Round up #171: XBOOKS, Stephen King’s latest horror

Round up #171: XBOOKS, Stephen King’s latest horror

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Up to 25 specific Kindle children’s books for $2 each

One reason why the Kindles with Special Offers have been more popular than the ones without has been the offers on books.

Well, I’m always happy to see book offers extended to even those who decline advertisers reducing the price of their Kindles in exchange for viewing the ads.

Today, AmazonLocal has a

deal on Kindle children’s books

You don’t need to have a Special Offers Kindle, although you do need to set up an AmazonLocal account if you don’t have one.

The deal is any of up to 25 specific children’s books for $2 each.

You need to claim this deal by Friday.

The

deal details page

shows you the books. However, if this is available to you (it may not be in your country), I’d go ahead and get it. If you don’t use it, it hasn’t cost you anything.

Enjoy!

XBOOKS?

Microsoft is making a big announcement today at 9:30 Pacific about the next XBOX. There has been a lot of speculation about how it might integrate with your TV.

One obvious question to me (but maybe not to most of the people covering this) is will it somehow incorporate the NOOK, since Amazon has invested so much money in it?

I don’t think most people are going to want to read e-books on their TV screens.  I have a hard time seeing that: my TV is more like music in the background for me…I don’t tend to stare at it and not do anything else at the same time, as would be necessary when sight-reading a book.

However, I can see three applications.

One would be to have text-to-speech. NOOK has never done much with that, but I could see having my TV reading a book to me while I folded laundry or worked on a spreadsheet.

Another would be to select books on an XBOX, and then have it send them to an EBR (E-Book Reader), phone, computer, and so on. Especially given the Kinect’s increasing Minority Report type gestural interface, it might be fun to make it seem like you were using your fingers to take a book off a shelf and open it. When shopping, it could include book trailer videos. I suppose you could make in-game purchases of e-books a possibility as well…although I’m not sure that many videogame characters have interesting libraries…

The third one would be to play to kids…there are many interactive book apps where you might want to bounce between a bigger screen (where shared reading might happen) and a personal screen.

My best guess is that we won’t hear anything about “XBOOKS” (just my off the cuff term for e-books on an XBOX), but wouldn’t it be cool…

Male and Female Announcers

I’ve been using the CNN App on my Kindle Fire with the sound off in the morning (while I exercise). That way, it doesn’t disturb my Significant Other. That means I’ve been using “closed captions” (those are words that appear on the screen to show you what is being said, basically…you have to choose to see them).

Generally, even though the show is live, they tend to be pretty accurate. I can see why they are so important to some people, and I’ve been happy to see them become more available on the Fire.

However, there is something…intriguing to me during the commercials (yes, those get closed captioning as well).

Sometimes, a voice is just described as VO (voiceover). Sometimes, though, it says “male announcer” or “female announcer”.

I love how the internet lets people be judged just on their thoughts (and the way they express them), if they want. To help give people that freedom, I try not to identify inherent characteristics much. I try to write these posts without reference to gender, for example.

So, I’m interested as to why the closed captioning identifies the gender. Oh, I guess I know why…people being influenced by a stated gender (even for something genderless like a computer), is demonstrated in The Man Who Lied to His Laptop (which I highly recommend). That would be an interesting study: are people more likely to buy something that is stereotypically female, just because the closed captioning says, “Female Announcer”? I would guess that is the case, but a study would give that hypothesis validation (and give an idea about the extent of the effect).

I also find it intriguing that music is usually just represented by two music notes. I would think that they would describe it: “spooky music”, “triumphant music”, that sort of thing…but they don’t, usually.

Unintended consequences: Amazon business details to be revealed?

Hm…maybe this is why Apple still wants to go to trial in the legal action with the Department of Justice over the Agency Model.

In this

Publishers Weekly article

by Andrew Albanese, you can read about Apple trying to make documents from Amazon public in the case, and Amazon fighting it.

Tech writers get annoyed that Amazon doesn’t release specific sales figures, and honestly, I do think that secrecy has a negative impact on people trusting Amazon (although many people do trust the e-tailer…in a recent poll I did, more than ten percent of people said that trusting Amazon is why they bought e-books from them.

Amazon is arguing that releasing the information publicly would hurt their competitive advantage.

Apple argues that Amazon’s filed documents would not do so, and it’s not unreasonable for them to want the evidence about the different business models to be out there.

I’m not quite sure how this will go. If the judge feels that releasing it would hurt Amazon, they could look at them in closed session. If they do get released, it could be  embarrassing  for Amazon, although I don’t think it would be devastating. Sure, the blogosphere would be all over it, but that’s not the same thing as damage. I wonder if we might even learn things that make Amazon look good?

Stephen King’s latest horror…no e-book edition for Joyland

Oh, the conglomeration of contradiction that is Stephen King!

The author led on e-books…at first. Then, there was the “windowing” (delaying the e-book version) and blocking text-to-speech access (which may not be a decision made by King, but could certainly be influenced by arguably the most powerful author in the world).

I’ve written about this before:

My Response to Stephen King

This is more of the same issue.

E-books advance accessibility. It is perhaps noble to want to advance brick-and-mortar bookstores…but not doing an e-book is choosing a commercial enterprise over individuals with challenges. That includes print challenges, but also with mobility issues. Yes, they can order the p-book (paperbook) online, but according to this

Wall Street Journal article by Jeffrey Trachtenberg (you may have to search for “Stephen King Says No to E-Book, to Scare Up Business” in Google to be able to read it), King said:

“…let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.”

Easier for some than others…and this doesn’t even accomplish that goal, if people can by the book online (which they will be able to do).

While King’s biggest book of the year, a sequel to one of the author’s most popular books, is not being windowed, it is scheduled to be released with text-to-speech access blocked.

I think The Stand is one of the great American novels, and I try not to judge the art by the artist. However, I have to admit that emotionally, these moves make me like Stephen King less…not necessarily as an author, though.

I should be clear: I probably wouldn’t have bought the new Stephen King books right away, even if they were available in digital form. I don’t tend to buy big name fiction like that when it is first released, although I do sometimes. I have a lot to read, and don’t usually feel the urgency. My concern here is really for others…and I always hope that Stephen King will recognize who is impacted the most by these choices in the future.

What do you think? Do you want to know Amazon’s business details? If they come out, do you think it would hurt them? Will Microsoft mention e-books with the XBOX? Would you sight-read a book on a TV? Are you aware of being influenced by the gender of announcers in commercials? What do you think of Stephen King’s decision not to do an e-book version? Is a good move to support brick-and-mortars? Was calling the decision a “horror” over the top (I was a bit ambivalent about that…I liked the tie-in to King’s genre writing, but thought it might be overly sensationalistic)? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

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

Round up #170: The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, books by the foot

Round up #170: The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, books by the foot

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

The end of “books by the foot”?

When I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore, one of the weird things that would happen is that somebody would come in and want to buy a bunch of remainders (bargain books, basically) of a particular color (“Do you have ten green books?”).

They were using them as decoration. It might be in a model home, or it might be in a store display. They were usually mixing books of different colors.

Well, recently, my Significant Other and I were shopping in a department store, and I noticed the above display for furniture.

See those bookshelves?

It’s a photograph! They have something like “wallpaper” with bookshelves on it, and just put that up to give the feel for the room.

First off, we do have a room like that with floor to ceiling shelves in our home, but I don’t think most people do any more…so I guess this is aspirational advertising.

Second, it just looks weird. It’s like those cardboard computers they put on desks they are trying to sell. It makes it feel like…a dollhouse, or like you are on display in an alien zoo or something (hm…maybe that last one is just me).

I don’t know how many books were sold that way a year (and some people sold miscellaneous books by the foot ((as in twelve inches))), but this might have some impact on the market…

New York Times: “Apple Fights Back in Antitrust Case Over E-Book Prices”

This

New York Times article

by Edward Wyatt and Brian X. Chen starts out with this line:

“Don’t mess with the legacy of Steve Jobs.”

Regular readers might recall that I described Steve Jobs’ mystique as Apple’s most valuable asset, and that I thought that protecting that might be what got them to settle in the Agency Model case before it went to court.

Well, the trial is set for June 3rd. There could still be a last minute settlement, but if there isn’t, Apple may work in court to refute tarnishing allegations against Steve Jobs. I suspect that if there is a settlement (which could even come after the trial starts), it might include not having to admit any wrongdoing by Apple’s visionary.

An extraordinary and valuable book

I’m only partway through

The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What We Can Learn About Ourselves from Our Machines

by Clifford Nass and Corina Yen, but I’m finding it quite remarkable. It seems like an important book for understanding the world and the people in it…like The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal by Desmond Morris or Please Understand Me II (which is an update of Please Understand Me) by David Keirsey.

Nass is a social scientist who has pioneered work that shows that people interact with computers as if the machines were also human beings.

This has led to much practical work, not just theory.

This book has a somewhat different focus…it tests social ideas by using computers as the “agents” in experiments.

It’s pretty simple: it’s hard to test the impact of flattery using humans, because who that human is (gender, age, and so on) really affects the impact the flattery might have on us. It’s possible to do it, but quite complex. Using a computer as a flatterer is simpler.

The book appears to be able to test a lot of ideas effectively (using experimentation).

For example, what’s the best way to give somebody a review at work? Praise, criticism, praise? Or is there a better sequence?

I want you to read the book, so I’m not going to give you the answer they found.

However, I will share with you a little test I did today, based on one of the book’s findings.

They said that team building can be enhanced by the team members having a commonality. It could be a simple as assigning people to different colored teams (as they do on Survivor), or first finding similarities and then grouping people by that.

I was presenting to my coworkers (other trainers) today on the project management work formula (W=D*U…Work = Duration * Units). I know I”m a good presenter (that’s the feedback I get), but this is can be particularly dry stuff (like accounting and algebra rolled together).

So, I wanted to try the commonality thing.

First, I explained a problem we were going to solve. Then, I broke the room into groups, just based on who was sitting next to each other. Sitting next to somebody doesn’t mean that you normally would group with them…there are a  lot of us coming from considerably varying distances, so seating is kind of catch as catch can.

What I did, before I asked the groups to work on the problem (which isn’t an easy one…it has to do with “leveling”), was I asked them all to find a pop culture thing that everybody in their group liked: a movie, a book, a sports team, a musician, something like that.

I gave them a minute to do it, and there was some lively discussion.

Then, they worked on the problem for a few minutes.

I had them tell me what the commonality was for each of their groups, and I referred to them by that term.

Here’s what I found to be extraordinary.

I think every group solved the problem…and it needed four different solutions. These are not math people (well, one of them is, but that’s not our job), and none of them had an education in project management (I asked them that in the beginning). I’ve done this same problem with people who were in front of me for a project management class, and it’s taken quite a bit of work and not everybody got it.

Second, and perhaps more important, was the feedback we gave at the end of this seven hour-long meeting. My segment was only half an hour of that: we had a lot of topics.

People said this was the most fun meeting we’d ever had! That wasn’t just me, but I’m sure it was partly me. Also, somebody said it was good to do a “light topic” like mine after lunch. A light topic? I’ve never heard project management/resource allocation described that way before!

Obviously, this is only a small sample and one test, my intuitive sense is that the bonding that happened just by asking them to find that one commonality made them work together better, and made it seem more fun.

Can’t wait to get through the rest of the book!

I’m sure some of you are wondering…

Here’s the problem:

You are in an 8-hour long meeting on a Friday. That morning, just before the meeting, you find out that you also need to do a report to turn in first thing Monday morning (the next business day), and you know from experience that it takes eight hours to produce that report.

You now have sixteen hours of work to do in eight hours.

There are three legitimate approaches to fixing that, and one that is considered cheating.

The problem was to come up with all four solutions…and I only gave them about three minutes to do it.

I’ll let you put in your answers by commenting on this post, if you want. If you want to comment on anything else, free to do so.

Update: I’m going to provide the answers below…if you haven’t thought about it yet, you might want to do that before continuing.

Increase the Units

This is usually the first people mention (it is one that my reader Bailey mentioned in a comment). What that means in this case is either get somebody to else to do the report for you, or have someone else go to the meeting for you. Obviously, that might depend on your role in the meeting. Let’s say you have a coworker do the report. Now, you’ve fixed

16 w = 8 d * 1 u (16 hours of work being done in 8 hours of time by one person)

to

16 w = 8 d * 2 u (16 hours or work being done in 8 hours of time by two people)

Increase the duration

In this version, you ask for an extension: can you turn in the report later, or postpone the meeting? If they say yes, then you’ve fixed it this way:

16 w = 16 d * 1 u (16 hours of work being done in 16 hours of time by 1 person)

Do less work

There are two ways to do less work:

• Do a worse job
• Increase efficiency

In the “do a worse job” category in this case, you might go to the meeting for just 4 hours and then create a reduced value report in 4 hours…or possibly work on the report during the meeting (only paying half as much attention to both). Bailey mentioned this one.

It’s tough to see much about how you could increase efficiency in this case, with little warning. Increasing efficiency often means adding technology. For example, it would take people less work to paint a room with paint rollers than with paintbrushes. Perhaps if your boss bought you, oh, Excel, you could produce the report more quickly in the future. This is the answer bosses often want you to do (become more efficient), but they may not want to spend the money to buy new tech.

The last one, which is considered cheating, is to work overtime…stay up until two in the morning doing the report (after the meeting), or work on the report over the weekend. That’s cheating, because you aren’t supposed to plan on overtime…it’s a tactical response, not a strategic plan. In some states, industries have gotten in trouble for having budgeted overtime in their plans.

That’s it: those are really the three choices (plus the cheating one).

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

Round up #169: ultimate PAW EBR, publishers bullied by Apple?

Round up #169: ultimate PAW EBR, publishers bullied by Apple?

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Earl: the backcountry survival tablet

If “Earl” seems to good to be true, you are right…it’s not true yet. Take a look at it:

MeetEarl.com

This is a (deep breath) solar-powered, water-resistant, GPS-loaded, weather-detecting, walkie-talkie, Android E-Ink device…with a flexible screen.

It’s the ultimate EBR (E-Book Reader) for the PAW (Post-Apocalyptic World).

It’s only being crowdfunded right now…you can “invest” in the development, and that’s how you end up getting one at this point (for as low as $249).

They are about 55% of the way to the goal as I write this, and there are 25 days left to help them get to the $250,000 needed to launch it.

Would it replace a Kindle?

Not in the marketplace…most people don’t need all that stuff, and it’s a lot more expensive than the “Mindle” (that’s what I call the lowest priced device). However, you should be able to install the Kindle app on it, and, well, it would certainly appeal to some people (including people who worry that a Kindle is too fragile for their kid).

I think it may happen…they could hit the goal.

The nice thing then would be if some of the tech spread into other tablets, which is certainly possible.

Amazon’s problems in Europe

There have been a couple of interesting bad PR (Public Relations) situations for Amazon in Europe recently.

First there is a 1-day strike in Germany over pay:

The Guardian article

The argument is over how the workers at Amazon’s warehouses should be classified. Are they working in retail, or are they working in logistics? Amazon does a lot with logistics, no question…in the USA, they have a big business delivering things for other people.

Oddly to me, retail workers get a higher wage in Germany than logistics workers.

However, that’s not the only source of the problem here. There was a TV show back in February that alleged abuses by Amazon, including the use of security connected with neo-Nazis:

DW.de article

That documentary probably contributed to this strike…Germany is a big market for Amazon, and you know how it goes…once a powerful entity gets hit, the hits may keep on coming.

I’ve written before about negative stories about how Amazon treats warehouse workers in the USA. There may be a reason Amazon bought a robot company, partially to automate warehouses…

Then, there is this article about Amazon.uk (as opposed to Amazon.de, which had the strike:

Reuters article

Amazon recently reported financials, and, well, they fed concerns people have had about the e-tailer running business through a Luxembourg division…which means they don’t pay the same taxes they would if they were housed in, say, the UK.

According to the article, Amazon paid $3.7 million in taxes on an income of $6.5 billion…note those initial consonants. That’s a rate of about….0.06%. It’s a good thing Europe is rolling in the dough right now and doesn’t need money, right? Just kidding…my guess is that Luxembourg isn’t too upset by this. Amazon does have to be careful about it’s reputation, though, and not just in the USA.

How logo would you go-go?

One of my regular readers, Lady Galaxy, gave me the heads-up on this

Daily Finance article

about “subliminal” company logos.

A lot of people became familiar with the concept with Wilson Bryan Key’s book,

Subliminal Seduction

which isn’t currently available in a Kindle edition.

Certainly, Keys’ ideas have been challenged…see this

The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams article

The basic idea is that images of which you are not consciously aware can influence you…in particular, there might be unrelated images (such as sexual ones) in an ad for a drink, perhaps, and that would make you want to buy that drink.

Anyway, the Daily Finance article included Amazon’s logo…and that prompted some comments from another regular reader, Roger Knights, and my responses to them.

Before I tell you what we were saying, let me ask you some questions:

Reportedly, it’s intended to look like both a smile and carry that “A to Z” message. The latter is also supported by Amazon’s research department being called Lab 126, about which Jason Merkoski in Review: Burning the Page says,

“As for the “126” part, well, you have to realize that there was never a Lab125 or a Lab124, just like there was only ever a Preparation H, never a G or an F. The “126” part stems from the fact that “A” is the first letter of the alphabet and “Z” is the 26th, a techno-geeky homage to the “A to Z” development center. Jeff liked his geeky in-jokes— you could have heard his laugh a mile away when they came up with that name.”

The discussion Roger and I were having was over whether the line is an arrow pointing to the “O” (and therefore a mistake) or a flowchart type connector with the arrowhead just indicating direction (so it is “A to Z” and not “Z to A”). Roger thinks they should change the logo so that the arrowhead points more clearly to the Z. I don’t feel the need for that. For me, that message is done correctly…the arrowhead even distorts the bottom of the Z, pushing it up out of the way and deforming it.

What do you think?

New York Times: “U.S. Now Paints Apple as ‘Ringmaster’ in Its Lawsuit on E-Book Price-Fixing”

This New York Times article

reports something which simultaneously seems obvious and makes you shake your head in disbelief.

The DoJ (Department of Justice) has now released e-mails which make it really clear that Apple wanted e-book prices to go up when it masterminded the Agency Model for e-books.

That’s the allegation…and unless Apple is going to say the e-mails are false, they are pretty convincing (take a look at the article by Edward Wyatt and Nick Wingfield).

I suppose the shift here is in seeing publishers as the victims of Apple, rather than as co-conspirators.

It always seemed apparent to me that Apple had come up with the idea, and floated it to publishers. One question was whether or not the publishers discussed it with each other (which could make them guilty of a conspiracy to fix prices), or just each individually made a deal with Apple.

It’s not a surprise that Apple might have been the “ringleader”. It’s hard for me to imagine the publishers all sitting together and saying, “You know, it’s rumored that Apple is going to be producing a new tablet computer. Let’s suggest to them that they make us raise the prices on e-books…”

What do you think? Would you want a waterproof solar-powered EBR…even if it wasn’t a Kindle? Would you pay almost $200 more for one? Does Amazon’s treatment of its warehouse workers bother you? Are the publishers victims of Apple? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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

Round up #168: Kindle 3D phone, geeky Moms

Round up #168: Kindle 3D phone, geeky Moms

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Interesting mix at KDD for Mothers’ Day

I’m sure (or at least I strongly hope) that Amazon chooses the Kindle Daily Deals with promotional tie-in value in mind.

That’s why I was impressed with today’s Kindle Daily Deals.

Okay, sure…the featured (and Gold Box) deal is on any one of a number of highly-rated romances.

However, the science fiction & fantasy deal is

2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: The Odyssey)

for $1.99.

That’s really making a solid choice for those geeky Moms.

It has an interesting developmental history. Essentially, Stanly Kubrick bought the rights to some short stories from Arthur C. Clarke…and they jointly wrote the screenplay. However, at the same time, Clarke (with Kubrick’s knowledge, and, I think, encouragement) wrote the novel.

The novel took elements from a few Clarke stories, as did the movie. It isn’t that the movie was written without Clarke and then Clarke adapted the movie.

The Teens daily choice is also one I could see being a sharing between mother and child…but it isn’t one I would think would be read aloud:

The Dark Is Rising (Dark Is Rising Sequence, The)

That’s a Newberry and Carnegie Medal honored book. It is, however, what I call a “Discovered Destiny” book: the protagonist finds out that they aren’t really who they always thought they were, or that they have some secret mission to perform (that they didn’t know about previously). While in some cases that can be “anti-parent”, I could certainly see how a mother and child could have some very interesting discussions if the mother had read the book when young and then gave it to her own child. That’s certainly possible in this case…the book originally came out in the mid 1960s.

Smashwords: “How Data-Driven Decisions *Might* Help Indie Ebook Authors Reach More Readers”

This

presentation

by Mark Coker of Smashwords is the result of some really heavy lifting in data analysis, and has some great insights for e-book authors and publishers.

While this is a single source of data, I’d suggest that it is one of the most significant analyses you’ll read this year, and I highly recommend it.

They do say we can share it with our friends, but I don’t want to take too much away from it. Let me note a few highlights:

• Longer books sell better (60% of the bestsellers were more than 100,000 words)
• Free books are most downloaded, but low-priced ($0.99 and $1.99) are not downloaded as much as somewhat higher priced books…some publishers are underpricing their books
• Sales are not distributed evenly…in other words, just like with print books, some bestsellers really dominate the market. That might be a surprise for e-books for some, who want to see them as more “democratic”

Note that I’m really summarizing: there are 71 slides in the presentation. Yes, the presenter has an agenda, but I did find the data valuable (even if collection of data across all outlets could not be done evenly).

James Patterson explains why his books sell

This is a really insightful

The Guardian article

from mega-successful author James Patterson.

It talks about how the author’s background in advertising made the first big book a success, and about collaborating and producing around ten books a year.

This is one of those stories about “finding a better way”, and worth reading.

CBC: “Writers’ Union of Canada to vote on admitting self-published authors”

CBC article

Sometimes, it feels like the USA is really good at making stuff (like the Kindle), but slower than some other countries at changing behavior (which, as a trainer, is what I do for a living).

The Writers Union of Canada is scheduled to vote at the end of May as to whether or not to allow independently publishing authors into the group.

Generally, traditionally published authors have balked at that. They wanted to recognize the hurdles that were passed to become tradpubbed…it was certainly different from paying a “vanity press” to publish something.

That idea has really changed, though, and will continue to change.

People shrink at the term “self-published”, although that’s often what is happening…the preferred term is now “independently published”…even though that’s a bit mushy to me.

The simple fact is that there are now many “hybrid authors”. They are both traditionally published and independently published. Many very successful tradpubbed authors are now going their own way, and that’s likely to increase.

It then challenges you: why do we accept this author when they do things one way, and we would reject the same author when they do things a different way?

I think it’s possible to set a certain level of success as the barrier to entry. Having a single title on a “recognized” bestseller list (you can create a modifiable list) for at least three weeks (an arbitrary number…I don’t want it to be just one appearance on the list at a retailer, because those can be manipulated by buying a bunch of copies yourself…even at particular times of the day when competition is lower.).

I suspect it will be a while before the Authors Guild in the USA seriously considers the same question, but I could be wrong…and would be happy to be wrong.

WSJ:”Amazon Is Developing Smartphone With 3-D Screen”

This
Wall Street Journal article

talks about an array of possible gadgets from Amazon this year, including a phone with a 3D holographic display…no glasses needed.

Others mentioned include a cheap audio-only streamer, and a set-top box (like a Roku).

I’ve suggested that this will be a year without huge technological breakthroughs in the EBR (E-Book Reader) market, and a 10-inch Kindle Fire doesn’t count.

It’s interesting that EBRs aren’t mentioned.

Here’s the thing. Amazon can be a hardware manufacturer that doesn’t make money on hardware. That works if they use your loyalty to the hardware to get you to buy other profitable items (we are back to my “diapers and windshield wipers” line).

It’s hard for anybody to compete with that.

For me, though, I’d love to see all of this as one device eventually. Why give me a set-top box if my Kindle Fire could easily wirelessly transmit to a TV? Of course, that’s what the set top box could be…just seen as an “accessory” for a Kindle Fire.

How much cheaper could an audio streamer be than a tablet? Sure, you could probably make something for $10…but can’t you just make the Fire do the same thing?

I’ve said before that, if it’s a choice between carrying a tablet that makes decent phone calls and a phone with a relatively small screen that shows movies decently, I think people will go with the tablet. Tablets are small enough to carry reasonably easily, but the bigger screen makes a difference in a lot of functions. Until we get morphable devices (which can change shape), I think the tablet will win.

That said, Amazon can make a lot of money (er…sales, not profit…they aren’t that good at profit) with an array of devices. Those devices have to get people to sign up for Prime, and Prime has to get people to buy physical items.

I think that’s the winning strategy.

I have to admit, I’d be a little afraid to get a “Kindle phone”. My Samsung is very reliable, even it’s a bit outdated now perhaps. It’s a real workhorse. I can’t say that about my Kindle Fire: like an early model PC, it does “crash” a lot, but not so it’s really irritating. Flipboard may stop responding, for example. I wouldn’t want that to happen with my phone…

What do you think? Should authors’ groups accept independently published authors? How do you determine for yourself who is “an author”? Would you buy a Kindle phone? Do you have a geeky Mom? Are you more likely to buy a book for $2.99 than for $1.99? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

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

Round up #167: no DRM doesn’t increase piracy for Tor, Mothers’ Day specials

Round up #167: no DRM doesn’t increase piracy for Tor, Mothers’ Day specials

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Mothers’ Day specials

Oh, how the pace of commerce has changed! Mothers’ Day is this Sunday in the USA, and you can still get deals on line and get the item in time. Whether you are buying for a Mom or not, I thought I’d mention a couple.

First, there’s the deal on the Kindle Fire HD 7″ models directly from Amazon (this doesn’t appear to apply to the 8.9″). You have to enter this code at checkout:

FIRE4MOM

Note that entering it a checkout means you will not get the opportunity to enter it if you use 1-click. This deal is good through May 12th, and only for USA customers. Here is a link to the rest of the

Kindle Fire HD 7″ deal details

Second, DecalGirl has a deal on skins. Skins are really a way to personalize a device, including Kindles and Kindle Fires. It’s like a super duper sticker you put on it. You can even do customized ones by uploading a photo. They have a promotional code for 25% off through May 13th…I guess they even have the late folks covered…so to speak. Of course, you could also let Mom pick her skin.

You can shop here:

DecalGirl Mothers’ Day skins

At checkout, enter the code

THANKSMOM

I assume it’s okay to post this, since they sent me an e-mail they said I could forward to friends…you’re my friends, right?

Senate passes equal collection legislation

I’ve written about this a lot before, and I’m happy to see it moving along (even though it isn’t law yet).

There’s nice coverage of the vote by the Senate to pass equal collection legislation in this

Money.CNN.com article

Just to summarize, it would mean that large internet retailers would collect sales tax at the point of sale on online purchases, similar to what happens in a brick-and-mortar store.

This is key: it is not a new tax.

If people think of it as a new tax, it probably won’t pass the House of Representatives, despite the bipartisan support it has had.

Nobody will owe a penny more of sales tax if this passes…but the vast majority of people will pay more.

That’s because you are probably expected to pay sales/use tax in your state on your annual taxes when you buy things from out of state retailers…but most people just don’t. We do in my family, and it’s a bear…if this does pass, it will simplify things for me.

Can you imagine figuring out your own sales tax on your brick-and-mortar purchases, and then paying it as one lump sum once a year?

I’m not convinced it will pass the House, although there are certainly  motivations  to do so. Amazon and Wal-Mart both support it. More importantly, the Federal government might be able to send less money to the states if the states were able to collect the sales tax they were already owed. However we all know that “logic” isn’t spelled “lawgic” for a reason…the two don’t have a whole lot to do with each other.

Tor going DRM-free has not increased piracy

There’s a fascinating

Tor.com post

that talks about how things are going after a year of being DRM (Digital Rights Mangement) free. Tor is a major publisher (part of Macmillan), and I reported on their decision.

DRM is code inserted into digital content by the publisher to control the use of that material.

When you download an e-book that is DRM-free, there is nothing it that technically stops you from copying it or altering it.

That doesn’t mean that you have the right to do anything you want: you could still do things (like distributing it freely over the internet without permission) which would be illegal infringement.

However, if you want to convert it from an e-book you can read on a Kindle to an e-book you can read on a NOOK, that is apparently okay.

Here’s the key line in a short excerpt:

“As it is, we’ve seen no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles, despite them being DRM-free for nearly a year.”

That doesn’t mean there has been no piracy (there can even be piracy of DRM-protected files…it’s just harder), but that releasing without DRM hasn’t meant that there was any more or it (as far as they can tell).

As they note, their success doesn’t mean it would be equally successful for all books, but you can bet other tradpubs (traditional publishers) are looking at this carefully.

Taking a Kindle for a test drive…really

My Significant Other and I knew that it was getting to be time to buy a new car (I had a Scion XB with over 150,000 miles on it…it was still doing fine, but you start thinking about maintenance costs at that range).

For me, tech in the car is a big thing. I’ve been listening now to text-to-speech in the car for years.

In the Scion, that was with an FM transmitter, playing through the radio.

We wanted a hybrid. We’d been driving Toyotas (I did like the Scion a lot) and had pretty much settled on a Prius.

Then, we drove a Ford Fusion over the weekend…and bought it.

For us, the drive was just so much better…the feel of it, and especially the visibility.

The tech was fine: it’s practically like having gotten a new computer, which is a fun day for me. I’m not that big on driving, but I really enjoyed it today. I have a touchscreen in the car, but I can also talk to it. The Kindle Fire (and my phone and my Blackberry and my Significant Other’s phone) paired to the Bluetooth with no problem. I start the book on the Kindle (before I start driving), and tell it to play Bluetooth audio…and I’m off and running. It also has two USB charging ports, so I don’t need a car adapter with this one.

Unrelated to the Kindle, the back-up camera is crazy cool. I haven’t had a new car for about nine years, so this all new to me. I really like that it shows me two virtual reality lines for where the car is going to go…and if you turn the steering wheel (even before you start moving), it shows you the projected path. It’s going to take quite a while before it feels natural to look forward (at the screen) when backing up, but I can clearly see the advantages.

That “taking a while” thing happens, though. I had a funny one the other day. The clock in our bathroom died, and I’m often reading on my Kindle Fire in there while I exercise and brush my teeth (I take a long time doing the latter). However, I did have a paper magazine up on the towel rack where I normally put my Fire. I caught myself reaching up to push something on the paper magazine to see what time it was. I didn’t get very far, but that’s clearly become a habit for me.

Some people ask why an RSK (Reflective Screen Kindle…anything but a Kindle Fire) doesn’t show a clock all the time. One reason why their batteries last so long is that they do very little when you are reading. They redraw the “page”, and that’s about it unless you tell it to do something. If there was a clock, they’d have to redraw the page at least every minute…that would eat up battery charge life.

What do you think? Will equal collection legislation pass the House? How will it affect Amazon if it does? Did you buy any more books from Tor because they went DRM-free? How do you use your Kindle in the car? 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.

Round up #166: Harper Lee sues, Star Wars Day

Round up #166: Harper Lee sues, Star Wars Day

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

“May the Fourth be with you!”

Ath you probably…wait, that thould be…that’th thilly! Drat, once you say “May the Fourth be with you”, it’s hard to stop using the TH’s for S’s.

May the Fourth has become Star Wars Day, due to the above pun. Amazon is getting in the spirit, with discounts over the weekend on Star Wars stuff…check out the

Star Wars store at Amazon

One of today’s Kindle Daily Deals is

10 Star Wars books

for $1.99 each.

That is quite a few options…you might want to start with Heir to the Empire: Star Wars (The Thrawn Trilogy): Star Wars, Volume I by Timothy Zahn. That one is rated 4.4 with over 500 stars, which is impressive…most impressive. Is it a Jedi yet? That’s your call…

As always, check the price before you buy…it may not apply in your country, and I know I’m getting this out pretty late in the day.

You can also get

40 Star Wars Dark Horse Graphic Novels for $3.99 each

Note that graphic novels often have the text as part of an image, which can’t be read by text-to-speech. That doesn’t mean that the publisher has blocked it, just that it is unavailable to the software.

Edgar Award Winners

The Edgar Awards, given by the Mystery Writers of America, is sort of like the Oscars for mysteries.

The winners were announced on May 2nd, and here is a list:

http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html

This may not have been updated yet, but Amazon maintains a list of Edgar-winning Kindle books here:

Kindle Store › Award Winners › Edgar Awards

You can also go from that page to award winners in other categories, including: Nebular and Hugo (science fiction); RITA (romance); Newberry (children’s books); Nobel; Pulitzer; and more!

Sign up for the Kindle Daily Deals e-mail and get a selected e-book free

You have to be signing up for the first time for this marketing e-mail from Amazon, but this is a nice incentive:

Kindle Delivers Daily Deals: Sign Up and Get a Selected Kindle Book for Free

AP: “‘MOCKINGBIRD’ AUTHOR LEE SUES OVER COPYRIGHT IN NY”

This was an interesting

AP article

I would guess that To Kill a Mockingbird is the most desired book to have Kindleized.

It’s often been stated that Harper Lee, the author, doesn’t want to deal with e-books, but this article suggests it may be more complicated than that.

A lawsuit filed by Lee alleges that Samuel Pinkus, Lee’s agent, took advantage of infirmity and got Lee to assign the copyright to Pinkus.

If that’s the case, that could certainly have complicated the sale of the e-book rights.

How would you like to be in court defending yourself against Harper Lee? It’s going to be very difficult to not look like the bad guy…even if Atticus Finch isn’t presenting the author’s case.

Digital Book World: “Public Libraries, Corporate Publishers and eBooks”

Well, this is a round up , so I want to make sure everybody is caught up on tradpubs (traditional publishers) and libraries.

The tradpubs had not been universally making e-book available to public libraries…and they still aren’t all doing it 100%.

However, this

DBW article

by Jack W (sic) Perry gives you a nice timeline. All of the tradpubs are now doing something with public libraries. That’s nice to see, although it’s not everything yet without restriction.

Well, I don’t want to wait too long before I send this out, so the deals are available to more people…enjoy!

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

Round up #165: Amazon adds TTS to iOS, Anne Frank pornographic?

Round up #165: Amazon adds TTS to iOS, Anne Frank pornographic? 

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
Amazon adds text-to-speech to iOS app, coming to others

This one is near and dear to my heart, and I’m so pleased that Amazon has done it!

In this announcement in the Amazon Kindle Forum

New Accessibility Features to Free Kindle Reading iOS Apps

they are announcing new accessibility features for their free iOS Kindle reading apps (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch…I assume it works on all of them).

I’m going to go ahead and reproduce what they listed:

New accessibility features of the Kindle app enable blind and visually impaired customers to:
- Read aloud over 1.5 million titles available in the Kindle Store using Apple’s VoiceOver technology. Over 300,000 of these books are exclusive to the Kindle Store. Over 700,000 books are less than $4.99; over a million are less than $9.99.
- Seamlessly navigate within their library or within a book, with consistent title, menu and button names; navigate to a specific page within a book and sort books in the library by author or title.
- Read character-by-character, word-by-word, line-by-line, or continuously, as well as move forward or backward in the text.
- Search for a book within their library or search within their book and navigate to specific text.
- Add and delete notes, bookmarks, and highlights.
- Use customer-favorite features like X-Ray, End Actions and sharing on Facebook and Twitter.
- Look up words in the dictionary and Wikipedia.
- Customize the reading experience including changing the font, text size, background color, margin, and brightness.
- Use iOS accessibility features like Zoom, Assistive Touch, and Stereo to Mono, as well as peripheral braille displays.

Other new features include:
- Easily rate and review books by accessing `Before you go…’ directly from The `Go to’ menu
- Enhancements to `Before you go…’ including the ability to download a free sample and email yourself a reminder about recommended books.
- Additional Font Selection for Japan – Hiragino Mincho ProN (Serif)

I think these are huge improvements! As regular readers know, I use text-to-speech myself (especially in the car), but I’m more concerned with it being available to those with print challenges. This is going to be really helpful for them.

They say it will becoming to other reader apps, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be implemented the same way for Android, since the iOS ones are using Apple’s VoiceOver. If they use Ivona for the Android app, that will convert quite a few people to TTS.

I’m hoping this accelerates publishers deciding not to block text-to-speech access for their books…it gives TTS more market power, certainly.

Kudos, Amazon!

A great ad from Kobo

Even though this blog is called I Love My Kindle, I also write some about other devices, and the world of e-books generally.

This commercial is, in my opinion, one of the best ads for an EBR (E-Book Reader) to date:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALJgdKP4pTY

It really captures the magic of reading and what it means to families.

I recommend you take a look…well done, Kobo!

HuffPo: “Anne Frank’s Diary Too ‘Pornographic’ For 7th-Grade”

This

Huffington Post article

is going to raise some ire right off.

It’s about a parent filing a formal complaint that The Diary of Anne Frank is inappropriate for a school to use.

This is about the “definitive edition”, which may have a passage in it you don’t remember from reading it when you were young.

What’s appropriate for children is always a sensitive issue, but it’s worth reading the article to see what you think about it.

My gut reaction is always towards openness as far as books are concerned, but it’s possible they could have selected a different version and still had it have the value.

By the way, it always jars me when I hear people pronounced it the American way in news stories. For whatever reason, I learned the name the way it was probably originally pronounced…with the “a”s sounding like the vowel in “John”, not the way Americans usually say “can”. For me, it’s “Ahnna Frahnk”. I know that’s unusual, though.

Paperwhite update moves us towards “one book”

I recently wrote briefly about a Kindle Paperwhite update, and I’ve had a chance to play with it today. It brings an astonishingly good new feature to the device.

Interestingly, it moves us closer to something that came up in Burning the Page by Jason Merkoski (you can read my review of the book).

Merkoski talks about all books eventually being connected…being networked so you can jump from a reference in one book to that same topic in another book…sort of like surfing the web.

Well, this new feature moves us much closer to that reality.

They are just treating it like an enhancement to search, but that’s minimizing the impact.

You can highlight a word, or a phrase (a Paperwhite is a touchscreen, so you just do it with your finger or stylus).

For example, you could highlight a person’s first and last name.

I tested it with Alice in Wonderland. I highlighted “March Hare”, then hit “More” in the box that appeared.

I got another menu, including a choice to Search with an arrow…that gave me the following:

• This Book
• My Items
• Kindle Store

Being able to search the current book isn’t new.

Here was a fascinating thing with “My Items”…it includes your archived/Cloud items. That wasn’t obvious to me with “March Hare”, because, well, the term probably doesn’t occur in any of my other books. However, when I did “Alice”,  I definitely got results from books which weren’t currently on my device (I was connected to wi-fi at the time).

It also found things in My Clippings.

I should be clear: it looked inside the books, although it might have only done that with a book on my device.

The “Kindle Store” choice is even more interesting, though.

That found me a number of things, which would let me read more about the March Hare. For instance, it found me Gears of Wonderland, which presumably mentions the March Hare.

It wasn’t perfect…there appeared to be false positives, with books that had the word “March”, without necessarily having “Hare” next to it. It showed me this one as a result: The March Madness of Billy Hare. Perhaps “March Hare” appears inside the book…

Oh, and I noticed that the search results included a comment to tell me when a book was available through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library! Nice touch!

Amazon just keeps improving things, but they aren’t always great at tooting their own horn. I suppose that they might be worried that this would be seen as advertising in an e-book (which, in a way, it is), but I think it’s a very welcome feature.

What do you think? Does the social value of Anne Frank override any concerns about content within it? Are you excited about TTS on your Kindle apps? I was so excited I sent this post out early to include it…I wanted to be the first to tell you. Actually, I wanted to make sure people could use it as soon as possible…I’m usually not big on being first, unless I feel I have the story down. What do you think of the Kobo ad? 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.

Round up #164: free word game app, Paperwhite update

Round up #164: free word game app, Paperwhite update

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Kindle Paperwhite update 5.3.5

There is a recent update rolling out for the Kindle Paperwhite. You can wait for it to show up, or download it here:

Kindle Paperwhite Software Update

It brings two significant new features:

• The full definition of a word can now be viewed in the results window
• You can now highlight a word or phrase and search for it not just in the book, but in all of your items, or the Kindle store

I haven’t had a chance to really play with it yet, but that last feature sounds like a big improvement! I can certainly see running across a phrase in one e-book, and wanting to see what else was available about it in the Kindle store. I’ve also used the feature of searching my entire Kindle on older models…but I only tend to keep ten or so Kindle store books on any of my devices at any given time.

One tip: after you get the update, I’m hearing that your Kindle will re-index your books. You can see comments about the update in this

Announcement thread

The index is how your Kindle is able to look up things in a book…it has to basically “read” each book, and identify where the  occurrences  of the words are (“cat” is at location 223, 497, 1012, and so on).

As you can imagine, that takes a lot of power. Generally, your RSKs (Reflective Screen Kindles…anything but a Kindle Fire)don’t use much of your battery charge doing much, but indexing is an exception.

So, when you get the update (whether you do it manually or wait for it to be delivered), I’d leave the Kindle plugged in and asleep (not turned off) overnight. That should give it enough time to index without draining your battery charge too far.

My understanding is that you don’t want to let the kind of lithium-ion battery that is in a Kindle discharge all the way. I tend to charge them in the “middle half”: not in the first quarter, not in the last quarter.

Oh, one other warning, which I’ve given you before, but now is a good time to repeat it. Don’t let your Kindle get too hot or too cold. As we head into warmer days (I saw the temperature at 30 for the first time recently in AccuWeather on my Fire. That’s 30 degrees Celsius, of course…about 86 Fahrenheit. For many people using Celsius, zero is cold (literally freezing), 10 is cool, the 20s are comfortable, and the thirties are hot.

For your Kindle, you could actually damage it and have it explode if it gets too hot. How hot is too hot?

Well, according to this

CTIA 1725 Battery Safety Statements Amazon Help Page

you should only charge them between 0 and 35 Celsius (32 to 95 Fahrenheit). The storage temperature is more flexible…this is what I found a while back:

Operating temperature — 32°F to 95°F (0°C to 35°C).
Storage temperature — 14°F to 113°F (-10°C to 45°C)

Still, if you leave your Kindle in a car on a hot day, it could easily get over 45C (113F)…and could be irreparably damaged and possible explode, from what I’ve heard.

You’ve been warned…

Free Word Games app…and $1 for MP3s

I was asked to take a look at this free app by the publisher (we have some correspondence, but have never met IRL…In Real Life).

Word Search, Kriss Kross, Quote Falls, Hangman, Speed Words – Word Games Pack FREE! (Kindle Tablet Edition)

It’s a collection of five word games:

• Word Search
• Hangman
• Quotefalls
• Kriss Kross
• Speed Words

The publisher nicely alerted me to the fact that there are in-app purchases possible with this app…you could spend money within the app to buy “stars”. I believe the stars enable you to unlock more levels.

So, before I get into the app itself, let me mention how to block in-app purchasing.

This is a game played on the Kindle Fire (it was compatible with both our 1st generation devices, and our HD ones), but wasn’t compatible with my Android SmartPhone.

To turn off in-app purchasing (IAP) on the current generation Kindle Fires, it’s

Swipe down from the top – More – Applications – Apps – In-App Purchasing

There. Now you can give the Kindle to your kids to play with the app.

Will you want to do that?

I would say yes, these games are fun. They aren’t simple enough for beginning readers, but I do like that you can set the levels to make it hard enough for adults.

For example, Word Search is not that hard a game, right? You look for words in a grid of letters. Well, this app lets you make the list of words invisible…instead of seeing the letters in the words, you just see asterisks. That makes it much harder, but not impossible.

The games are visually interesting: Hangman isn’t just a stick figure, but a little cartoon. The introductory screen to Quotefalls (which may be my favorite game) was a nicely done graphic of a physical desktop, with a number of things on it (including a quill pen).

The instructions were reasonably well done.

My one quibble is that I would prefer a “home” button on some screens, rather than having to push “back” buttons repeatedly.

Still, it’s free and pleasant enough.

Right now, at least in the USA store, you also get a $1 credit for MP3s when you download it…so they are practically paying you to get the game.

Reuters: “Macmillan to pay $26 million to settle antitrust class action”

In this

Reuters article

they announce that Macmillan has agreed to pay over $20 million dollars in settling some suits over e-book pricing. This is another quick result from Judge Denise Cote (gotta love that judge). That doesn’t mean it happens right away (the next step is May 24th), and nobody is likely to see much money, but it is a step in that direction.

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

Round up #163: a Wicked sweet deal, Amazon doesn’t like short shorts?

Round up #163: a Wicked sweet deal, Amazon doesn’t like short shorts?

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Bufo, you’ve just been to Disneyland for your anniversary…what are you going to do next?

Ummm…somehow, that seems like a paradoxical question.

We had a great trip! I’ll write about it more extensively in The Measured Circle, but I thought I’d mention a couple of Kindle specific things here.

First, our hotel was about two miles (about 3.22 kms) from the gate. We don’t mind walking (my Significant Other does it a lot), but that did mean we walked eight miles one day just getting to and from the park twice.

I’m in decent shape…aerobically, that was fine. However, the middle of my mid-back got quite tired.

I figured out what that was when my SO took my “utility vest” (a photojournalist’s vest that I typically wear on weekends…”utility vest” is a nod to Doc Savage) to give me a bit of a rest, and said, “What do you have in this thing?!”

Well, one of the things I have in it is my Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless 32GB. It fits (barely) in a pocket, with a cover on it. The device itself weighs 20 ounces…one and a quarter pounds (.57 kilograms). The cover weighs another 8 ounces. Plus, I had my wallet, my keys, a SmartPhone…I’m not as used to walking that distance, and the weight was just too much. I ended up (very, very reluctantly) leaving my Fire (and my keys) locked in the safe in the hotel room the next day…that worked much better.

That was never a problem with my RSKs (Reflective Screen Kindles), and even my six-inch Fire HD would have been a lot lighter (6.1 ounces lighter, to be exact).

We did, though, use both the Disneyland MouseWait app and the Vegetarian Disneyland – How To Find Great Vegetarian Food at Disneyland book. The latter was helpful, even though a lot of the vegetarian food in the park is “junkier” than we eat. I ended up using them sometimes on my SmartPhone, after I didn’t bring the Fire. The Amazon Appstore and Kindle store licensing meant that it didn’t cost me anything more to do that…that was nice.

I did us the Fire quite a bit at the hotel, with my Bluetooth keyboard. One interesting use: I might be up when my SO wasn’t, and I could use the CNN App to watch live news with closed captioning. That worked when I was exercising.

I also got some reading done, of course. In terms of a narrative, I was mostly reading Gun, with Occasional Music. It has some interesting concepts, and I may write more about it later. I’m glad I got it for $1.99…it’s $9.39 right now.

While, of course, my attention was riveted on my SO during our anniversary trip, I did take advantage of reading time when my SO went to the gym.

A Wicked Sweet Deal

It does seem odd that I’ve never read the Wicked series, by Gregory Maguire. I”m a big Oz fan, and recently wrote the first in a series,

Bufo in Oz: was Dorothy’s house used as a weapon?

in which I argue that there is considerable evidence in the original book that Dorothy’s house landing on the Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t an accident, but was a deliberate attack by the “Good Witch Alliance”.

I’ve read a lot of Oz books, including non-canonical ones, but I’d just never gotten to these (or seen the musical, for that matter).

That’s why I was pleased to see that one of today’s Kindle Daily Deals was all four of the Maguire books, for $1.99 each. You can buy one or all four…if you did the latter, you are getting the set for $7.96.

As always, check the price before you hit that Buy button…it may not be offered in your country, and the price might have changed before you read this.

I don’t know if they would be good for older kids, but you might consider this as a gift for an adult Oz fan.

AmazonLocal deal: “Free Voucher to Purchase Select Kindle Books for $1 Each”

Here’s another deal:

http://local.amazon.com/national

You have to get the deal in the next four days or so, and then you can redeem it (by May 7th)  for up to twenty of a specific set of books for $1 each.

The books, and the details of the deal, are listed here:

Exclusive Offer for Amazon Local Customers: 20 Kindle Books for $1 Each

I wouldn’t describe the titles as super well-known, but it doesn’t cost anything to get the voucher, and then you can decide to use it or not.

Amazon doesn’t like short shorts?

A blogstorm got started over a possibility that Amazon was going to ban Kindle Direct Publishing titles that were under 2,500 words.

That is a complaint I see sometimes: readers upset because they bought something and didn’t realize how short it was going to be. That’s one of the reasons I’ve encouraged Amazon to put the word count (which could be done automatically) on the book’s Amazon product page, so you could tell before you buy it. Page count doesn’t tell you (and isn’t always available, I think), and KB size  is greatly affected by images, among other things. A word count would be a reliable indicator of length (except for things like comics and graphic novels).

I haven’t gotten an e-mail like that, but I don’t think any of my works are that short. 2,500 words is traditionally about 10 pages of a paperbook (although that obviously varies).

Well, Nate Hoffelder has some nice reporting on this in this

The Digital Reader

article, which appears to debunk the concerns. I think Nate’s idea that it might just have been one Amazon rep responding to one specific complaint might be right.

I wouldn’t want Amazon to ban titles of a certain length…I think that should be up to the market to determine. However, putting the word count on the product page makes sense to me. That saves people from having to “return” something which they think is too short. Oh, you can do it easily by going to

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

within seven days of purchase, and clicking or tapping the

Actions…

button.

Still, it would be better if you didn’t have to do even that…and processing transactions does cost Amazon money, even if it isn’t much. Customer Service also would be a cost to them.

I’d also like to see them put the clipping limit on the product page…publishers limit how much you can “clip” of an e-book (I think it’s typically five to ten percent), but you basically find out about it now when you hit the wall…like Wile E. Coyote running into a painting of a tunnel.

Cory Doctorow wants to know what you know, Amazon

I’m sure many of you know who Cory Doctorow is…and you can probably guess that I don’t always agree with the author. I do recommend this

The Bookseller article

in which Doctorow reports concerns that e-tailers aren’t sharing data (like sales data) with publishers.

Well, I have to say, as an independent publisher (it’s just me here, but because I make my books available to the public, I’m a publisher) going through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, I get excellent sales data.

I see the sales of my books every day…I can see them multiple times a day if I want.

If you want to see sales data, you can do that in more than one place…both at the KDP pages, and at your Amazon Author Central page:

https://authorcentral.amazon.com

It’s certainly possible that Amazon doesn’t give that information to traditional publishers…although they have to give them sales data at some point, even if it isn’t pretty much real time as it is with KDP.

One other possibility is that Doctorow’s publisher does have the data, even if Doctorow doesn’t…that’s just speculation on my part, though. It might be like the accounting methods that are supposedly used in Hollywood.

I ran into something like that when I was a retail manager in a chain store.

I’d previously managed a bookstore, and was pretty much brought into a gamestore to try to up the sales.

I had it carefully explained to me where the bonuses would be…at what sales levels.

That holiday season (I got there not too long before that), I worked as long as 160 hours a week in the store. I didn’t want to make my Assistant Managers work sixty hours for the wages they were getting.

My SO and I had it figured out, and we thought there was a healthy bonus coming.

When we saw it, it wasn’t anywhere near what we thought it would be.

I asked about it, and was told, “You bought the bags.”

Me: “What?”

Company: “We rotate which store buys the bags for the whole chain. In December, you bought the bags, and that was a big expense.”

That’s paraphrased, of course.

While that certainly might be reasonable (they probably could get a bigger bulk discount on the bags that way, and everything counts in retail), it has become slang in our family…when something turns out to be less than we expected, we say, “Well, you bought the bags…”

My Daguerreotype Librarian

This is one of the coolest sites ever!

http://mydaguerreotypelibrarian.tumblr.com/

When you go to a Tumblr site, it is mostly images, some very short videos, and sometimes, some real text.

This one celebrates librarians of the past…who really deserve it!

I know this one probably won’t look great on an RSK, but you might want to visit it on your computer. It should work fine on a tablet, though.

So, what do you think? Do  you find the 8.9″ Fire just too heavy for a daily use device? How cool are librarians? Without spoiling anything, is the Wicked series okay for older kids? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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

Round up #162: compulsory sci-fi, Amazon Appstore goes global

Round up #162: compulsory sci-fi, Amazon Appstore goes global

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Be careful what you wish…because it  might end up on the news

I don’t usually write about current events…I just don’t think this is really the place for it.

However, I did want to give kudos to Chuck Todd of MSNBC. During the recent events in Boston, someone on the phone started to give the contents of one of the suspects’ Amazon wish list (before things had gone very far). @Chuck Todd forcefully cut the person off, since it was preliminary at that point to presume guilt. I really thought that was responsible journalism: rather than just getting something first, it was clear that Chuck Todd was concerned about giving watchers that kind of personal information at that stage.

I always wanted to bring this up to get you to think about your own Amazon wish lists. If you make them public (you don’t need to do that), that can make public some information that you think about as personal. You may use your lists simply to remind yourself what to buy later (or even what to discuss). I would bet that potential employers (and dates) use Amazon wish lists in making decisions. Sure, your Facebook page more have more details, but I think that if people think you read (or watch or listen to or play) certain things, it could really prejudice them about you.

“I don’t care if you are in the middle of that Dostoevsky novel, you have to read your Heinlein first!”

Captain’s Log: We appear to have entered a bizarre parallel universe, where science fiction is respected and required reading in school. Head…spinning. Reality…warped, turning…upside down…

Honestly, I’m not quite sure how I feel about this

bill introduced into the West Virginia legislature

It would require that science fiction be taught “…in certain existing middle school and high school courses”.

One of the best classes I ever took was a science fiction class in high school. However, that was an elective…we weren’t being forced to read it.

I mean, after all this time getting science fiction to be mainstreamed in the movies and TV, nothing is going to make people hate it more than requiring it in school. I’m just kidding there…a good teacher can make required material something with which you wish to continue after your education ends…but it does take a really good teacher. Otherwise, especially for teenagers, there is a natural resistance to anything compulsory.

My teacher also liked science fiction. Can you imagine what a class like that would be like taught be someone who is being forced to teach it, and doesn’t respect it? The class might become all about the flaws…

Don’t get me wrong, I do agree with Arthur C. Clarke:

“Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

Well, sort of…as I think I’ve said before in this blog, I think they should read all three…and everything else.

I just am not convinced that this is the best way to go about it. Can’t you also just see those meetings where school board members argue about what exactly meets the science fiction requirement? I’ve been in discussions about that that have gone on for years, even decades…and that’s with people who are very well read in the topic.

For more information, see this

Blastr interview with the bill’s sponsor, Delegate Ray Canterbury

Publishers Weekly: “Penguin Close to Ending DoJ, EU Price-fixing Suits”

This

Publishers Weekly article

sets May 3rd as the next important date in the Department of Justice’s legal action against Penguin and the Agency Model. I thin that will go smoothly, and Judge Denise Cote (who acts commendably quickly) will approve the agreement.

That doesn’t mean Penguin prices drop the next day. I wrote about Macmillan settling on February 9th, and it wasn’t until April  6 that I confirmed that they were no longer setting the prices at Amazon (it probably happened the day before).

Still, this is good news, and we may see sales at Amazon on Penguin e-books by the hot summer reading season. Random House will also be bound by the agreement once the merger is settled. That deal was recently approved in Canada, and will probably happen before the end of the year.

American Libraries: “Report from Manhattan: Librarians Navigating the Digital Revolution”

You know, it seems from my reading lately that not too many organizations say, “Yay! I get to meet with publishers today.”

Believe me, I’d be excited to talk to the bigwigs at Random House, or Tor.

Still, it was very nice to a respectful report in this

American Libraries (the magazine of the American Library Association) article

from Maureen Sullivan, American Library Association’s President.

The last time I wrote about Maureen Sullivan, the President seemed to me to be a lot more…well, let me switch that to “less reserved”.

ALA & AAP: the relationship between public libraries and publishers

The article definitely suggests that there is hope in working out better deals between libraries and publishers. It’s a positive outlook, something I like to see from a leader (a certain other leader of a book-related group might want to consider the approach).

Amazon Appstore goes intenational…to almost 200 countries

This is a strong indicator that Amazon may expand the Kindle Fire to more countries…although the Amazon Appstore certainly sells for other devices.

Amazon press release

A bit weirdly to me, they make the point of mentioning Papua New Guinea and Vatican City…I have a hard time seeing the most famous resident of the latter playing Angry Birds…

This will mean a lot more money for app developers.

You may actually see an app from me at some point. I think I have a good idea for one, and I could write it…but I couldn’t program it or distribute it. I’ve talked with somebody who is involved with that end, and we may do something in the future.

Pilot Season at Amazon

Look, it’s not easy to pick which TV series are going to succeed. Does anybody else remember The Barefoot Executive? It was a Disney Kurt Russell comedy (but not a Midvale High one) where a chimpanzee could pick the winners and losers.

Now, I’m not saying that Amazon Prime members are like chimpanzees (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but Amazon has turned to them to pick which TV series will be produced by its in-house studio.

Yep, just like Amazon has in-house publishing, they have in-house video.

You can see the pilots here

Amazon Original Pilots

and help Amazon pick.

There are some interesting possibilities, including one based on the movie Zombieland, and an Oz series.

What do you think? Are you soured on Penguin even if the prices do come down? Do you really not care who publishes the books you read? Have I got you worried about what’s on your wish list? How did you feel about the books you were required to read in school? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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