20T13:14:00.000-08:00

We’ve talked quite a bit here in the past about the potential for advertising entering into digital book media. The convenience provided by eBooks, both for readers in easy acquisition and for publishers in terms of easily and instantly updating an “edition” of a text without need for the delay of printing and shipping, is undeniable and provides all sorts of potential for advertisers. Intuitively, it would seem like you’re more receptive when doing something relaxing like laying back with a Kindle than you would be while watching the nightly news’s depictions of the day’s horrible political gaffs or crime sprees, wouldn’t it?

The big roadblock, so far, has been the reader response. Readers seem to absolutely hate the idea of ads in books on principal. In the interest of being fair, I’ll admit that I used to be of the same opinion. Over the past several years, however, I’ve gotten some great eBooks at discounted rates through sites like WOWIO at times when books would have been otherwise out of my budget for whatever reason, and I’ve been impressed with how they handle the ad insertion. It’s tasteful, unobtrusive, and doesn’t interject into the reading experience in any way. All the things you wouldn’t think advertising likely to be. And it made my books cheaper, which I like.

After I commented on the site a while back, our editor Andrei, actually got invited to do a little Q&A session with WOWIO CEO Brian Altounian. Needless to say, the opportunity was more than welcome. Here’s the result, for your enjoyment:

Please describe how WOWIO does its business and what sets it apart from other online book stores?

WOWIO isn’t so much a book store as an online destination and community that serves as a digital media distribution marketplace. Through our family of sites which includes WOWIO.com, DrunkDuck.com, WEvolt.com and PopGalaxy.com, we provide opportunities to create, share and consume digital media content, including comics and eBooks. Our goal is to provide the best, most entertaining content possible while helping generate revenue for creators and publishers.

The thing that really sets WOWIO apart from others is our business model. We’ve developed a model that is driven by advertising which allows us to reach the 18-35 year-old audience, and we’ve proven that this model can work. We’ve worked with several major partners such as Maxim Magazine and Fandango.com to bring rich, interactive content to our customers.

Another differentiator is our mobility. While some eBook providers limit where their customers can access their content, we allow our customers to access libraries over multiple devices and screen sizes. Since our library is synched to our website, as long as you can access the web you can access your content.

Lastly, our members are not just consumers, but also creators. They are a very vocal and creative community that provides insight and new, sharable content that similar online content providers cannot match. For example, budding comic book writers can upload their strips to DrunkDuck and allow others to view, comment and share the work.

What made you decide to go into eBook business?

I knew that media was headed in a digital direction, had watched the challenges faced by traditional media in making that transition, and saw an opportunity to establish a model and content experience that could scale appropriately for publishers, authors, creators and advertisers as this convergence occurred. We wanted to create a better business model that could change the landscape of eBooks and I think with our patent issuance and some of our recent advertising programs, we have begun to realize that vision.

In addition to the advertising subsidized model, we wanted to establish industry innovations around the blended media eBook “reader” experience – we add other forms of media, such as audio and video, into the text – to enhance levels of engagement, creativity and immersion and are on pace to set that bar again with some of our forthcoming projects. Basically, we saw a lot of needs that would emerge in the traditional publishing space as the digital transition occurred and felt that we could accelerate the gap between technology emergence and content provision through our family of digital distribution sites.

DRM-free is highly supported by book readers but it is not a popular idea with the publishers. How do you find the balance between the two? Do you believe that more good has come from it than harm for WOWIO so far?

I think more good will always come from increased solutions to digital innovation in the publishing space. The good thing about WOWIO is that we are fans, readers, publishers and creators, too – so we get perspective from all sides, we welcome healthy debate, and make the best decisions we can on behalf of our creators, publishers and customers.

People inherently have an attachment to the products they purchase and the DRM-free model allows us to fulfill those goals for customer experience. Customers will buy more books and go deeper on the list once they experience an author. Customers do not feel disconnected from a product they purchased and this model provides a sense of customer experience and loyalty to the product. It also rewards authors and publishers that provide a great reader experience with new and recurring customer bases.

Many consumers have strong negative attitude towards ads in eBooks because they fear that ads will be intrusive and disruptive to book reading experience. Has it been a problem for WOWIO so far? Do you foresee it being a problem in the future?

We understand the concerns consumers have with ads in eBooks but we’ve created a model that not only avoids the intrusion so many fear, but one that allows users easier access to their favorite content.

For example, ads do not pop up throughout the book. There is an ad at the beginning before a reader starts a story and one at the end when the book is completed. And since we use an ad-supported business model, that means ads help make the titles more affordable or even sometimes completely free. It also provides an additional source of revenue for our publishers as well as an opportunity to get their content into the hands of more readers.

The feedback on our model has been very positive so far. But we think that others jumping into this space will need to be mindful of how the ads are presented because if the ads are too intrusive or take away from the reading experience, it will have an extremely negative impact.

Ads in books have been tried before but with little success. What makes you believe that eBook ads will be more successful?

One of the reasons this model has not worked before is that the ads were presented in a very obstructive way. The ads got in the way of the content and discouraged people from finishing the book.

Ads in eBooks present a different kind of opportunity for publishers, advertisers and consumers because the new technology allows the ads to be presented in completely new ways. We can ensure that they remain unobtrusive but we can also include additional elements to enhance the user experience, such as outbound links and video content.

Also, the ads placed within eBooks on WOWIO allow us to offer our books for free or at a discounted price making them much more attractive to readers. For example, in the deal we did with Fandango, they provided a free copy of Gulliver’s Travels on WOWIO for users that purchased tickets to the recent Jack Black film through their site.

But the only way it will work in eBooks is if publishers and advertisers keep the experience simple, clean and refrain from ruining the reader’s experience.

Current ads in sponsored WOWIO eBooks are static and pre-defined when the book is published. Do you have plans for dynamic ads or ads that are more targeted to a specific user?

Absolutely. The technology allows us to insert multiple forms of advertisements, such as video or animated content. But our ads are not pre-defined – the type of ad and the titles that include ads will depend on the sponsor, the publisher and sometimes the author. We work with all parties involved to determine which titles are best suited for ads, how long they run and what content is included.

What devices do customers use to read eBooks sold by WOWIO? Is Amazon Kindle a popular choice?

Amazon Kindle is definitely a popular choice, probably due to the compact size and ease of use. Users can take it and access their library anywhere. But what’s great about WOWIO is that our customers aren’t limited to a specific device. So if your Kindle’s batteries are low and only have a laptop available, or if you don’t own an eReader at all, you can access your library and continue right where you left off.

Where do you envision eBook industry and your company in five years from now?

I see WOWIO emerging as a leading blended media distribution provider. WOWIO will continue to serve as a leader in eComics and eBooks, bringing on leading publishers in both comics and traditional publishers.

The publishing industry is going to change several times over the course of the next five years, all of which will be impacted by our patent, our advertising model and, most importantly, by our innovative blended media immersion approach. It will be an exciting space that we look forward to helping define with great end-user products and experiences in the years to come.

Admittedly, this was a fun one for me, so maybe I’m slightly biased. Not going to try to deny that. To me, however, the points made here make sense. If you can provide a customer with something they will enjoy for less money than they would pay for it elsewhere, they are likely to buy from you even if it means flipping through two pages of ad material. Kindle books can make this happen in a way that print books never could, which seems to me like it makes the use of ads inevitable. The only fear is that people new to the concept will take it too far rather than knowing where to draw the line and avoid damaging the reading experience.

To be honest, this solution even works out better for publishers than the current DRM model does. If you can provide an eBook cheap to free, people are unlikely to bother pirating it. And let’s be honest and say that it takes far less work to remove the DRM protection on your average eBook than it does to edit individual pages from said book. What’s in there is staying there unless it’s truly obtrusive or offensive. Publishers love security. There will always be a large portion of the audience who would rather pay more for an untouched copy of their book, but this is going to happen in order to make a connection with everybody else. Let’s hope that a company that really does understand their audience does play a big part in defining the future of this aspect of the industry.

View the original article here

Happy Birthday Jules Verne!

2011-02-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

Jules Verne was one of the first authors to venture into the Science Fiction genre during the mid to late nineteenth century. He wrote about underwater, space and air travel years before their time. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days are all available for free on your Kindle or Kindle DX.

Twenty Thousand Leagues features a submarine called Nautilus that was built to look like a fish. Smart idea because this way warships are fooled into thinking it is a real fish. The top fin of the submarine was used to destroy the ships.

As modern readers, some reviewers said that Twenty Thousand Leagues was really entertaining and a surprisingly good depiction of a modern invention.

Around the World in Eighty Days is full of adventure and other crazy shenanigans. Phileas Fogg and his companion, Passepartout, set off with limited funds to make it around the world in eighty days. By completing the task, they would win a large wager. Along the way, they nearly get arrested, get attacked by Indians, and nearly lose each other through missed connections to various part of the journey. It is crazy what lengths they have to go through to make each leg of the journey. We have it easy with cars and airplanes!

Verne uses A Journey to the Centre of the Earth to education readers on life in ancient times such as the Ice Age and when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. This book kind of reminds me of the show “Land of the Lost”, where a father and his two kids fall through a crack in the road, and end up in the dinosaur age. A Journey features Professor von Hardwigg, his nephew Harry, and their guide, Hans. The professor believe that there were tubes in volcanoes that lead to the center of the Earth. They come across many geological artifacts and other unexpected adventures. This book is said to be the most outdated of all of Verne’s books, but it still has some merit in terms of how it looks at the earlier times.

The Collected Works of Jules Verne consists of 36 novels and short stories written by the author, including the three that I just mentioned. This is a great deal, and the reviews are all really good. I like that you can have all of Verne’s works in one place.

For a little more background on Jules Verne’s life, take a look at my Kindle Screensaver Blog post.

View the original article here

Considering the Future of Kindle Publishing

2011-02-20T04:40:00.000-08:00

We can take it for granted today that the future of book publication revolves around the eBook. Yes, I will acknowledge that it is unlikely to ever be the sole medium available to readers, but I would definitely say that it will be increasingly seen as the standard from here on out. This was obvious even before Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) announced their recent comparison of paperback and Kindle book sales. So, where does this leave the publishing industry?

In many ways instances, new authors had come to see the big publishing houses as unapproachable. They had their big names that they were banking on and the chances of being the one new author in a hundred, or a thousand, to get a positive response was daunting. People have said that more authors are springing up than ever before. I don’t buy that. People write and it’s only now that it’s been possible for even hobbyists to get their work out there. That is what the move to digital book platforms like Amazon’s means for writers. A chance to survive, or fail, on your own merits without the need of attracting a patron. At least in theory. You’re going from a traditional payment play to some form of micro-payment system where every person with a Kindle is a potential backer of your work. Sure you lose security in the process, but you’d have only had that if you managed to break in in the first place.

It’s an interesting new environment that emphasizes different values than we might expect. The downside of self-publishing, no matter how easy the actual process of book creation is, is self-promotion. Not much of a chance that you’re going to be the next big thing if you can’t let people know that you wrote a book, that your book is about something they might be interested in, and, at a slightly later stage, that there are people who have read your book and enjoyed it. Word of mouth is useful, of course, but really this seems to turn writers into public figures to an unprecedented degree and would seem to cause success or failure to rest on the endurance and adaptability of the author rather than the strength of the work they have produced.

I’m going to admit that when I started writing this, I was taking a negative view on that. It seems to cheapen the experience and draw value away from what I really believe to be the only thing that should matter when you’re deciding what to read: the Book. But really, what’s new there? The only difference now is that readers really have a chance to vote with their wallets.

If you have a nearly unlimited field of books to choose from, it can’t be worse than an industry that seems to have basically coasted along on a couple dozen big names for as long as anybody can remember, can it? Yes, we’ll lose some great authors at the side of the road because they didn’t have the drive, personality, time, skills, or whatever, to be their own publicists, but there’s not much doubt in my mind that we’ve been losing far more than that before now than ever will be the case again. So…gonna go with the Kindle platform and its attached self-publishing options as being a good thing in my opinion. The draw away from the big publishing houses should help more than it hurts, I hope.

Any thoughts from you guys?

View the original article here

Kindle Books on Linux

2011-02-20T01:35:00.000-08:00

As of recently it is possible to run Kindle for PC application via Wine on Linux. I tested it on 64-bit install of Ubuntu 10.10 and put together this step-by-step instructions and a short review. Enjoy!

You will need to install Wine Windows Emulator 1.3.* or higher. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this version is still in the unstable branch and can’t be installed through default Ubuntu software repositories. Fortunately, installing the “unstable” branch is quite easy and it is not that unstable. Just type this command in your terminal window and it will all happen automatically. You will only need to accept the EULA for true-type fonts.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wine1.3

Navigate to “Kindle for PC” page in your favorite browser and download the installer.Start the installer via Wine either by right-clicking on the downloaded file or by changing the folder to downloads in the terminal and typing

wine ./KindleForPC-installer.exe

The app will install and prompt for registration just like it does on Windows.You can now enjoy your Kindle books on your Linux machine ;)

Overall the app runs and works nicely but with minor quirks. Books download, you can read books, highlight passages and annotate. I couldn’t get dictionary lookup to work. On one of the two machines that I’ve tested the application refused to download dictionary claiming that it is not in my archived items and on the other it froze the entire virtual machine when it attempted the download (could have been a VM issue). But aside from this quirk you can totally read Kindle books on your Linux box. You can also use Google and Wikipedia for definition lookup.

View the original article here

Some Thoughts on Free E-books

2011-02-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

How often do you read free e-books on your Kindle? Always? Most of the time? Sometimes? Rarely? Does the fact that the book is free, make your reading process more enjoyable? Yes? No? Maybe?

As I’m looking for different sources for free e-books libraries, I come to conclusion that every single source for free e-books has some disadvantages. Aside from Project Gutenberg and ManyBooks.net (most of its books originate from Gutenberg), all of the free e-book libraries are highly commercialized. It really depends, which way a website owner decides to go – either infest a book catalogue’s pages with ads; create membership fees to highly disadvantage free membership’s choices; or even insert advertisement pages in the “free” e-books.

Of course, it’s understandable. There is absolutely no profit for these websites’ owners to invest their time in producing high quality free e-books. So, the free e-books theme is just a way for many to bring users to the website. And advertisements are their actual products. I see so many fake free e-book sites without real content – it’s starting to get on my nerves. It appears that all the domain names with “free e-books” are taken for these exact purposes. To find one site, be it with ads, but containing actual e-books, I go through ten fake ones.

I mean, really, ginormous kudos to Gutenberg for doing what they are doing. And if you are feeling generous, I do encourage you to make a donation to Gutenberg Project to keep them alive. It is tax-deductable.

Another issue with free e-books is that, of course, they are poorly edited. Even Amazon freebies’ content suffers in the quality: as some people noticed that most of Amazon Free Kindle books have editing errors (such as missing passages). Also, my beloved Gutenberg’s e-books are not all perfectly formatted.

Do you notice when a book is poorly edited? Does it bother you much?

View the original article here

Kindle 4 Thoughts & Hopes

2011-02-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

Color eReaders are getting more and more press as time goes on. Now that we have the Hanvon release just months away, there’s not really much room left to say that non-LCD color displays aren’t ready for release into the market yet. As such, it’s pretty reasonable to expect that 2011 will see the release of a new Kindle. Call it the Kindle Color, Kindle 4, or whatever you want…we already had a number of excellent ideas from readers about that in another post…it’s all but to be taken for granted at this point. What will we be getting along with it though?

Here are the major things I’m hoping to see when the time comes:

6? Display w/ Higher Resolution

Yes, I know some people are clamoring for an increase in screen size and this isn’t really any different from what we have now. To me, the screen is the right size already, we just need better resolution. Also, it helps keep the Kindle distinct from your average 7? Tablet, which I can’t help but feel is important. eReaders have got to continue to stay their own category if we’re going to avoid major compromise in quality in favor of more tablet/phone type features.

More User Customization

User-defined nested folders, personalized screen savers, more sorting options, an improves search function, basically anything that will make the process of using the Kindle move faster and more pleasantly so I can get back to reading on it.

EPUB Support

I know, fat chance, but we can dream, right? It would save some people, myself included, loads of trouble on eBook conversion and it would make library usage finally possible.

Optional Color and/or Media Integration

One of the things that worries me about the new release is the potential for intrusive advertising. I’ve already said that I think WOWIO does a pretty great job of avoiding that, but they’re not the only ones out there. Definitely wanting to avoid talking ads, horribly blatant product placement mid-text, and other such distracting things. A setting to switch things to the classic Kindle monochrome would be great, just in case.

Restored Memory Card Slot

Much as this doesn’t come up for me personally, I used to work for a company that was trying to use Kindles to help visually impaired kids get their reading done using Text to Speech and Audiobooks. It worked pretty well, but you could only have so many Audiobooks at a time. What if I wanted to load a whole school year’s worth of audio books on for my kid or something? I feel like that should be an option. Which leads into the next point…

Improved Audio Controls

Let’s face it, what we have now is a little sparse. I’d like to see some improvements, perhaps even when it comes to song selection while reading?

That’s all I’ve got for the moment. Some of these are long shots, others might be already in the works for all I know. There’s some good discussion going on over in the Kindle web forum about exactly this topic. Check it out and chime in with your opinions, if you have any. The way I figure it, the more input Amazon gets on what its customers want, the better the product will be in the end.

View the original article here

Borders Bankruptcy Details

2011-02-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

I know I mentioned this the other day in passing, when it was just an incredibly probable rumor I believe, but Borders(NYSE:BGP) is officially filing for Bankruptcy. As one might expect, they’re not about to just disappear, but it seems the Kindle is having its effect on the local book store ever more visibly.

The current plan appears to be a reorganization involving the closing of between 200 and 275 stores, thirty percent or more of the total chain, with the final number being dependent on what sort of concessions are able to be attained from the leaseholders on the 75 stores in limbo at this time. These 200+ stores are doing poorly enough right now that they are costing the company millions of dollars every week with little chance that number would have been able to turn around in the immediate future.

As much as it’s a bit disconcerting to get a reminder once again that the local book store you can just walk into whenever you want may soon be a memory, there’s a certain amount of irony in the reminder when you consider how recently people lamented the failure of the locally-owned book store in the face of big name megastores springing up all over the country. Borders was one of the driving forces behind that move and now they can’t keep up either. Something of a failure to adapt, perhaps.

What this means for your average Kindle fan or user is, perhaps unsurprisingly enough, not much. Borders has been a retailer for a number of eReader devices over the past few years, including the fairly popular Kobo eReader, and was in fact a big factor for a short time when they brought the Kobo to the US and provided the then-expensive Kindle with a competitively priced counterpart that could be seen right in a store. In spite of this, however, the Kobo is not and has never been a Borders controlled device or platform.

This may be the big factor in the Borders downfall, when it comes right down to it. Barnes & Noble(NYSE:BKS) hasn’t been doing amazingly in the past few years, but their Nook has been nothing but helpful and the Nook Color has an impressive following. The Kindle is obviously not so much connected directly to any brick & mortar book store, but its widespread availability and the robust platform behind it has pretty much defined the eBook industry as we see it today. For Borders to think to get by in this newest stage of the book industry riding on the innovations and productions of other companies while offering little to no cohesive core to bind them all together may have been a bit unrealistic.

If you happen to find yourself near one of the Borders stores being shut down, be on the lookout for fliers and posters because it appears that there will be stock liquidation sales at any number of locations as the restructuring moves forward. Grab what you can while it’s there and cheap! Should you find yourself book store free following the closings, hopefully a Nook or Kindle will hold you over until something better comes along in your neighborhood.

View the original article here

Kindle Applications

2011-02-19T08:59:00.000-08:00

Kindle for iPhone or iPod touch gives you about all of the features you can get on a regular Kindle or Kindle DX. You can download any of the books from the Kindle Store, sync to pages and adjust the font. Kindle for iPhone or iPod touch uses a backlit screen so you can read your book in the dark if you want to. The home screen allows you to sort your books by recently added, author, or title.

Additional features include the ability to download the book in the background for IOS 4.0 devices, read free and out of copyright books from Project Gutenberg and other similar sources. For a more comprehensive list of features go check out the Kindle for iPhone page on Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).

Software requirement: IOS 3.0

To install: Search for Kindle for iPhone in the iTunes App Store on your computer or on your iPhone or iPod touch. Get the latest version: 2.5.1.

The Windows PC Kindle Application allows you to read your Kindle books on your computer. It includes full screen color and brightness adjustments, the ability to sync annotations and last page read, and you can search for all books available in the Kindle Store.

Requirements for the Windows PC Kindle Application:

Windows XP Service Pack 2, Vista and 7.

At Least 128 MB of RAM

Screen Resolution of 800 by 600 or greater

500MHz Intel or AMD processor or faster

100MB of disk space

Most PC’s nowadays fill these requirements easily.

To install: Click “Download Now” on the Kindle for PC product page and the installation should begin automatically. If it doesn’t, Amazon provides you with a page that gives you a link to try installing it again.

Kindle for the Mac does has most of the same features as Kindle for PC except that the Kindle for the Mac just allows font adjustments.

Requirements for Kindle Mac Application:

A Mac with a 500MHz Intel processor or faster

512 MB of RAM

Leopard or Snow Leopard OS

800 by 600 or greater screen resolution

100MB of Disk Space

To install: You can install directly from the Kindle Mac Application Product Page, or you can install from the Mac App Store.

The Blackberry Kindle Application is available for:

Bold 9000 and 9700

Curve 8520 and 8900

Storm 9530 and 9550

Tour 9639

Torch 9800

To install: Sign into your Amazon account and send an email to your Blackberry or download directly from your browser at “amazon.com/kindlebb”.

This is the only app that is available to just U.S. customers.

The Kindle for iPad Application is the same as the application for the iPhone, but on a larger device. It also includes Kindle Audio and Video.

Software requirements: iPhone/iPad 3.2 OS software update.

To install: Download Kindle for iPad from the iPad App Store.

Kindle for Android users can share reading progress, read in landscape or portrait mode, zoom in with a double tap and read over 100 magazines and newspapers in addition to the 810,000 books in the Kindle Store.

Software Requirements: Android 1.6 or greater

To install: Search for “kindle” in the Android Market or use your phone’s sensor to capture the Kindle for Android Application barcode on the product page.

The Windows Phone 7 Kindle application has 5 different font sizes and 3 background colors to choose from. You can also email a link to a book you are currently reading or one from your library to a friend.

To install: Download the Windows Phone 7 Kindle application from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.

View the original article here

Kindle vs Google Books. Who Wins?

2011-02-19T05:37:00.000-08:00

Whoa. Google just threw its ginormous hat into the eBook ring. The bell has rung, and the bout between the Kindle and Google Books has started. So, what do we here at Kindle Owners Blog think about it?

Here are my initial thoughts – Google Books right now loses the battle when it comes to ereaders, but things could change in the future, making them even more competitive. Let’s break it down based on the usual things someone is looking for in an ereader –

Pricing

Here, we of course are talking about book pricing, not e-reader pricing, as there is no specific reader for Google Books. It appears at this point that pricing for books is essentially the same for any title that is available in both formats. Which brings us to the next category –

Selection

The Kindle is the clear winner here. Google and Amazon have about the same access to popular titles (although I think Kindle may still have a bit more), but Kindle blows away Google when it comes to independent books.

Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla of independent publishing and generally the first place independent authors go to self publish their books, so a large chunk of these titles are available on the Kindle. They do have some competition, such as Lulu.com, but a good chunk of those books are available on Amazon as well, making them available on Kindle in many cases.

Cross-Device Use

Google has some fancy apps for Android, iPad, iPhone, desktop, Nook, etc. This makes it uber-portable. But, Kindle has all of those things, too! So, another tie in that category.

Google Books Big Downfall – Lag Time

The final category – and the one that really hurts Google for now in my opinion – is the way the books are stored. On the Kindle, your books are stored directly on your device. They pull right up.

On Google Books, your books are stored on Google’s servers, meaning each page you pull up has to be downloaded on your device. Ouch. Users have been complaining loudly about the “lag time” it takes to pull up a book. What a hassle!

And that, for me, seals the deal – Google Books is good, Amazon Kindle is still better. With no lag time, better book selection, and virtual ties in every other category, why go with anything but Kindle.

By the way, we didn’t even mention the availability of newspapers, magazines and blogs. Kindle is the winner there, too.

Mind you, we may be a bit biased here at “Kindle Owners” Blog, but I have tried to be as objective as possible, and I am personally a big fan of Google and have an Android phone. If it were better, even though I love my Kindle, I would reluctantly admit it.

I am sure the Google Books system will continue to evolve, and if it does, we may post an update here. In fact, soon, we will unveil our overall Kindle vs. Everybody Else page that we will keep updated.

Until then, Kindle 1, Google Books 0.

View the original article here

Free Kindle Books on Open Library

2011-02-19T04:26:00.000-08:00

Open Library is an amazing non-profit project (partially funded by California State Library). It is trying to catalog book (and e-book) titles and their locations, thus creating a gigantic library. As Open Library owners describe, “One web page for every book ever published”. The idea is to be able to find any book’s location – be it in a store, library, or in electronic version. Open Library is an open project. Anyone can (and is encouraged to) participate: adding book titles, editing the existing catalogue, fixing typos. Also, their software and documentation are also open. There is no registration required for downloading free e-books. However, you need to register on Open Library if you want to participate in the project.

I have to warn you: finding where to download a free e-book is not really intuitive in Open Library. To find a free e-book, you need to type the book title/author’s name in the search bar (there is also an advanced search option, where you can also look for a book by ISBN, subject, place, person, or publisher); check “Only show e-books”. On the results’ page the list of books will have one of three icons – borrow, DAISY, or read. All the available e-books have the “read” icon beside the book title. Press “read”. It should open the book in read-online mode. Press the icon “i” on the top right corner, next to the “play” option. It will open a menu with available e-book formats: PDF, Plain Text, DAISY, ePub, and finally, my favorite, “Send to Kindle” option. Ta-da!

As you might have noticed, other than “read”, there are two more icons appearing in the Open Library search results: “borrow” and “DAISY”. “Borrow” finds the book in the closest to your current location library (it searches by zip-code); and DAISY is a format for vision-impaired readers. According to Open Library, DAISY offers “the benefits of regular audiobooks, with navigation within the book, to chapters or specific pages.” You can find out more about DAISY on their official website. As far as I understand, DAISY format is not that easily accessible. One needs to get a key issued by the Library of Congress NLS program.

Quite frankly, I think I’m very impressed with Open Library’s book catalogue idea and its execution.

View the original article here

Library Books and the Kindle, What’s the Deal?

2011-02-19T00:50:00.000-08:00

When the Kindle vs Nook competition began, a lot of those of us who take an interest in such things were making a fairly big deal about the advantages of the Nook’s EPUB compatibility. This remains an advantage for the Nook and any number of other eBook readers to this day, oddly enough. This, when it comes down to it, is really what’s behind the inability of the Kindle to pick up books at your local library.

Most of you will know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t, here’s the basic situation as I understand it. The standard in eBooks is currently the EPUB. What Amazon is using for their Kindle platform is a variation on the Mobipocket format which is basically the generation previous to that. For whatever reason, some people think it’s because it keeps the Kindle platform the focus of Kindle devices and software rather than give up any potential control over distribution, the most up to date distribution systems just don’t quite click with Amazon. Sadly, these are the very systems in place for libraries around the country to take advantage of!

Library services, for example Media on Demand, tend to use Overdrive Inc’s software. It’s a way to distribute their books in EPUB format, using the Adobe Digital Editions DRM (which is distinct from Amazon’s proprietary right’s management methods), in order to give people copies of eBooks that will become unusable after a set period of time. It’s a neat concept, since it allows for a single “copy” of an eBook to be sent to people without the usual risk of unauthorized copies. It’s understandable that publishers would be somewhat concerned about that, since there’s nothing to stop people from just holding on to the files themselves, but libraries are awesome and should be supported even as the digital text option takes off.

So, for the moment, Kindle owners are still stuck waiting on the sidelines when it comes to borrowing books from libraries. Not really surprising since we’ve only in the past month or so seen the activation of even single lending enabled Kindle Editions of books, but still more than a little disappointing for new owners who want to get the most out of their purchase or gift acquisition.

Is there hope for the future? Of course! Look forward to new and interesting options when it comes to book borrowing. Eventually, somebody will figure out a good way to get the ball rolling. In the meantime, it’s probably helpful to keep in mind that many libraries will offer at least some of their books in PDF format, or at least help walk you through the process of grabbing some public domain titles to put onto your Kindle if you’re not confident doing so on your own. While PDF documents don’t like quite as good on the eReader display as the newer formats do, they’re still quite readable and there’s a lot out there to hold you over. No need to be too horribly jealous of all those Nook and Kobo owners. If all else fails, check out the Kindle Lending Club I mentioned in an earlier post. It hasn’t been going for long enough to have a great impression about reliability, but some option is better than none!

View the original article here

More on Apple vs Kindle for iOS devices

2011-02-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

So, Apple vs the Amazon Kindle platform. I brought this topic up a few days ago, I know, but it bears repeating now that representatives from Apple have come out to clarify their position and put an end to the speculation based mainly around the rejection of Sony’s Reader app submission to the Apple app store.

For those who haven’t been following the situation, Apple has apparently decided to start enforcing some of the rules regarding in-app purchasing that they have seemed uninterested in until this point. As a result of this, Sony was unable to get its iOS Reader app published, and Amazon’s Kindle app, along with all the other eBook readers out there linked to a store, may be in some pretty serious trouble. Up until now, the way things work has been for the Kindle app to send you to the Amazon.com website whenever you want to pick up something new to read. It results in convenience for users and neatly bypasses the need to work within the app store infrastructure. That part, I doubt Apple minds. What they are objecting to is the fact that these sales, going through the website as they do, fail to make Apple any money. So, new restrictions. Now, since Apple wants a 30% cut and Amazon is making as little as a 30% cut as it is on many sales (specifically those coming from its self-publishing authors), many people are foreseeing a problem.

Heading off many of the potential solutions that Amazon could have used to address the new restrictions, Apple reps have made clear that there can be no linking to outside stores from inside an app anymore, and definitely no marking up of in-app sales to dissuade their use. Basically, anything you’re selling to users of your app had better be available through the app so that Apple can get its cut and it must cost the same or less than in any other store you operate. Not good news for the Kindle platform.

It remains to be seen how Amazon is going to respond to this. There really seem to be very few options. The question may come down to a matter of how much of Amazon’s eBook sale numbers comes through Apple devices. I would imagine it would have to be a large percentage to persuade them to raise prices across the board for eBooks, which is what would have to happen for Apple’s percentage to be accounted for. But it is also highly unlikely that the numbers could be so low as to make pulling the app completely a viable option. Simply forgoing their own percentage of the price on a product that many believe is already being sold at cost or below is the least likely scenario of all, in my opinion. Short of withdrawing the app, it seems like any compromise in favor of Apple will have a negative impact on users of Amazon’s own Kindle owners and that seems like a silly choice to make unless it’s overwhelmingly necessary.

Maybe this is a move intended to bolster Apple’s unimpressive efforts to take over the eBook industry’s distribution network the way they have that of the music industry, but if so then at best this will be an uphill battle that will earn them no small amount of ill will. With the eReader capabilities of the iPad in particular being a selling point for many people, all Apple may be accomplishing here is diminishing the value of their devices by causing problems with one of the most popular apps they have seen to date.

View the original article here

Kindle Update Adds Real Page Numbers and More

2011-02-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

It appears that Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) has been doing some customer polling, or at least watching their forums, and came up with a few new features for an upcoming Kindle software update as a result. While this has not rolled out to the public as an official release just yet, they are offering an Early Preview of the update for manual download through the website at this page. I’ve got to admit, this addresses a few long standing concerns.

Foremost among user complaints about the Kindle has often been the progress indicator. Hard to share a passage you like with friends and family when you can’t just suggest that they turn to a specific page in their own copy, right? Well, now Amazon is adding in corresponding page numbering between print and digital copies of their library, beginning with the top 100 most popular books that offer both formats and moving on from there.

You know how you can annotate and highlight things in your favorite Kindle books? Well, now you’ll be able to share those markups with anybody who’s interested. It opens up new avenues of communication for friends, families, reading clubs, authors, and pretty much anybody who spends time seriously thinking about their reading. Note that this is an optional feature that is not turned on by default, so there is no danger of sharing inadvertently as far as I can tell (if that’s a concern for you).

Many people have realized the flaw of the user rating system on Amazon and many other sites. Often users will only make the effort to comment if the book was particularly bad or amazingly good. Even then, if you can’t get to it right away while it’s fresh in your mind, what’s the point? Now, when you finish your book you will be given a chance to rate the book, share a note on the book (via the Facebook and such),and get some recommendations on things to read both based on the author you just read and from a selection of more general personalized recommendations. It’s fairly unobtrusive and shouldn’t negatively affect your reading experience, while at the same time having the chance to improve the reliability of the rating system on the Kindle store.

Magazines and Newspapers are becoming a bigger and bigger thing in the eReader world. The new layout makes them that much easier to browse. There’s not much more to say about it than that it makes more sense this way and seems to speed up browsing magazines for the Kindle considerably.

Lots of fun new stuff to play with in this Kindle software update. Nothing game changing, necessarily, just a bunch of stuff that users have been asking for. It’s nice to see that Amazon’s still interested in getting the Kindle updates going out even when there aren’t any major problems needing to be addressed in the software. I’m going to play around with it a bit more and post some impressions in the near future if I get a chance. Let me know how it’s working for you.

View the original article here

Twilight Series for Kindle: Featuring New Moon

2011-02-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

New Moon is the second book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. It is a really dark book, which makes it’s title, New Moon, very appropriate. It is $8.99 on the Kindle and Kindle DX.

New Moon is a bit Romeo and Juliet-esque because it involves similar circumstances and depression. Bella celebrates her 18th birthday with Edward and his family. She ends up cutting herself to the point of bleeding and, as vampires, the Cullen family is overwhelmed with the desire to eat her. When they realize how much of a danger they are to Bella, they decide to move away.

After Edward moves away, Bella suffers from a deep depression and seeks solace from Jacob Black. He and his tribe are werewolves. They protect Bella from various threats and revenge attacks. A bit of miscommunication becomes a matter of life or death for Edward, but will Bella save him in time?

Sometimes I am shocked at the dark nature of young adult novels, but in a sense they do address major issues that teenagers today have to deal with. That includes depression and struggles relating to romantic relationships.

New Moon didn’t get as good of reviews as it’s predecessor, Twilight, but here are a few I thought were interesting. Many complain about what a sap and over the top Bella is, but in a sense this is what teenagers can relate to.

Night Wind

“I’m glad that there is a popular Native American character and that he is a potential love interest for the main character instead of just in the background. I’m not glad that Jacob’s character is so devoted to someone who repeatedly hurts him (Bella even admits that she’s being selfish by wanting Jacob with her even though she doesn’t return his romantic feelings). This book isn’t for me, but I’m glad other people have enjoyed it. If you enjoy a good love triangle, then you’ll like this book. If you find such drama annoying, then you’ll hate it. Again, it just depends on what you’re looking for.”

From the Heart

“If Stephanie Meyer played on our sympathies by showing us a weak Bella in Twilight, I think she tried to compensate by breaking her out of that mold in New Moon. All of a sudden she starts acting out, being reckless with her motorcycle and cliff-diving. Likewise, we don’t see much of Edward but learn much more about Jacob. Makes me wonder if she felt bad for leaving us in the dark about him in the first book.”

Jamie Wasserman “jamie23”

“kay, so this is a lot of people’s least favorite in the series. The pacing in the book is dreadfully slow. Bella spends a lot of time wallowing and doing harmful things. But it resonates true and it makes the ending in Italy that much more exciting. Finally, Edward and Bella are together for all about 5 minutes. It’s a wonderful prelude to book 3.”

View the original article here

Apple Won’t Kill Kindle App

2011-02-18T09:44:00.001-08:00

After Apple rejected Sony’s ereader app for the iPad this past week, there were a lot of rumors flying around that the Kindle app might be getting killed on Apple devices as well. Fortunately for any of you who have an iPhone or iPad, that is not the case!

Apple does not allow any app to have a store built into the app itself, and Sony’s app had just that. Many thought it was going away because Apple did not want the competition with their current iBooks setup. However, it simply violated the rules for the app store.

The Kindle app does not work in the same way as the Sony app and does not violate those rules. When you buy a book through the Kindle app, it simply takes you to the web, where you buy the book that are then uploaded to the app.

So, no worries for those of you who read your Kindle books on your iPhone or iPad – they are there to stay!

View the original article here

Kindle Books Honoring Thomas Edison’s Birthday

2011-02-18T08:36:00.001-08:00

Thomas Edison, born on February 11, 1847, was one of the major pioneers of the modern electric world. There are several good Kindle books that cover his life and his major contributions to society.

For free, you can get a copy of Edison, His Life and Inventions. This book describes Edison’s influence on America in nineteenth and twentieth centuries through his invention of not only the electric light bulb, but the phonograph, batteries and mass communications as a whole. As for the formatting and text, Edison, His Life and Inventions had some glitches. But, there’s nothing to lose if its free right? One reviewer put it well in regards to Edison’s contributions. Edison not only invented the products, but he also invented the industry founded on electricity.

The Wizard of Menlo Park is a refreshing break from the typical biographies of the famous inventor. This book brings out the human side of Edison. Yes, he was very successful and good at creating fascinating new things, but he did not know how to handle the fame and the business side very well. A good lesson from Wizard is that even though you might fail at most things in life, there maybe one thing you are really good at. You can really take off and run with that good talent or invention, like Edison did. One thing I thought was interesting about Wizard was its portrayal of Edison as a celebrity, because the concept of “celebrity” is so different today. Come to think of it, Thomas Edison was a large contributor of making the modern celebrity industry: film, music, etc even possible.

According to Let There Be Light: A Biography of Thomas Edison, the inventor had 1,093 patents in the U.S., as well as many more in France, Germany and England. The phonograph patent was revolutionary because it was the first device to produce and record sounds, but many of his inventions were developed as improvements on past inventions. more Let there Be Light does not have any reviews yet, so it is hard to tell what readers think of this biography.

The Kindle book selection Edison is surprisingly small, but overall they have great reviews and are certainly worth checking out.

View the original article here

The Kindle 3 WiFi, 3G WiFi and Kindle DX Screen Protectors

2011-01-28T05:19:00.000-08:00

New Kindle Review

The Kindle 3 WiFi, 3G WiFi and Kindle DX Screen Protectors.

The newly released Kindle 3 WiFi has a very large screen of 9.7 Inches. This is ideal for a broad range of reading formats. From newspapers to blogs to any PDF files, reading has never been this fun! Although with a big screen like the Kindle 3's, it can't be helped that it will, sooner or later, be scratch from too much use and carrying it around. You would always want to have your priced possession looking brand new, scratch free and the way as it came out of the box.

Scratches definitely shouldn't be part of the picture, when reading you favorite book. You wouldn't want to read your Kindle 3 with a huge scratch on its screen right? That's totally an aberration to its beauty! To help protect your Kindle`s screen you need a Kindle screen protector.

There are different products available in the market, but many of them will not cover the whole screen. When buying from a shop you just have to make sure that the screen protector fits the screen. When choosing the right Kindle screen protector, you don't need to go for the most expensive one. Even those that are priced at $2 will do the job, as long you have some sort of cover for you Kindle. If you invest a little more, you can get a higher scratch and dust resistant screen protector that is thicker and more durable.

A Kindle screen protector is a must have for all Kindle 3 and Kindle DX users. Its huge screen is one of its main features and you just can't take the risk of having this smart devices screen damaged or scratched. Below is selection of the most suitable and best rated screen protectors that are suitable for the Kindle review 3 WiFi, 3G WiFi and the Kindle Wireless Reading Device DX model. Please feel free to leave comments about purchased products, to help others with their choice. All you comments and suggestions are highly appreciated.

For more information, visit Kindle Wireless Reading Device. This will offer information on finding Kindle 3, including enticing features and products Info on Kindle Review Portal.

Kindle Review

2011-01-28T05:13:00.000-08:00

Kindle Review

I never travel anywhere without my library.

One of the down sides of RV living is the lack of the space necessary to house your book collection. Whether your tastes run to Romance, Mystery, SiFi, or Science and History, there are always books you can't let go of. All this can be solved with an electronic book such as an Amazon Kindle or a Sony.

Both devices allow you to buy books online or get free books from places like Project Gutenberg. The Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device allows you to purchases books at the Amazon book store and have them sent wirelessly to your kindle. Imagine - you browse the Amazon book store, read reviews of books written by other readers and get recommendations based on your previous purchases. Then you download a free sample of the book, check it out and purchase it if you like it. All this while you sit in the passenger seat cruising down the highway.

Most of the best sellers are available for the Kindle Wireless Reading Device usually selling for about $10.00. Some books cost less some cost more but most are a considerable saving over the hard cover or paperback price. Amazon online allows you to sort books by price, some Amazon titles are ever FREE! If you purchase from your computer, your title will be automatically downloaded to your Kindle the next time you turn it on with the whispernet feature turned on. Whispernet can be active or inactive to save power. If you're just reading the battery charge will last up to two weeks. Only four hours will give you a full battery charge.
Kindle Wireless Reading Device

The Kindle includes the battery charger unlike the Sony which charges extra for the charger. Another advantage of the Kindle Wireless Reading Device is that when the battery has finally "had it" it is consumer replaceable where as with the Sony you must send it to a service center for battery replacement.

Both Kindle and Sony allow you to adjust the size of the text. Although they have different proprietary formats, both readers will support text and PDF files. Yes! You can download all your PDF books from your computer. But the neatest thing about the Kindle is that it has a web browser which allows you to surf the internet.

The bottom line is the Sony is sexier looking but the Kindle allows you to do more.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

What is a Kindle?

2011-01-27T20:43:00.001-08:00

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Kindle Review

What Is Kindle?

I enjoy a good book. More than just being entertained by the story, I like having the physical item. I have a whole library at home with shelf after shelf of books on various subjects. I really like my library. But there is only one problem. I am running out of room for more books. This is a common problem for anyone who owns a lot of books. Sooner or later, you are faced with the problem of space. Do you get rid of some of your books to make room for new books? Do you stop collecting books altogether and just hope the local library has what you need? Or do you go digital (yes, I said digital)? One way to do that is to use an Amazon Kindle and download books electronically.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

Someone once said “Print is dead”. They just may be right. With today’s technologies and wireless networks, you no longer have to own a printed book in order to read it. Ebooks are a good way to enjoy reading while not having to worry about owning several boxes full of books. One popular hardware platform for reading electronic books is Amazon’s Kindle.

What Is the Kindle?

The Kindle is an electronic device for downloading, storing, and reading electronic books, known as e-books. It was developed by a company called Lab 126 which is a subsidiary of Amazon. The Kindle has instant wireless access to Amazon.com and their huge number of e-books (over 115,000 and growing). You can read newspapers, subscribe to magazines and blogs, and even play audio files such as MP3’s or audio books. The Kindle is compact and lightweight so it is easy to handle. Just think of it as a conveniently portable television for your books.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

How Does the Kindle Work?

The Kindle uses a grey screen to display a page of text. To turn the page, you just press a button to go forward or backward. It can download compatible files over Amazon’s Whispernet directly to the Kindle by using the same network as Sprint EVDO. You don’t even need a computer to download and then transfer files like you do some MP3 players and other electronics. It also includes a web browser but you are limited to only Amazon or Wikipedia. You can add and read e-books from other sites, too, as long as they are compatible. So you can download stuff from Mobipocket or even in plain text. Amazon offers an email service that can convert files from HTML, jpeg, bmp, PDF, and others into the Kindle format. There is enough internal memory in the Kindle to be able to store around 200 e-books but you can get an SD memory card if you want to add more memory.

Although the wireless service is free, you have to buy the e-books in order to download them. For instance, a book on the latest New York Times bestsellers list can be purchased for $10. Other titles will cost you around $1.99, which is significantly cheaper than a printed book, even in paperback. Books that are public domain can be downloaded for free.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

Other Features of the Kindle

The Kindle can perform like a cross between a book and a word processor. You can bookmark, highlight certain text or words, and even look up definitions in the Kindle’s electronic dictionary. You can dog-ear a page that you are reading while make notes on the side for research. If you are in a hurry, the device can remember the last page that you read. If you want to transfer text to your computer, just save the particular pages as a text file and you can transfer it over to your computer by using a USB connection.
Don’t be confused thinking that the Kindle Wireless Reading Device is just like an iphone or similar device. It does not have color or personal settings. You can’t play games, call someone, or send text messages. And you have a limited Internet access all across the web. The Kindle is only for downloading and reading e-books and electronic documents.

Where Can You Download E-Books?

One of the best things about the Kindle is you are not limited to just what Amazon has to offer. There are other sites that are either Kindle compatible or they have file types that can be emailed in to Amazon and converted to the Kindle software. Here are just a few sites where you can find electronic books to read.

Mobipocket – Lots of titles to choose from and you can load them directly to the Kindle.
Fictionwise – One of the largest sellers of electronic books within the United States, you can download the file and then email it in to Amazon and have the format converted to the Kindle format.
Webscriptions – This site sells e-books that are mostly in the fantasy, sci-fi, or mystery genre. They contain books by most of the major publishers in that market. Most of the older books can be downloaded for free.
Feedbooks – This is a site for book sharing, new and unknown authors, and even do-it-yourself newspapers. You have to register to use the site but registration is free.

What Is Amazon’s Kindle 2

The Kindle Wireless Reading Device is the latest version of the Kindle but with upgrades. There have been quite a few changes to the device. For one, it has a longer-lasting battery than the original. It also has more storage capacity. While the first Kindle could hold around 200 books, the Kindle 2 sports enough GB to store around 1500 books. The catch is that you don’t have a slot for an SD memory card but you really don’t need one. Also, the Kindle 2 has a faster page turn sequence. It can even convert the text to speech if you want the book read aloud (say, if you were driving a car and unable to read).

While the device itself has its obvious uses, there are a couple of criticisms about it. One, the price for a Kindle 2 is $359, which may seem steep to some, especially for a device with limited use. This brings us to the second complaint. It is not another PDA, cellphone, music player with options, or anything like that. It just reads electronic books. So it is the same price as other devices that have more than one function. It seems that the Kindle may be designed for people who are avid readers who, only in the long run, will be able to save money as well as space on the purchase of books.

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Kindle Wireless Reading Device

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Kindle Wireless Reading Device