Kindle Review

Friday, February 25, 2011

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

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.

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

Thursday, February 24, 2011

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

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

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