Amazon gives US Kindle Fire owners $5 in Amazon Coins

Amazon gives US Kindle Fire owners $5 in Amazon Coins

This is front page news…literally.

On my landing page at Amazon (and it could be different for you…especially if you are out of the USA), we have one of those letters from Jeff Bezos. It explains that every US Fire Owner is being given $5 in

Amazon Coins

This is essentially a new type of “currency” that can be used to buy apps, games, and in-app items from the Amazon Appstore.

In one of those amazing coincidences, a coin is equal to one USA penny…it’s like the two are connected in some way! Just kidding…it’s like the characters Dorothy meets in Oz speaking English. It’s just easier to do the conversion. If one Amazon Coin was worth .78 of a penny, it would make calculating difficult.

Interestingly, there’s a big conflict between Jeff’s letter, and what appears here:

Amazon Coins – Promotion Terms

According to the promotion page,

“1. In order to receive 500 promotional Amazon Coins with your Kindle Fire purchase, you must be a new Kindle Fire owner located in the United States. If you have previously purchased a Kindle Fire or you are located outside the United States, you are not eligible to receive 500 promotional Amazon Coins with your purchase. “

However, Jeff’s letter clearly says,

“If you own a Kindle Fire, you’ll find a little unexpected something in your account right now — 500 Amazon Coins, worth $5.”

Not if you buy a new one…if you already own one.

Update: thanks to my readers Ann Von Hagel and D. Knight who helped clarify this for me. Essentially, Jeff’s letter is addressing those who already own a Kindle Fire, and the promotion page is addressing those who are about to buy their first one. Both groups get 500 Amazon Coins, but one individual will not be in both groups. They were simply saying that you wouldn’t get another 500 ACs if you already had a Kindle Fire and then bought another one. I do think they could have been clearer that this is account level. Two different ownerships could exist for Kindle Fires on the same account. You could own a Kindle Fire (you bought, you paid for it), and register it to Account A. A friend of yours could also own a Kindle Fire, and register it to that same Account A so you can share books. That’s two ownerships of devices…but I still think the account would only get 500 ACs.

Wow! I have to say they have not crossed the T’s and dotted the I’s on this launch, and it’s a major launch! I never quite understand that: it was so important to do this morning that you couldn’t even check to see if your links worked?

Here’s what I mean.

I wanted to find out if I’d been given credit, since we already own a Fire…we actually own more than one, so I also wanted to see if we’d been given multiple credits. Do we get $5 for each Fire, or $5 for being a “Fire family”?

I happened to be on my PC, not my Fire, so I started looking there.

I went to My Account. No mention of them.

I searched the Help pages. First, I tried this page

Redeem Amazon Coins

figuring that would tell me how to see my balance. If I was going to use them. Nothing. There was a link to go to the page about buying Amazon coins. The link didn’t work…it just took me back to search, instead of to the page itself.

Then, I searched for “Amazon Coins” in Help again, and got to the Buy Amazon Coins page.

Nothing about balance.

By the way, you can’t buy Amazon Coins directly from a 1st generation Kindle Fire, although you can buy them using your computer by going here:

Amazon Coins

You also get a discount when you buy them. You can buy $5 worth for $4.80, for example. The discount increases as you buy more. You can get a $100 worth for $90, for example…sort of like a frequent buyer discount. That’s actually a really good deal…many people spend $100 on apps and in-app purchases, and this is like getting $10 worth of them for free.

Anyway, back to the balance. I had my Kindle Fire 8.9″ getting charged up for the day, so I went and got it to check.

I went to the Apps tab, then clicked Store. A big splash came on telling me I had the 500 coins. It also said to “Tap your balance to buy more coins.”

Okay…from the Kindle Fire, it shows in the bottom right corner. It’s showing me 500 coins…so unless it’s different on each device, we got 500 for being a “Fire family”, not per device. I can’t imagine they’d make this device specific, so I think it’s 500 for the account.

What should you spend your $5 on?

Well, in a situation like this, I tend to sit back a bit and think about it.

I recently downloaded the free

Iron Man 3 – The Official Game (Kindle Tablet Edition)

I wasn’t blown away by the movie, but I thought the app might be fun. It is fun to tilt the tablet to make Iron Man change directions.

However…

You are going to want to buy suit upgrades (Jarvis recommends it), and that takes real world money. You could do that with Amazon Coins, I presume.

Here’s a link to the top 100 paid apps in the Amazon Appstore:

Top 100 paid apps

Many of those are ninety-nine cents. My own recommendation would be to use the $5 on something expensive that you want. I would figure that ninety-nine cents wouldn’t be a barrier to buying something later…but $14.99 might. I assume you can mix a payment: do part of it with Amazon Coins, part of it with cash.

Whoops, have to back off that! I just checked, and it won’t let me use coins unless I have enough for the whole purchase. Interesting…that means I can’t apply my coins to a $14.99 purchase.

I could, of course, buy more coins…and at a discount. That means I could spend $9.50 to get $10 more in coins…and then use my $15 in coins to buy a $14.99 item. That means it would have cost me $9.50 to get something which is $14.99…that’s a pretty good deal. I would also have one Amazon Coin left over. That’s going to happen a lot, since you buy ACs in even dollar increments, and app prices generally end in ninety-nine.

If I were you, I’d look at the

Kindle Fire HD productivity apps

I already have

OfficeSuite Professional 7

myself, but if you need to use Microsoft Office products (particularly Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) on the go, I’d suggest this one for consideration.

Hm…it’s going to be fun to look through the apps!

I do find the coin design interesting. It’s an Amazon warrior (you know, like Wonder Woman). In fact, she even appears to be wearing a headpiece like Diana Prince’s, although she is in a toga type garment, not “satin tights…fighting for our rights”.

However, she not surprisingly doesn’t display the classic “martial mutilation” from which the name “Amazon” derives…but they didn’t usually in illustration.

This is absolutely a very strong lock-in move by Amazon. Why buy from the Amazon Appstore instead of Google Play? Well, with a Fire, it’s obviously easier (you really can’t buy from Google Play for your Fire, the way things are set up…that doesn’t mean you might not be able to do it a different way). I also tend to do it so my apps are more manageable from my Fire to my phone. Now, though, you can also do it to get a discount…by using your discounted Amazon Coins.

Always thinking, those folks at Amazon…if they would only test the interfaces before they went live! I do think they would benefit from user beta-testing, but they do like to keep things secret.

Bonus deal (I like to include something for non-Fire users): Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel (Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro) by Dennis Lehane is a well-reviewed thriller, $1.99 (a $8 discount) as one of the Kindle Daily Deals today. As always, check the price before you buy…it might not apply where you are.

Update: Amazon now has an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) in the forum for Amazon Coins:

FAQ: Amazon Coins

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Microsoft to buy NOOK division?

Microsoft to buy NOOK division?

This

TechCrunch article

by Eric Eldon and Ingrid Lunden has gotten a lot of play, and understandably so.

They claim to have seen documents about a proposed Microsoft buy-out of the NOOK part of Barnes & Noble for $1 billion.

That would include the NOOK tablets, NOOK reflective screen devices, and the college bookstore part.

Those elements were effectively separated from the brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble trade bookstore (what most people think of when they think of Barnes & Noble) not that long ago.

The article (which I recommend you read) also suggests that B&N would be out of the tablet business by the end of next year (2014).

“Tab-tab-tablet, good-bye! Tab-tab-tablet, don’t cry!”

Or perhaps…

“Don’t cry for me, Barnes & Noble!
The tablet was just bad business
Although the screen was bright
The timing wasn’t right
We’re still a bookstore…
Until that’s no more”

One of the interesting things is that I think many people liked their NOOK tablets, and of course, they’ve just added the Google Play store (which, as I wrote earlier, puts the NOOK tablets into a hardware business instead of a content business).

That’s really the heart of the problem.

Barnes & Noble and Amazon have clearly been seen as competitors as online bookstores.

When Amazon introduced the Kindle, and later the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble, like one of the blind people encountering the elephant in the old story, processed just through the book lens.

They thought that to compete with Amazon, they’d have to also introduce e-book hardware. Honestly, they did a very good with it (eventually). They even led in a few important points (like frontlighting the screen and peer-to-peer book lending).

However, the Kindle Fire was never, in my opinion, about e-books. I’ve always said that the device is there to get you to buy physical goods through Amazon (diapers and windshield wipers).

It’s a little bit like…let’s see. You are challenged to a sword-fighting duel. You train and train and get a really good sword. However, you find out that your opponent has jet aircraft…so you figure you’d better get them. You put all your time and energy into getting jet aircraft…even though, as it turns out, your opponent isn’t going to use those jet aircraft during the duel at all.

That doesn’t mean Amazon doesn’t want to sell e-books…I think they do. I think the money, though, is in getting you to buy the physical stuff (they also do a lot business providing services, like fulfillment and web storage, but that’s another story).

So, while Barnes & Noble was competing with Amazon on tablets, they were doing it to sell books (and apps…digital stuff). Amazon was using them as a gateway to something else. Maybe that’s a better analogy. Amazon built a nice door. Barnes & Noble built a nice door…but B&N didn’t have a store behind their door.

I do think it could happen. Microsoft could buy the NOOK business…and shut down the NOOK tablet part of it (which underperformed in the last holiday season) a year from now (maybe a bit more than a year…one more holiday season).

The question is, why would they do that? Why buy the NOOK tablet business and then shut it down?

It’s not, I think, because it is a competitor for Microsoft hardware.

I think they aren’t really buying the tablet business…they are buying the NOOK customers.

This deal would include the NOOK reflective screen devices, and it didn’t say what they might eventually do with those (if this story is all accurate).

I think for Microsoft, they want retail customers…and this would give them to them.

They could then sell Windows tablets to those customers.

I haven’t seen this in many stories, but Microsoft had an e-book business before…and eventually abandoned it. Those people who bought into .lit might be a bit wary of this.

Barnes & Noble’s investors aren’t wary, though. Take a look at this

CNN.Money stock chart

for B&N…up more than 25% in two days.

Does that mean people are saying, “Yay! Microsoft is going to buy B&N and then Barnes & Noble will make a lot of money as I stick with it through retirement?”

No, for many of them it means, “Good! I can get a better price for this turkey before I dump it.”

What would happen to the brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble stores?

I think Leonard Riggio, the B&N founder who has made an offer for them, would get them.

Microsoft would own the NOOK hardware, NOOK Books, really all the digital content, and the college bookstores.

Riggio would own, and try to re-invent, the brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Going farther out, Microsoft would dump the NOOK hardware (including the reflective screen devices, eventually). NOOK would basically just become an app that was part of Windows. You’d have access to your NOOK books, and it would come on Microsoft devices. They might continue to sell digital content online.

Riggio…might figure something out, but I think the stores would look very different than they do today. I do think it’s still possible to make brick-and-mortar bookstores work, but you need them to be destinations. You need the shopping experience to be vastly superior to what it is online…otherwise, as Amazon gets same day delivery going, there’s not going to be much point in going to one.

We’ll see how this all plays out. If this was a leak, I don’t think the players are upset about it. They are getting valuable feedback about how the public sees the idea…and I’d say it’s been generally positive.

Could we lose Barnes & Noble as a chain trade bookstore? I think so…at least in the current configuration of it.

We’ll see what happens.

I’m interested to know what you think…you can let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

P.S. Thanks for all the well wishes about my surgery! I’m doing pretty well…my Significant Other has been very supportive, and I think my surgeon did a great job. Thanks also to those who gave me a heads-up on this story…even if I’ve already seen something, I appreciate those!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Google Play comes to NOOK tablets

Google Play comes to NOOK tablets

“And the walls come tumblin’ down…”

Barnes & Noble sent me a

press release

and then I saw this other places as well (including a heads-up from Joseph Holmberg, one of my readers.

Google Play is now going to appear on NOOK tablets.

This is an important tipping point moment.

Right away, I think people may see it on the surface as a tactical  move against Amazon’s Fire tablets. Amazon doesn’t have access to Play on their tablets: Barnes & Noble does.

Yes, people will certainly see that as a competitive advantage for Barnes & Noble. For people who haven’t decided which way to go, it gives B&N a big leg up.

However…

This goes much deeper than that. That is only the tip of the “hypeberg”, so to speak.

Both Barnes & Noble and Amazon have been primarily content providers in the past. They have sold books, which I think most people would still see as Barnes & Noble’s main focus (I’m not sure everybody thinks of Amazon that way any more).

When B&N introduced the NOOK, it was a “reader’s tablet”. You used it to get content from B&N.

Now, suddenly, that’s not the focus of the device at all.

Let’s think of Barnes & Noble as…a restaurant.

You went in, and you bought what was on their menu.

Now, when you walk in and sit down, they give you their menu…but they also give you a super menu that has the menus for ten other major restaurant chains, and you can order from them. You want a Round Table pizza delivered to your Barnes & Noble table? Fine, no problem.

The restaurant’s own menu has almost nothing on it that isn’t on those other menus, and there is a ton more choices on the other menus.

Why would you order from the restaurant’s own menu at all? It means you have to look in two different places…and one of them almost always has what you want, and the other one doesn’t.

That’s a real question: why would Barnes & Noble continue to offer their own appstore, videos, or music? That’s a lot of work, which Google will do if they don’t.

Yes, Barnes & Noble would probably make more profit on their own “menu”, but not if it isn’t making many sales for them.

I didn’t mention books on purpose, but Google Play also has books. If they ramp up that part of the store, good luck to B&N in competing…even on their own tablets.

The NOOK line has just become a hardware business, not a content business.

That then brings in another question: will people continue to buy NOOK tablets if they see them as just another tablet choice? When they don’t see them as “Barnes & Noble’s reader’s tablets” but as a direct competitor to, say, the Nexus or a Samsung?

I really think this move could lead to Barnes & Noble getting out of the tablet business eventually, or it becoming just a minor sideline.

Now, there is another important point here.

Know what else is in the Google Play store?

The Kindle app.

My  understanding  is that this means that NOOK owners can just download the Kindle app from Google Play, and with no rooting, nothing fancy at all, enjoy their Kindle e-books on their NOOK tablets.

That’s an awful big celebrity to invite to your birthday party. It makes it a little hard to keep the focus on you.

My guess is that there are some really significant changes in store (so to speak) for B&N in the next year, and this is part of it.

Should Amazon respond?

The first question is whether or not it is up to them.

While I see people blithely saying that Amazon just hasn’t paid some licensing fee to Google, I haven’t really found something that shows that is the case.

There are more references to Amazon and “walled gardens” on the internet than there are anacondas in the actual Amazon river.

Amazon is actually pretty open. They allow installation of apps from “unknown sources”. I’ve done that several times…directly from sites, like Zinio, and from other resources, like 1Mobile.

I’m careful only to do it with apps I trust, since, naturally, I take the responsibility when I install an app Amazon hasn’t tested for the Fire.

That, by the way, is going to be another major headache for Barnes & Noble with this move. They are going to get so many Customer Service contacts (which are quite expensive) about things people have downloaded from Google Play that don’t work right on their NOOK tablets (or even just about how to play them). If B&N just keeps directing them somewhere else, that’s going to be a turn off.

Back to Amazon and competitors…Amazon has apps for competitors in their Amazon Appstore. For example, they have the Netflix app: a direct competitor for Amazon Instant Video.

Does every single flavor and variety of SmartPhone that wants to be listed as compatible on Google Play pay licensing fees? They might, certainly, but I don’t know that.

I think it’s quite possible that it has been Google that has not listed the Fire, rather than the Fire which has not been made compatible in some way with Google Play.

Being compatible would be different from having the Play store natively on your device (which is what I think the NOOK tablets will have)…the latter likely would require a fee.

Will we some day have access to Google Play on our Kindle Fires? I think that’s possible. I do think a key purpose of the Fire is to get people signed up for Prime, where they will then buy profitable physical products (“diapers and windshield wipers”). Having people buy from Google Play wouldn’t necessarily impact that. I also think it’s important to note that Amazon is a producer and supplier of video in a way that Barnes & Noble isn’t…however, I suppose they could make those things available in Google Play if they had the Play store on Fires.

I don’t think that’s going to happen right away in response to this move from Barnes & Noble.

If you are losing a hot air balloon race, you might start throwing everything over board to lighten the load…in this case, B&N is throwing over their own content provision for the tablets.

If you are in the lead, like Amazon, you can afford to keep those items on board…for now.

One other quick note: this does not impact the NOOK reflective screen devices (non-tablets). You don’t install apps on those, just as you don’t install apps on RSKs (Reflective Screen Kindles).

===

Bonus tip: I’m trying not to write just about the Fire in a post, when I can avoid it.

For those of you who have missed having the free Kindle store book listings at eReaderIQ.com, try

http://www.freereadfeed.com/

I’m hoping to give you a bit more information about it soon.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Amazon announces 1st quarter results: the more they sell, the more they lose

In this press release:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1811383&highlight=

Amazon announced their 1st quarter results.

As is not unexpected, their sales were way, way up…22%, and of course, this is now a well-established company, so that’s amazing.

According to my calculations, that means that by 2039, every sales transaction in the world will go through Amazon…including when your kid “sells” a  tooth to the Tooth Fairy.

At the same time, net income was down 37%.

They are just going to figure out a way to sell fewer items, or they are never going to make any money. Just kidding, of course…there are other outgoing expenses besides selling things.

Still, while Amazon customers cheer the great deals they get (including “no additional cost” items through Prime), many Amazon investors are probably smacking themselves in the forehead…again.

This post originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

May 2013 Kindle book releases

May 2013 Kindle book releases

While I don’t generally pre-order Kindle store books myself, I know many of you do.

I understand the fun of just having the book show up, but I figure I’ll order when I want it…since I could have it within a minute, usually.

May is a big month for books…it’s the unofficial start of summer, and just as we start to see the movie blockbusters, some of the books show up for that Memorial Day weekend as well.

These aren’t necessarily the most popular of the pre-orders…I’m just going to list ones that catch my eye. Since we might not agree on that, here’s a link to the 2,274 (at time of writing May releases in the USA Kindle store:

May 2013 USA Kindle store books

I won’t intentionally link to individual books which block text-to-speech. However, I’m very happy (and heartened) to tell you that this time, only one of the books I took a look at it had the access blocked. That’s a big improvement (in my opinion), and that includes books from major publishers that used to block it routinely.

Inferno: A Novel (Robert Langdon)
by Dan Brown
pre-order for May 14

Undoubtedly, this is going to be a biggie. Brown is the author of the Da Vinci Code (and others), and this features the same main character. You’d probably see this a lot on the beach…if you could see what people were reading on their devices.

Dead Ever After: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel
by Charlaine Harris
pre-order for May 7

This is supposed to be the last book in the Sookie Stackhouse series (the inspiration for the True Blood TV series).

Deeply Odd: An Odd Thomas Novel
by Dean Koontz
pre-order for May 28

Odd Thomas has been a popular series for the horror writer.

A Delicate Truth: A Novel
by John le Carré
pre-order for May 7

Very popular writer, for decades. I liked this story on him which ran recently in the New York Times: John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age.

The Rithmatist
by Brandon Sanderson
pre-order for May 14

This one looks interesting! It’s the first young adult novel from Sanderson (Mistborn, co-author of the last Wheel of Time book).

Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition
by T. Colin Campbell with Howard Jacobson
pre-order for May 7

Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery
by Walter Moseley
pre-order for May 14

The return of Easy Rawlins!

Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness
by Mike Johnson, illustrated by David Messina
pre-order for May 15

This is a comic book series (in one volume) (check available devices to see if you can get it for yours) which is a lead-in to the new movie…which is a sequel to a reboot to a TV series from is getting to be close to fifty years old…feelin’ it yet?

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 3
pre-order for May 14

See, you can reboot something, or it can live again as a comic book series…or app…or audiobook…or…dang, you just can’t kill these old pop culture properties! Where’s a slayer when you need one? Actually, I love that pop culture is forever, although I’m still waiting for a big screen version of Herbie Popnecker (which I still think could be a big ((no pun intended)) hit).

The Man Who Seduced Hollywood: The Life and Loves of Greg Bautzer, Tinseltown’s Most Powerful Lawyer
by B. James Gladstone, with a foreword by Robert Wagner
pre-order for May 1

You need a big inside Hollywood book for the summer, right?

In Her Majesty’s Name: Steampunk Skirmish Wargaming Rules (Osprey Wargames)
by Craig Cartmell, illustrated by Fabien Lascombe
pre-order for May 21

You don’t have to actually play a war/role-playing game to enjoy reading the rules. I’ve certainly done that (although I should mention that I use to manage a game store, in addition to a bookstore…we weren’t just RPGs, though). The description of this one makes it seem as though the author is grounded in the appropriate literature…certainly might be worth a sample for you Steampunk fans (no samples until the release, usually).

A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley
by Neal Thompson
pre-order for May 7

Ripley was a true original, and certainly influenced pop culture. I used to see the comics, and went to the museum.

Leopard’s Prey (A LEOPARD NOVEL)
by Christine Feehan

Romance from a #1 New York Times bestselling author

Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
by K. Eric Drexler

Well, you know…it’s the little things that count.

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (The Liberation Trilogy)
by Rick Atkinson
pre-order for May 14

For some people, summer and a big old history (wait, can you have new history?) go hand in hand. This one is 896 pages in paper…but don’t worry, it won’t make your Kindle heavy.

The Art of Thinking Clearly
by Rolf Dobelli
pre-order for May 14

I love this kind of stuff! Eventually, we might even get thinking figured out…

Well, there’s enough to get you started. Are you excited for any of these? Do you have another book coming out in May you’d like to recommend? Do you read a lot over Memorial Day, or is that more for movies and outdoor pursuits? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Digital Public Library launches

Digital Public Library launches

I’ve written before (briefly) about the Digital Public Library:

http://dp.la/

This is an ambitious project to make works available for free online. It is funded partially by the US Federal government through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, although there are many private partners as well.

The DPLA went online yesterday; I wanted to wait to write about it until I’d had a chance to try it out some.

When somebody says “library” to me, I still think primarily of a place to borrow books to read. That’s what I expected here: a super-duper Project Gutenberg, where I could go in and get classic (public domain) books to read. I was particularly looking forward to obscurities that I couldn’t get other places on the web.

I have to say, at this point, I’m a little disappointed in how it met that image of mine.

I put “Tom Sawyer” into the search, and I would have expected The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Tom Sawyer, Detective to pop up in easily downloadable links. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a lot of commentaries as well.

Instead, the first thing that appears is an image of some sort of metal plaque depicting Mark Twain.

Next came The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as text. I clicked on that, and it gave me a link to the file at

http://www.archive.org

Sure, that would still get me the book…but the DPLA is serving more as a search engine in that case than a library.

I looked back at it: the picture of the medal object also took me to another site…the picture wasn’t stored at the DPLA.

Glancing through the first page of the results, none of them were the other books…they were mostly images.

I could filter for text, and I did.

There were reviews, and a reader’s guide, and a picture of a movie theatre from the 1930s (showing a movie about Tom Sawyer)…basically, ephemera rather than the books themselves.

Now, I’m a big fan of ephemera. I love looking at old things like that…playbills, fanzines, posters. It just isn’t what I expected the main focus to be in a library.

I first tried going there on my Kindle Fire with a different book…and what I got was a PDF. It wouldn’t display online on my Fire, and downloading it didn’t seem to work. That was on a different site. The file for that book is also on Archive.org, which would have worked better. I wonder if they are trying to find best links, or what the process is.

There are some cool features, which indicate that the future could be much brighter.

On the home screen, you have links for Exhibitions, Map, Timeline, and Apps.

The Exhibitions are special collections. Right now, we have

• Activism in the U.S.
• America’s Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal
• Boston Sports Temples
• Bread and Roses Strike of 1912: Two Months in Lawrence, Massachusetts, that Changed Labor History
• History of Survivance: Upper Midwest 19th Century Native American Narratives
• Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States
• This Land Is Your Land: Parks and Public Spaces

I’m guessing it’s not a coincidence that two of the stories have to do with Massachusetts right now, but it might be.

Activism in the U.S. brought a number of sub-topics…and a sub-topic basically got me some text and a slideshow of images. It was a bit like something you would see on many websites, although the images were unusual.

I thought the Map might be fun. Without selecting anything, I was told there were 2,064,314 results. There may be more things in the library which aren’t able to be located geographically in the USA.

I’m in California, and at the initial zoom level, there was a circle (one of 13 total) over California and a bit of Nevada showing 14K (presumably, 14,0000 files). I zoomed in (and panned with my finger), and there were 12K in California, 2K in Nevada. Zooming in didn’t change the numbers, so I tapped the 12K.

As that point, it appeared I could scroll through those 12,000 items. Tapping where it said “California”, then I could see it a bit more manageably…and then umber became 13,254. That’s oddly a mismatch…perhaps the California search includes things about California?

I next used the searchbox for the map, and searched for my town. That gave me 2 results on my Fire…but I couldn’t seem to get them to show up. On my desktop, I got twelve results…and I could see those.

I used the Timeline, and scrolled back to 1939 (an incredible year in pop culture history). They listed 11,221 items. To refine the results, you click the “Show” button (I didn’t find that entirely intuitive).

The order of most results were: image; text; moving image; sound; and physical object. There was a click for more, which added: dataset; collection; software; an interactive resource.

Interactive resource appeared to be the timeline itself, and software told me that there were zero when I got there (but one before I clicked it).

The moving images weren’t actually theatrical movies (there would be ones in the public domain from them), but short subjects, sometimes they might have been from newsreels, sometimes they were more scientific.

Clicking on Federal Theatre at the World’s Fair took me to another site, where it played on my desktop (I didn’t try that one on my Fire).

The Timeline would be a lot more interesting with actual public domain pop culture items in it…I still like it, but I’m a bit geeky about that.

Unfortunately, I have to say that’s generally going to be the appeal here. I was hoping for something that would make a lot more casually consumed media available…books, magazines, movies, radio shows, that sort of thing. Instead, at this point, I’d say this is more of academic interest. That’s still really valuable, and I hope they digitize a lot more. However, it’s a bit like a library that only has a rare books collection, and no popular titles.

I’ve written before about my hope that the Federal government might start digitizing lots of stuff in the public domain (they have tons of copies of that stuff at the Library of Congress and making it available for free in universal formats online. That may still happen…but I’m guessing it was easier to get funding for something that is more of a prestige item like this. I’m still going to hold out hopes for dime novels, though.

I was going to finish there, but I did a

search for “Tarzan”

Eleven results..three were text, and one of those was book review. The original book wasn’t there (easily obtainable legally on line), and there was an image of a Tarzan lunchbox from the Smithsonian! Again, I do think that’s cool…but not what I expected.

Go ahead and check out the DPLA…feel free to tell me and my readers what you think about it by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

To Kill a Mockingbird e-book at B&N, but is it legal?

To Kill a Mockingbird e-book at B&N, but is it legal?

You can go to

eReaderIQ

and list books to have them notify you when they are released in Kindle format. This is one of the great free services offered by that site, which is perhaps the most valuable Kindle resource on the web.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the most watched book right now, and typically has been.

Why isn’t it already legally in e-book form?

Well, my understanding is that Harper Lee doesn’t like to talk about TKaM, and even perhaps wishes it was never published in the first place (for personal reasons).

Rather than being specifically opposed to e-books, my sense is that no one wants to approach the author about the issue, and while that unfortunately makes the book unavailable, I can respect that.

So, it was quite a surprise when I was alerted to this listing at Barnes & Noble:

To Kill a Mockingbird e-book

Thanks to Meya, one of the Kindle Forum Pros, for that heads-up!

If this was a legitimate edition, done with permission of Harper Lee, I would have seen it announced six ways to Sunday (even though this is Sunday). It would be as big a coup as when the Harry Potter books went to e-book (although somehow, I don’t think “Harpermore” would be as fun) and if a publisher got it, they’d trumpet it.

I checked first to see that it was the book, and not a guide book or something. They have a “look inside” feature, and it appears to be the full work.

Then, I looked at the publisher listed. It says it is from “Micro Publishing”. A quick search doesn’t show me a publisher with that name.

Harper Lee has been with HarperCollins (I believe HarperCollins and Harper Lee are just  coincidentally similar) as a publisher for some time, so I checked their site: no evidence of an e-book.

Actually, that’s a good path for me: I’ll probably send HarperCollins something to give them a heads-up.

This could be a legitimate version, but I think that’s unlikely. You usually can’t complain about infringement on behalf of someone if you don’t have a personal stake in the book: it would make it too likely for nuisance removals, which is apparently what happens at YouTube.

Anyway, if this an authorized edition and Amazon also gets it, great. I think the most likely thing, though, is that this is someone using Barnes & Noble’s independent publishing platform to infringe).

What happens if you buy it as a NOOK book and it turns out it is infringing? You won’t be legally liable for anything…it’s the distribution that’s the problem. The Supreme Court has ruled that having infringing copies isn’t the same as having stolen goods (infringement and theft are two different crimes, for one thing). Amazon famously removed infringing copies of 1984 from Kindles, and said they wouldn’t do that again in the same circumstances (that was overstepping the bounds…as I mentioned, having the book wasn’t illegal). I would hope, though, that people would voluntarily delete it.

If I hear more, I’ll let you know.

Update: it appears to be gone from Barnes & Noble this morning. It’s possible that the post here and/or my contacting HarperCollins had something to do with it.

I suspect some people probably wish it was still there, but if it was infringing, I’m happy to see it gone.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Confirmation: Macmillan e-book prices no longer set by publisher

Confirmation: Macmillan e-book prices no longer set by publisher

Yesterday, when I was telling you about a bunch of bargains with Amazon apparently price-matching Barnes & Noble on the latter’s half-off sale on top NOOK Books this weekend, I noticed that many of them were Macmillan and suggested that perhaps Macmillan and Amazon had renegotiated terms after the former settled on the Agency Model. Whew, that was  a long sentence! Let me catch breath…okay, to go on…

I’ve checked several Macmillan books this morning, and the line that “This price was set by the publisher” is now gone.

If you’ve been tracking books at

eReaderIQ

which is a great free service that will send you an e-mail when a book you are tracking drops in price an amount you specify, you may have gotten some pleasant surprises in your Inbox.

Macmillan has a number of imprints (specialized lines of books). If you were tracking something from one of these, you may have seen the change:

• Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• First Second
• Henry Holt & Co.
• Nature Publishing Group
• Palgrave Macmillan
• Picador
• Quick and Dirty Tips
• Scientific American
• St. Martin’s Press
• Minotaur Books
• Thomas Dunne Books
• Tor/Forge

What does this mean for the future?

We should start seeing Macmillan books discounted at Amazon, including being featured in Kindle Daily Deal and  100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or Less. I’ll certainly be interested in seeing how things are affected when I run my next Snapshot on May 1st. It’s possible the average price of a New York Times bestseller hardback equivalent may drop, for example.

So, where are we on the Big Six US trade publishers and the Agency Model at Amazon?

• Simon & Schuster: can be discounted
• Hachette: can be discounted
• Macmillan: can be discounted
• HarperCollins: can be discounted
• Penguin: can not be discounted (still under the Agency Model, but they have settled…we need to wait for the new terms to be worked out)
• Random House: can not be discounted (still under the Agency Model…they will be bound by Penguin having settled, if their merger with Penguin is approved)

It will take some time after the Agency Model is gone before we really see the impact, because we have to get back into price competition between sellers. I think we might really see an impact this holiday season, though.

Here is a search for books published by Macmillan (this won’t cover all of the imprints):

Macmillan titles in the US Kindle store

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Amazon buys Goodreads

Amazon buys Goodreads

Honestly, it was a bit of a surprise when I got this

Amazon press release

in my e-mail!

I doubt anyone has been talking more about the idea of Amazon getting more social than I have (although it’s possible), but I didn’t really expect them to buy

Goodreads.com

After all, Amazon already bought a readers’ social site:

Shelfari.com

back in 2008 (in the first year of the Kindle, which was released late in 2007).

Shelfari never had the cache that Goodreads does, though, so this is a big deal.

In fact, if this was a major industry, there might be a lot of scrutiny about the “merger”. Yes, there are others out there:

LibraryThing

for one, and earlier this year, I suggested Amazon buy the BookAnd app.

Goodreads reportedly has more than 16 million members…when you think about the total number of “serious readers” in the USA, that’s a really sizable chunk (it wouldn’t surprise me if it is half of the people who buy, oh, more than 100 books a year).

Goodreads wrote about this in a

Goodreads blog post

and there are a couple of interesting things there. One, this means Goodreads is hiring, and two, they want to know what integration you want between your Kindle and Goodreads.

Now, I want to point out that this may not mean a lot of changes at Goodreads (outside of that integration thing). IMDb.com was the best movie reference site on the web (in my opinion) before Amazon bought it, and it still is.

The obvious question for me is, what happens to Shelfari?

I have an account there, and I have used it some. Social sites take a lot of work in you personalizing your use of it (ask the doomed Google Reader what people think when you take something away). Migrating to a new one is like moving to a new school when your are ten years old. It might be a better school, but it’s a still a hard adjustment.

Amazon just could keep running them both, but my guess is that they will migrate Shelfari accounts to Goodreads, and shut down the former eventually.

That’s going to be a bit complicated, because they aren’t the same, but there probably is a lot of duplication of features.

My guess is, though, that this is going to result in a better site for Amazon users. I do think they’ll lose some of the anti-ammys (People who are against Amazon…I just made that one up), but they’ll make up for it with other people.

The acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of June of this year.

I’m looking forward to it, but I know that might not be your reaction. I’ve been a Shelfari user, but not really a Goodreads one (I’m going to start exploring the Goodreads options). Part of that was because you could import your books from Amazon to Shelfari, and I assume they’ll add that to Goodreads later.

I’m also curious about what your involvement with readers’ social sites has been up to this point:

I’m not quite ready to poll about what features you would like this to bring to the Kindle service, but feel free to make suggestions by commenting on this post. I’m particularly interested in what you love about Goodreads.

Thanks to my reader, Ed Foster, for giving me a heads-up on this! I saw the press release first, but it’s always appreciated. Ed linked to this

Publishers Weekly article

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Amazon makes it easy to find KOLL books

Amazon makes it easy to find KOLL books

This is something people have wanted!

When you are searching for books in the Kindle store, there is now a checkbox so you can limit the results to those that are Prime eligible.

Update: some readers aren’t seeing the box. I just tested it again this morning (using Maxthon) and it was there and the link below worked for me, just returning KOLL books. One more test…yes, it did not work for me when I was logged out!  When I logged back into the account, it worked again. You may have to be logged into a Prime eligible account to see the box. Here is what it looks like:

It may also have to do with what browser you are using. If you do comment about seeing it or not, please include your browser. I just checked it in Internet Explorer 7, and I had it there. To be clear, I am selecting a category in Kindle e-books before I see this.

Update: I’m sorry a lot of people aren’t finding this! Here’s a process that is working for me, although it may be different in different browsers (and sometimes, Amazon tests things with a limited number of people).

I go to Amazon (and am signed in).

I change the searchbox at the top to search from “All Departments” to “Kindle Store”.

I search for (for example) cat.

I see the checkbox at the top of the results.

===

That means they are part of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL).

Yes, you can narrow by category, sort by highest rated, and so on.

For example:

KOLL books by best reviewed

This is a fantastic improvement, but remember, you have to actually borrow the books from your hardware Kindle (including Kindle Fires)…this is just so that you can find them.

To borrow a book for free, you must click a button that says “Borrow”, not “Buy”. I see people get confused by that a lot.

With the KOLL, you can borrow up to a book a calendar month.

I checked, and they don’t seem to have changed the description on the book’s Amazon product page much if at all, so people will still make the mistake…but it does make it easier to find the books.

Thanks again to Amazon for always working to make things better!

Enjoy!

Oh, and I’m seeing it in the Maxthon browser…I assume you’ll see the checkbox everywhere, but they don’t always deploy things like this everywhere at once. If you don’t see it, feel free to comment on the post to let me and my readers know…

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.