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

Playing “Hangman”…

Amazon claims in this

press release

that its publishing division has had a million seller. It’s significant that Amazon could, with its traditional publishing business, sell enough of a work to challenge the Big Six publishers. As I wrote about a couple of years ago in A Tale of Two Middles, that’s one way that Amazon can potentially work around the publishers. The e-tailer has tended to lose when going up against them (text-to-speech, and the Agency Model, for two examples), but as indicated in the current Apple trial, the publishers are worried about Amazon gaining more power and luring away their authors.

Congratulations are definitely due to Oliver Pötzsch, who is the author featured in the press release.

However, this isn’t exactly Stephen King territory yet.

Here’s the telling part of the press release:

“… the first Amazon Publishing author to sell 1 million copies in combined print, audio, and Kindle English language editions worldwide.”

That’s right…this is not the same thing as selling a million copies of a hardback book: it combines hardbacks, paperbacks, audiobooks, and e-books. This is also the combined figure for three different titles (the fourth, The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman’s Daughter Tale, can be pre-ordered for July 16th, 2013).

Still, this is no small accomplishment, and can’t make those other tradpubs any happier.

Steve Jobs in the Apple trial

We are winding down in the Apple Agency Model trial, and today, Eddy Cue talked about Steve Jobs role, as reported in this

AllThingsD article by Peter Kafka

Honestly, I looked at another article first to bring you, but it was too tacky. Steve Jobs didn’t always do things with which I agreed, certainly, but I do think that respect is reasonable here.

Cue talked about how Jobs got into the iBooks project, once it was decided it was a go…including picking Winnie-the-Pooh as part of the launch.

It looks like we’ll have closing arguments on Thursday, and I would expect there to be a decision fairly quickly…I like Judge Cote, and I don’t think this will get stretched out for months.

As this point, I do think it’s possible Apple will prevail…

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of years…”

Just doesn’t have the same ring as the original, right?

Well, according to this

PaidContent.org article by Janko Roettgers

Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute is working on an anti-piracy DRM (Digital Rights Management) scheme that would change words in books so that you could identify which copy belong to whom, as a way to combat piracy.

Wait, what?

I mean, I’m sorry, but authors sweat blood sometimes picking just the right combinations of vowels and consonants to tell their tales. I can’t imagine that this kind of “finger-printing” is going to be embraced. I hope-I hope-I hope…

Netflix to introduce user profiles

The video giant has figured out that not everybody on the same account has the same tastes.

Huffington Post article by Alexis Kleinman

My adult kid and I share an account (my Significant Other just doesn’t use it), and that does make for some odd recommendations. For one thing, my kid is a linguist…we aren’t even always watching things in the same language! We don’t know quite how it will work yet, but it is supposed to be here by the end of the summer.

Why report on that?

We’re still waiting for Amazon to get something like that going for Kindle accounts. Yes, we have FreeTime for the Kindle Fire, and parental controls on the RSKs (Reflective Screen Kindles…anything but a Fire at this point), but we could certainly use something simpler. My SO is not going to read the Doctor Who book I borrowed from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library this month, so it just sort of clutters things up.

I mentioned that we might see more software/service changes from Amazon this year than radical hardware changes (although I would figure that we’ll get new hardware), and this “profiles within accounts” kind of thing could certainly attract a lot of people.

Kindle for Windows 8 update

In this Amazon Kindle forum thread

Kindle for Windows 8 update 2.0

Amazon announced a new version of Kindles for Window 8. It’s bringing quite a few new features:

* Ability to search from inside a book
* Redesigned home screen and in-book navigation
* Easier bookmarking
* Filtering of Notes and Bookmarks
* Option to sample recommended books
* Live Tile displays of the book you’re reading
* Updated view options menu, library and search views

I’ve seen quite a few threads where people complain about the limited functionality of this version, so this should help. I’m intrigued by “filtering of Notes and Bookmarks”…I’ll look for more info on that.

Kindle Paperwhite update 5.3.6

They also announced the

Kindle Paperwhite Update Version 5.3.6

While it appears to have brought some other minor changes, this is the big new feature:

* Improvements when buying from a book sample – While reading a sample of a book, you can view the price of the full book and purchase from the reading toolbar with one tap

That seems nice…we all want things that make it easier for us to spend money with Amazon, right? Well, if it’s money you were going to spend anyway, making it easier is a plus for the consumer.

How to support a blog

I do get asked about this, and I’m reluctant to bring it up. I don’t accept payment for ads (any ads you ever see here are added by WordPress, and they get the money. You don’t see that in the regular blog feed, I think, but I have seen it on individual articles on the website.

You can certainly subscribe (thanks, subscribers!) if the blog is in the Kindle store…but that doesn’t work for a lot of people (if you are outside the USA, I think, or if you are using a reading app).

I’ve had people ask me if I accept donations, or if they can just send me money. I’m not a non-profit, and reporting money given to me for the blog on my taxes would really befuddle me.

One thing you can do: if the blog has a link for Amazon Gift Cards, that can be a good way to do it. You can buy gift cards for other people, or you could just buy them and apply them to your account. That’s a pretty painless way to help out. It doesn’t change what you pay for anything at all.

As long as I’m writing about this (and so I can get back to something where I feel more comfortable), let me talk about Amazon Gift Cards a bit…I often see questions from people who are confused about how they work with Kindle books.

There are no Kindle gift cards…there are Amazon gift cards with pictures of Kindles on them, but when you buy a gift card with a picture of a birthday cake, that doesn’t mean you can only buy cake.

You apply the gift card to your account.

The way that we buy books in the Kindle store is with “1-click”. 1-click will draw from any available gift card balance on your account until it is exhausted, then go back to whatever 1-click payment method you’ve designated (if any).

Let’s say somebody gives you a $25 gift card, and you want to spend it on books. You apply it to your account, and someone else on your account buys, oh, mouthwash (I’m not suggesting anything about their personal hygiene here, by the way). If they use 1-click, it will take away from that gift card balance.

You aren’t asked if you want your gift card balance applied to your current Kindle store purchase, because you would have to click on something to do that…and it’s called 1-click.

That’s why some people have an account just for Kindle purchases, so they can keep them separate.

Infographic of mysteries in different US states

This

Ebook Friendly article

has a nice infographic from Open Road with e-book mysteries in different states in the USA.

I have to say, I’ve never gone to this site before, and I’m impressed! I don’t follow a lot of sites on Twitter, but I’m going to start following this one, which will put it in my Flipboard read in the morning.

I’m going to explore

http://ebookfriendly.com/

more, and then report back to you on it. I always figure there is room for a lot of good writing on the web about e-books, EBRs (E-Book Readers), and publishing. You’ve probably noticed that I tend to link and credit…I like being a place you can find the good work that others do.

What do you think? Is changing words in a book an acceptable way to combat piracy? Will you just be happy when the Apple Agency Model trial is over, however it goes? Am I making a mistake when I promote other sites, or do you like it? 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.

Regular readers have often read little things about my (adult) kid. While I do share things about what I think and how I feel, I really don’t think I share that many concrete details…and I’m not going to start now.

However, I’m excited to share (and, I suppose, shamelessly plug) that my adult kid has finally been encouraged by enough friends to make a public blog.

It’s on Tumblr, and this is it:

Overheard on the Streets of Boston

Although, if you visit Tumblr, it encourages you to sign up, you don’t have to do that to read this. If you do, you get the advantage of being able to “follow” a Tumblr blog…sure, I’d like my kid to have more followers, but totally up to you.

What is the blog?

My kid works in Boston, and walks through town (as a lot of people do). This is literally what the name suggests: just small snippets of conversation that my kid has heard and shares.

It’s probably better that I don’t explain it too much.

I think it’s fair to say that I think it helps that my kid is a linguist, although all of the posts (at least so far) are in English…well, it helps if you understand Spanish for one of them.

In my opinion, the posts are quirky and droll…I think many readers of this blog will be amused.

I should also say, and I think this is a good thing, that we have different sensibilities. My kid uses words in the blog that I wouldn’t, and…I guess it might be a bit edgier than what I do here.

If you want to give it a look, I’d appreciate it. If you follow it, even better. I’m proud of my kid, and even prouder that this is something quite different from what I would do.

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

A reader recently suggested that I address this in post through a private communication, and while I have talked about it somewhat before, I think that the situation warrants a little clarity.

When you “buy a book” from the Kindle store, you are actually buying a license. You own the license as much as you would own a copy of a paperbook (for more on that, see my post,  How an e-book is like a treadmill at the gym). The license is subject to conditions that are in place when you buy it…some of them are great for readers, some arguably not as good.

There are two easily confused terms that are involved here, although they actually are quite different: “sharing” and “lending”. I often see people using the term “sharing” when what they are actually asking about is “lending”.

When you share a Kindle book with someone, you are an equal owner of it. You both have the same rights to it. It is like sharing a bank account, or sharing the family car.

When you lend a Kindle book to someone, you still own the license, but you are allowing someone else to have temporary custody of it, so they can use it.

Sharing in the Kindle store is a marvelous thing! It is one of the best things about e-books versus p-books (paperbooks). Everybody on the account can share compatible Kindle store books. We have four people on our account, in two timezones. We can pay for a book (license) once…let’s just say $9.99. We can typically all read that same book at the same time…for just that $9.99 price.

That works much better for us than p-books ever did! I can’t imagine taking one p-book, having it start here in California in one household, then carting it (or mailing it) to another California household, and then off to the other side of the country! We’d also have to read it one at a time, taking turns. It’s much more fun to be able to read a book at the same time as my Significant Other, and then we can compare our impressions of it at the end (if we want).

All you have to do is be on the same account.

How many devices can you have registered to the same account?

There is no limit!

That’s right: you could have 1,000 devices or more (representing, oh, let’s call it five hundred people) on one account, and you could all read the same book for just the one download price.

Now, there is typically a limitation to that, and it is an important one. The publishers put a “simultaneous device limit” (SDL) on each book. That’s how many devices can have it licensed at the same time. Unless it says otherwise on the book’s Amazon product page, that number is six. Some books have fewer licenses (I have actually seen it to be as low as one, but that’s very rare…I think that was a textbook), some are unlimited (that’s often true on public domain freebies).

However, six is quite a few.

Let’s say that the seven dwarves all want to read the same book and are on the same Kindle account. Let’s also say that it has the typical six device limit.

The first six dwarves download it with no problem.

When the seventh dwarf goes to download it, it will inform the latecomer that there aren’t any more licenses available.

When one of the other dwarves finishes the book, removes it from the device, and syncs with Amazon, that license will then be available for that one who was late to the literary party.

That dwarf doesn’t own the e-book license any less than the others…it’s just that six devices at a time is the limit.

Are there times when you might want more than six licenses? Sure, I could see that with schools, businesses, and so on. Amazon recognized that need, and started a new service (which I still need to explore more), called Whispercast:

Amazon revolutionizes mass distribution with Whispercast

So, that’s sharing. You all own the book equally, can each have it for as long as you want. Even without Whispercast, this can work very, very well. One tip: people sometimes ask what to do about paying for the books, if you are trying to keep finances separate. That’s true for one of the people on our account. What you can do there is have the person who has a separate Amazon account “gift” the book to the sharing account. That way, they can pay for it however they like.

Here’s how that works:

My relative gifts the book to me. I receive an e-mail, and accept the gift. It’s then available to all of us, and my relative can download it and read it.

It means the book isn’t instantly available to my relative (I have to acknowledge the e-mail first), but with me, it’s the same day, typically, and often within an hour.

All Kindle store books can be shared in this way. Some e-books are not compatible with some devices (some require a large screen, for example, so they might not be available to a free Kindle reading app for a phone), but that’s unusual.

Lending a Kindle book is very different. The publisher has to enable lending…and the Big Six publishers generally don’t.

There are serious limitations on lending:

• You can only loan the book for fourteen days
• While your recipient has the book, you can not read it
• You can only loan a book once…ever. If you loan a book to your friend, you can’t later loan it to a family member

Those may seem severe, but publishers aren’t required to let you loan the book at all, under the law.

Even though the biggest publishers don’t enable lending, I would guess the majority of books in the Kindle store are able to be loaned. That’s because Amazon really tries to encourage it. Independent publishers (and that is often just an author) can only get the higher 70% royalty (as opposed to 35%) if they follow a number of guidelines…and one of those is enabling lending.

Still, I think most people find lending not all that useful…if you do use it a lot, feel free to comment on this post and let me know.

For more information on the mechanics of lending see

Amazon’s Kindle lending help page

but feel free to ask if you have any questions.

There you have it! Sharing is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Lending is a lot more limited, but I’m sure some people make use of it.

I’m sticking to those core differences here, although this is a large topic. If you have any other questions, or comments, 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.

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

DecalGirl: Buy one, get one 50% off

DecalGirl is having a sale (through June 24th) on skins, cases, and more. Skins are essentially very strong decorative stickers, and they have them for Kindles. They can make very nice gifts for someone who already has a device.

Here’s the site for shopping:

http://www.decalgirl.com/?promocode=bogodad&trk_msg=66IQ6I5A39SKV5038DNLCINSC4&trk_contact=2TKDE83GIGKCJGK8UTEQKL4R74&utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=http%3a%2f%2fwww.decalgirl.com%2f%3fpromocode%3dbogodad&utm_campaign=fathersday

Note: they list all Kindles, including RSKs (Reflective Screen Kindles…anything but a Kindle Fire) under “Tablets”. Select Tablets, then say it is made by Amazon.

Vlad Studio has some nice book-themed ones.

At checkout, you’ll be entering BOGODAD to get the discount…remember that you need to be buying two items, and the discount will be applied to the least expensive one.

Free app finds your Kindle Fire

I’ve tried a Kindle Fire locating app before and it didn’t work well for me, but now I’ve found a free one that does…and has some other interesting capabilities:

Webroot SecureAnywhere Mobile

There’s a premium version as well with more capabilities, but I did like what this one did. It could locate my Kindle Fire…I went to a website, enter a passcode (they did something clever with that which didn’t make it harder for me to remember, really, but would make it harder to guess), and showed me the current location of my Fire…within a couple of hundred feet. It actually gave me an address (not the right one), but it was nearby. That could let me know, for example, if I left it at the office or at home (not that I would do either accidentally…knock on virtual wood).

What if it’s just misplaced in the house?

You can send it a command to scream…and yes, it was loud and annoying! That’s what you want, though: a thief would likely ditch the device if they were in a public area and it started screaming like a person! That also locks the screen. You can also lock it without the screaming. So, you can locate, lock, and scream…with the premium version of this app (not free), you could send a remote wipe command.

It also scans your device for malware (software that does bad things, basically): it didn’t find any on mine.

Why wouldn’t you get this? Well, if you forget your password, that could be a problem. You might not want other people in your family (if they have access to the Webroot account) tracking you…or pranking you (I wouldn’t want it to scream in the middle of a meeting). You might be concerned about the government or hackers getting information about you through Webroot. Of course, if you don’t have wi-fi on and have misplaced it, it won’t help you much. If a bad guy when it reconnects, though, it will scream at that point (my test showed it wasn’t immediately…took a few minutes).

Generally, though, I would recommend it for most people who are comfortable with having online accounts and creating (and remembering) passwords. It has four stars (out of five) with 124 reviews at the time of writing, so that is somewhat reassuring.

Eddy Cue on Steve Jobs and iBooks

The Apple Agency Model trial continues, and I’m feeling more and more like Apple might win. I wonder if that means the publishers are kicking themselves for having gotten out?

There are definitely interesting revelations. This

AllThingsD article by John Paczkowski

relates some interesting insight from Eddy Cue, being painted by the Department of Justice (DoJ) as the driver of the Agency Model for e-publishing, and who worked closely with the late Steve Jobs.

Cue says he approached the CEO in 2009 (the year before the iPad was released) about doing a bookstore, and Jobs wasn’t interested.

The year before (and within six months of the Kindle’s initial release), Jobs was famously quoted in a

New York Times article by John Markoff

as saying, “…people don’t read anymore” in dismissing the Kindle.

By 2009, though, Cue doesn’t mention that overall condemnation and marginalization of serious readers…instead, it was because phones were too small and computers were too big.  That feels like a bit of a whitewash to me, but Jobs did change the position when the iPad was going to be released.

I think we’ll have a verdict by the end of next week…and if Apple loses, they could appeal.

Apple could appeal? I thought only bananas could do that…

Oh, and Apple is mad that Random House isn’t being compelled to testify…

Publishers Weekly article

That could bolster that appeal effort…if it becomes necessary.

Comcast will use your router to provide neighborhood wi-fi

Well, it’s not exactly your router…it’s your wi-fi gateway that you got from them for your broadband. This is a clever idea, and part of their (successful) effort to expand wi-fi for their customers.

The devices won’t use the same signal you use, but will broadcast a second one that can be used for free…by other Xfinity customers. Non-customers can use it for free…twice, and then they’d have to pay.

CNET article

I’ve found wi-fi from Xfinity (we are subscribers) available to me before, and I think this will really expand it.

Comcast has to figure out how to get people not to “cut the cord” (and go without cable services). This is one way, as is their app:

XFINITY TV Player

The app would be a lot more attractive if it didn’t stop the video from running when I plugged in my HDMI cable to my Kindle Fire HD to watch it on my TV…I think they’ll work that out eventually.

Still, the expanded wi-fi should be good for wi-fi Kindle owners (Fire or not) who are Comcast subscribers…and others in a pinch.

Kindle hardware in India

The Papewhite, the “Mindle”, and the Kindle Fire HD 7″ and 8.9″ are now available from Amazon.in

http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B007HCFU90/ref=gw_in_c1_ks/275-7716727-1685962?ie=UTF8&nav_sdd=aps&pf_rd_m=A1VBAL9TL5WCBF&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=10MHJXW9MFNNMSKY87JG&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=408409067&pf_rd_i=1320006031

It doesn’t appear to have local language support, though, so that’s a possible serious hindrance.

NPR’s Backseat Book Club

People might not like backseat drivers, but backseat readers? Joy for the reader, quiet for the driver. Actually, we sometimes read out loud to the others in the car, but this is an excellent reading list from National Public Radio

The Complete List: What NPR’s Backseat Book Club Has Read So Far

Reading lists are tricky things, and I haven’t read everything on this one, but it looks solid to me. I mean, once you hit

The Phantom Tollbooth

you’re good but this includes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Black Beauty) and more contemporary titles…as a former bookstore manager, I’m impressed.

Have comments on any of these stories? Feel free to let me and my readers know.

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

Are Americans’ reading tastes trending towards simpler books?

Does that include school reading assignments replacing more complex books with ones that are more accessible?

According to this

NPR article

referencing research from
Renaissance Learning

both assertions are true.

The

Full Report (pdf)

substantiates what might seem like depressing statistics. For example:

“…the complexity of assigned texts has sharply declined, from about [grade] 9.0 in the early 20th century to just over 6.0 in the early 21st century. This finding echoes other studies that have concerned policy makers about whether students are presented with sufficiently challenging material to help them prepare for college and career.”

I think, like most serious readers, my immediate, emotional, gut reaction to that is that it’s a bad thing and a depressing indicator.

However, as my more rational (and contrary) mind kicks into analysis mode, I wonder if that’s really the case.

Let’s accept as a postulate that the bestsellers tend to be at a lower grade level now than they were fifty years ago, and that teachers are assigning books that are at a lower grade level than they used to do.

The first question: is the grade-level assessment process a reasonable one? Is it providing an appropriate measurement?

You can do grade-level assessment analysis on anything you want. Microsoft Word will do it for you. I used to teach people that, when writing for the general public, go for fifth-grade level. That was my sense of what would reach the most people. Now, it is different if you are trying to influence a specific group of peers (coworkers, for example) where credibility can be more important than comprehensibility. When I train trainers about credibility, one thing I’ve said (in a light way): “When in doubt, use big words.” That tends to make it seem like you know more than the other person…that isn’t when you are explaining how to do something, but why you would do it.

Interesting, word length is one of the things that Word uses to determine grade level. Word Help says

“Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test

This test rates text on a U.S. school grade level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can understand the document. For most documents, aim for a score of approximately 7.0 to 8.0.

The formula for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score is:

(.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) – 15.59

where:

ASL = average sentence length (the number of words divided by the number of sentences)

ASW = average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of words)”

More syllables and longer sentences are judged to be at a higher grade level.

For example, this sentence

“The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.”

is assessed at grade level 2.4.

Changing it to this:

“The rapidly moving scarlet fox jumped over the unmotivated brown canine.”

ups it to grade level 11.2.

Looking at that, though, which one seems like the better sentence to you?

I think that’s important, here: I’m not sure that a higher grade-level work means inherently better writing.

Mark Twain’s writing will tend to be assessed at a lower grade-level than Oscar Wilde’s…does that mean it is less desirable for students?

However, I do think there is a real value in understanding the more complex words and sentence structures. It’s like doing exercise…people like their athletic challenges to be difficult. They want to up the speed on the treadmill, do more repetitions, throw farther…they want to approach and then extend their limits, even though they don’t always need to perform at that peak.

Perhaps it’s like designing a city. You want to make the walkways as accessible, as easy to use, as possible. That may be what’s happening with reading. On the other hand, your city may have a skatepark for those athletes…and making things more difficult there is better.

Gee, did I just make reading geeks like me cool like Tony Hawk?

Why would this have changed over time, though? Why would there have been harder books assigned decades ago?

There may be several reasons involved in that.

One is that many more people are going to school (especially higher grades) than did a hundred years ago. I’m not suggesting that there is a difference in capability, but there may be a difference in situation. It could be that people who went to high school in the 1910s (and the Renaissance Learning data goes back beyond that) were people who were going to be able to concentrate on reading, even outside of class. Would I have been as much of a reader in elementary school if I was also spending several hours a day in a field doing manual labor? If I’m being honest, I’d have to say no.

So, high schoolers today may have less experience, less practice, reading than high schoolers a hundred years ago.

Let’s move away from the school for a minute.

What about popular books having become simpler, if we accept that as a postulate?

Reading holds a different place for us than it used to do. Simpler books may be better suited to being part of a multimedia experiential mix which wasn’t available even fifty years ago. It might be simpler to switch in and out of The Hunger Games than it is War and Peace. If we do more activities for shorter sessions (instead of reading a book for three hours straight, we read two books, a magazine, a news site, e-mail, tweets, listen to music, watch video…all in that three hours), that might impact our preferences.

It’s also, perhaps, a sign that more people are reading. We are seeing the sales of books go up, from what I’ve seen. Maybe what is happening is that there are more people reading as part of what they do in their lives. So, you get less experienced readers (who therefore want simpler, more familiar material…I’ve read a lot of 19th Century stuff, so the vocabulary has become relatively easy for me…the first time you read Sherlock Holmes, it can be tough), who don’t read as much as the “serious readers”, but read more than they used to read, impacting the bestseller list.

One of the interesting things in the Renaissance Learning study was that popular culture drives reading. If a movie comes out, based on a book, sales of that book go up considerably. How many people will read The Great Gatsby this year who wouldn’t have considered it last year?

That may be increasing the overall amount of reading…even if the works chosen are not always particularly complex. I wouldn’t look for a Gravity’s Rainbow blockbuster any time soon. Higher grade-level books may be inherently more difficult to adapt to visual media…which would mean they wouldn’t get that readership boost.

I guess I’m a reading athlete: I like complex works. I also do like simple ones, no question…and I think it’s a good thing that (as I believe) more people are reading books. Perhaps assigning simpler books is actually a sign of a democratization of literature.

What do you think? Did you stomach fall when you read the beginning of this story? If people really aren’t going on to more and more difficult books in the way that they used to do, is that a sign of cultural decay? Do you find yourself reading more “popcorn” books than you used to do? 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.

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

HarperCollins wants you to reinvent publishing

There is this mythology that the tradpubs (traditional publishers) are stuck in the 19th Century…that they can’t see beyond tree-gobbling, smoke-belching book factories and brick and mortar stores.

I’ve said before that I expect the large publishers to be able to make adjustments…oh, not all of them, and not completely, but this industry has already seen major changes, during the life of most of these companies. Look at how railroads and TV have changed publishing. In 1930, publishers hired Edward Bernays (who basically invented modern public relations) to increase sales…and Bernays convinced architects to include built-in bookshelves in new homes. That’s not traditionalist thinking: that’s the ability to go to an expert for help, and to accept it…not what you get with hidebound organizations.

Now, HarperCollins is asking app developers to

“Use imagination and technology to build software that goes beyond the traditional ways we read and discover books.”

This is a contest, with monetary rewards (as high as $15,000).

They aren’t just saying, “Hey, do what you do.” They are making the HarperCollins Open Book API (Application Programming Interface) available. According to the

Booksmash Challenge details page

the API has

“…exclusive book data, author data, and content not available to the general public. These tools will allow developers to think about how to make readers fall in love with books all over again, and how to lead a reluctant reader to just the right story.”

Notice that part about “content”. This suggests that apps will interact with what  you read in some way. Suppose an app noticed the content of a book you read, and maybe took note of what you highlighted. It could then (after you are done reading, hopefully) suggest something else similar. That’s sort of like “people who bought also bought”, but it could be based on actual content, not just the fact that five disparate books were on sale at the same time. Applying “sentiment analysis” might also be a great tool. That would guess, based on the language in the book, if the book was in favor of something or against it. The app could then suggest “other books that support this idea” or “hear from the other side”.

I think this may end up producing something which has a significant impact on the industry. It doesn’t necessarily mean it happens within the confines of the contest: just the fact that it exists may inspire others to come up with their own apps.

Kudos to HarperCollins for encouraging innovation!

Similar to Kindle Worlds, though, there may be developers who are uncomfortable with the terms…out of the box thinking like this tends to naturally encourage the contributions of outsiders. That can be both good and bad, as you get people with less understanding of the situation, but you may also get people who had never thought (or written) about something turning considerable talent and intelligence to it.

7-11 giving away $5,000 in Amazon gift cards

Here’s an opportunity for you to win $5,000 in Amazon gift cards!

https://7eleven.promo.eprize.com/awesummer/

That’s only going for this week, but it does cost anything to enter. I was first alerted to this by my Special Offers on my Kindle Fire…which is one reason the ad-supported  versions of the devices tend to be more popular than their ad-free, but more expensive, counterparts.

I think you could now refer to Amazon gift cards as “Anything Money”. I mean, there are so many options!

If you win, let me know…

Doctor W In47o

You know how sometimes you run across books in the Kindle store that are clearly the results of bad OCR (Optical Character Recognition)? No? Let me explain that a bit.

Let’s say that you have a print copy of a book, and you own the rights to it…and you don’t have an electronic file. You want to digitize, to make it into an e-book. You have a few options:

1. Have somebody re-type it. That’s time-consuming, labor intensive (and therefore expensive). With professionals doing it, you are likely to get a pretty good result

2. Have somebody read it into voice recognition software (speech-to-text). That requires less skill, but tends to be somewhat less accurate…and takes quite a long time

3. Scan the book, and ask software to read the images which are created and turn them into words. That’s what OCR does…it looks at (optical) the images to find the letters and numbers (characters). That’s relatively fast, inexpensive…and can be quite inaccurate

I borrowed

Doctor Who Short Trips: Life Science

from the KOLL (Kindle Owners’ Lending Library) this month…and the faults of OCR are obvious and atrocious.

Here are some of the things that I see:

• Numbers randomly appearing throughout the book…in the middle of words, for example. They look like footnote indicators, but they aren’t. These are likely because there were wrinkles or smudges on the page, and the numbers are the software’s best guess
• “M”s rendered as “I n” and things like that. That’s what makes it clear it is OCR…a human wouldn’t make that mistake
• Sections randomly bolded
• Completely illegible sections
• Wordsallsmashedtogether and w o r d s w h e r e e v e r y l e t t e r i s s e p a r a t e. I listen to text-to-speech in the car, and Ivona on my Kindle Fire does a remarkably good job with words without spaces between them…but tends then to pronounce every letter separately in ones where there are unnecessary spaces. So, I might hear “TEE ATCH EE DEE OH SEE TEE OH ARE” instead of “The Doctor”, all said rapidly. I’m pretty good at understanding that sort of thing, but I’m going to stop listening to this book in the car, because it’s clearly going to create a distracted driving situation

How could they have fixed this?

Proofreading, just like you do with any other book. I could have fixed all of it in probably a few hours.

They just don’t want to spend the money. Now, I’m happy to have the book available to me…the writing actually has been good in these short stories. It’s just been such a challenge to get to it! I’m glad I didn’t pay the $12.99 list price for it, certainly, and I think many people would return it as unacceptable.

Apple trial continues

It’s looking increasingly to me like Apple will prevail at trial, but we’ll see. We are getting some very interesting testimony from the publishers (John Sargent of Macmillan, for example), which makes it look less like a conspiracy and more like a game of Cosmic Encounter. Nobody seems to be able to remember anything specific, and they all have these weird powers they suddenly drop into the mix. They all think they are playing the other people for fools. Apple’s not coming across as a “ringleader”, manipulating these publishers into all working together. It sounds like the publishers were also willing to work with Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Google…or anybody they wanted to get the best deal.

Sure, according to this

PaidContent.org article by Laura Hazard Owen

Rupert Murdoch wanted to “screw Amazon”…but it sounds like they were willing to do that to Apple, too.

It’s hard to imagine this group all agreeing to anything, based on testimony. I feel like I wouldn’t want to go to lunch with them unless they removed the butter knives first. Just kidding, but it sounds more like a mosh pit than lockstep…

What do you think? What would you like to see an app do to help you discover new books? Do you know someone who might enter the Booksmash Challenge…or who would choose to stay out of it? Is the testimony in the Apple trial getting you to change your estimation of who will win? 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.

No, the answer isn’t \S/uperman, but it might be “superbook”.

Since e-books first started to become more widely used by serious readers (let’s say late 2007, when the Kindle was introduced), there has been a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of e-books versus p-books (paperbooks).

Certainly, p-books have some advantages, and continue to have adherents (many people use both formats). I’d say that some of the most cited ones are the sensory experience (feel, and oddly to me, smell), availability of titles (although that’s beginning to shift…there are starting to be many titles that are only available in e-book form), and the ability to sell/lend/giveaway your copy.

On the e-book side, there is convenience, certainly, and free books.

However, there are also some experiential elements that I see frequently cited for e-books.

One is the ability to increase the text size. I benefit from that personally, and many other people mention it.

Another is the dictionary.

I don’t think I would have picked that as being seen as a much of a core function as it is.

I didn’t commonly stop reading something and go find a dictionary to check a word. Part of that might be because I read a large dictionary cover to cover when I was a kid, and I’d say I have an above average vocabulary. Honestly, though, I was encountering words (often older terms from the 1800s, perhaps), which I didn’t know. When I was reading, I tended to just let the context confer the meaning…and I could remember the words to look them up later, if I wanted. I didn’t need to know how many wheels were on a “dogcart” to understand that someone had come up in a horse-drawn conveyance.

Is that connected to the fact that I don’t normally visualize when I read? Perhaps. Maybe if you are trying to visualize a scene, you need more of those details. I probably shouldn’t say “trying”…I know it happens for the majority of people without effort.

So, while I loved having big dictionaries and encyclopedias in the house, I was much more likely to read them just for their own use, rather than in the midst of reading a book.

Since the first Kindle, though, people have talked about loving the onboard dictionary…and I use it much more than I ever did a paper dictionary (while reading).

I suspect the internet has something to do with the quick adoption of the technology.

We are used to, on a website, being able to click something to find out more about it. It’s not a new muscle concept to learn, especially with a touchscreen…you see a word you don’t know, you touch it, and a definition appears…like clicking a hyperlink.

I thought I’d use this post to take a look at that functionality. I’m going to use the Kindle Paperwhite to explore this. It is what Amazon considers the top of the line RSK (Reflective Screen Kindle…anything but a Kindle Fire at this point). The abilities in other Kindle devices may vary somewhat…the original, 2007  Kindle didn’t have nearly the options, although you could still look up words.

I opened my “go to” book for testing…Alice in Wonderland. I like using that partially because it is public domain (so I don’t have to worry about infringing on copyright as I experiment with all sorts of things), and partially because it is so familiar to so many people.

I “long pressed” the word “Dormouse”. Long pressing is one of the key skills in using any touchscreen device. You hold your fingertip or stylus on something for about a second, and options will appear. It’s similar to right-clicking in a Windows program.

In this case, I got a nice scientific definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary. I could have had a different dictionary as my default, but that’s the one that comes with the Kindle for USA English, and I’m fine with it.

It’s interesting to note for me that the one I long pressed was capitalized (Carroll is treating it like a name), but that didn’t affect the look-up.

The definition gives me a pronunciation for it, and then lets me know that it is “an agile mouselike rodent…” I don’t want to quote too much of the definition: Alice is in the public domain, the dictionary is not.

It also gives me info, letting me know that it is in the Family Gliridae.

I can then tap “Show Full Definition”.

Doing that takes me into the actual dictionary itself. I could, for example, see additional definitions on the page (doronicum and dorp). The first definition screen doesn’t limit it to the word you chose, but it is much smaller. I could “page”through it just like through any book. It included an origin, and more of the info. There was also a “linked entry” for “mouse”.

Because I am in a book, I can tap the menu (horizontal lines in my top right corner) and “Add Bookmark”. I can also long press here, which would allow me to add a highlight. That’s a nice thing; I’ve had people ask me before about creating a list of “vocabulary words” they can review later. That’s a way to do it. First, go to the full definition, then highlight the word in the dictionary. Later, in the dictionary, you can “View Notes & Marks” to see those words, and includes enough context to give you the definition of it.

I then used the Back arrow “<” to check the other options.

Long pressing Dormouse again, I had a choice for “More” in addition to “Highlight” and “Show Full Definition”.

“More” lets me do several things:

• Share
• Add Note
• Dictionary
• Search (which has sub-options of This Book, My Items, Kindle Store)
• Wikipedia (which would require a wireless connection)
• Translation
• Report Content Error

Translation was surprisingly robust, in that it gave me more languages than we have options to use as the interface on our devices. It also auto-detected the language of the word I long-pressed (correctly, as English). The “to” languages were

• Chinese Simplified
• Chinese Traditional
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Hindi
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Norwegian
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Spanish

So, I now know that “syvsovere” is Norwegian for “dormouse”…believe me, at some point in my life, I’m going to work that into a conversation.

It’s also worth noting that you can start with more than one word. I highlighted “March Hare”, and got the same sorts of options. That allowed me to search Wikipedia, for example, and it had nice information specifically about the character in Alice. It did that without leaving the book, just in a box. It gave me the choice to launch Wikipedia, but I didn’t need to do that.

I wrote recently about why we read, and hypothesized that it’s because it is the purest intersection between us and another’s thoughts. Things that immerse us more in the words are good…things that distance us are bad (as far as reading goes). If you were someone who kept a paper dictionary on the nightstand when you read (and I think that was not uncommon), or even had a giant dictionary on its own stand, this is much more fluid. Understanding aids immersion, and the in situ look-up is less disrupting than going to another source.

How about you? Do you use a dictionary more, now that one is available in your book? Would you like more dictionary options (for example, would you pay a hundred dollars to have the complete Oxford English Dictionary available to your Kindle book)? I think I may poll separately on where the dictionary ranks among favorite features of e-books, but 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.

I have recently finished reading Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years) for the first time. I came to it as a big Oz fan, with a good knowledge of the official books in the series.

The book has been influential. When you see works created since Wicked’s release in 1995 which “reimagine” putative children’s literature for a modern, adult audience, you can often see how the spirit of this book caught on with the creative community (and with those who market entertainment). Would we have had Disney’s Once Upon a Time series without Wicked? Perhaps, but not in the same way.

I had certainly heard of Wicked: I sold it when I managed a brick and mortar bookstore. I was able to approach it without knowing much about the particulars, though.

SPOILER ALERT

I will reveal some fairly minor things about the book (and the original Oz books and the 1939 movie) below. I’m careful about trying not to take away the sense of discovery from those who are going to first encounter a work, and that’s why I’m giving you this warning. I don’t think I’m going to write about anything any particular plot twists, but I will mention some elements that appear in the book.

What I did anticipate was that the book was going to make the characters seem “more like real human beings”. I expected there to be sex and violence: there sometimes seems to be this idea that so-called children’s literature is limited by an ability to portray those areas of life, and that writing for adults frees the author to cover those. I don’t think L. Frank Baum wanted to put in sex scenes, and was told that was inappropriate by someone else…this isn’t an external constraint, it’s an artistic choice. There is certainly violence in the original Wizard of Oz book…the Tin Woodman alone accounts for over 100 deaths. There isn’t any explicit sex in the original series, although romantic love is an element.

That would have been okay with me. I’ve been called a prude because I don’t use obscenities in the blog, and have sometimes criticized their use by others (although I think that has not particularly been for fictional works). I alert people to possibly  objectionable elements when I do reviews, but that doesn’t make me give the book a more negative review (although I do think it can limit an audience, while perhaps expanding another).

Where did make me more uncomfortable here was the negative attitude the book presents about the world.

That always tends to get to me in books. When a book presents things as people (human or not) being generally “bad”, I find that unrealistic. I’m not a fan of cruelty in books by people who aren’t the clear “villains”, but are simply in the general populace. It just clashes with my own paradigm, in that I think people are generally “good”. For that reason, it feels…exploitative, I guess.

Gregory Maguire’s Oz is a very cruel place. Adults are cruel, children are cruel. There is overwhelming societal prejudice, against strangers, against intelligent Animals (more on that capitalization later).

Does that contrast with the original series?

Well, there are some cruel people in L. Frank Baum’s Oz. They are, however, in a tiny minority.

That’s perhaps part of why Oz has been part of our culture for well over a hundred years. People who read Oz would like to go there…despite the Wicked Witches, the Nome King, the Wheelers, the Princess who wants to take your head, and the deadly Kalidahs. There is slavery (it’s quite common), and suicide. Still, most people in Oz are good, and Ozma (the main ruler of Oz after the Wizard) has an open heart.

That’s nothing like Maguire’s Oz. Maguire carefully brings in names and elements from the original series, but they are seen through the opposite of rose-colored glasses.

Mentioning color brings up a key point.

While the book is supposedly based on the public domain Oz books, and gathers characters from books beyond the first (Tik-Tok, for example, appears in a different form…the clockwork robot first appeared in the fifth book of the series), it clearly owes a great deal to the non-public domain 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz.

Much of what happens in the book stems from the Wicked Witch of the West being green. Naturally, that’s seen as a bad omen (I don’t think there are any good omens in Wicked). As an infant and forward, Elphaba (Maguire creates new names for characters), is seen as a symbol of evil because of skin color, and that naturally impacts the future Wicked Witch’s emotional development.

The Wicked Witch of the West is not green in the L. Frank Baum books. That was apparently introduced in the 1939 movie, partially to show off the color in the movie.

Also, the Witch flying on a broomstick is important in Maguire’s Oz, and does not happen in Baum’s (although other witches do fly on broomsticks much later in the series).

After someone sings a song in Wicked, there is a mention of rainbows…a not so subtle connection to Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

It’s absolutely fair to say that the 1939 movie was also different from the original books. It was not a success when first released…there were many Oz fans who didn’t like the casting of Bert Lahr, a known comedian, as the Cowardly Lion, for one thing.

However, it is different in different ways from Maguire’s Oz. It differs more in specifics than in tone.

Did I like Wicked?

Yes…I thought the writing was quite good. It was harsh, it was deliberately shocking in places, it was sometimes jarring (cigarettes, adjustable loans, and trains in Oz? For one thing, where were they growing the tobacco?)…but I really felt for the characters. I was anxious to see what happened next.

For me, it would have been a much better book if it didn’t have the Oz veneer over it…but can I honestly say I would ever have read it if it had just been a sort of Dickensian tale, without the magic and familiar characters? Probably not.

I will go on to other books in the Maguire series.

One last note about the book itself. I mentioned this capitalization thing with Animals. That was something that bothered be every time it happened: intelligent animals in Maguire’s Oz are pronounced in some way with a capital letter. That’s to distinguish a Cow (which speaks and thinks like a human) from a cow (which doesn’t). I didn’t get that: how do you pronounce it differently? I listened to part of the book with text-to-speech, and of course, Ivona didn’t pronounce it any differently. I didn’t have trouble telling what was meant by the context, though…it just seemed like a contrivance. As a vegetarian, I wasn’t happy with the treatment of the animals or Animals in the book, but people weren’t particularly more cruel to them than they were to other more human types that they encountered.

This all got me thinking about when people reimagine public domain works. That can produce some great things. For example, West Side Story and Forbidden Planet are both based (somewhat loosely) on Shakespeare plays (Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest, respectively).

That can lead to some great new insights and art. Philip José Farmer’s A Barnstormer In Oz, which preceded Wicked by some thirteen years, similarly explores Oz with a different sensibility…and yes, more realistic violence and sex than the original books.

I’m not opposed, under the current legal structure, to new adventures with public domain characters…I just recommended authors do just that in Three characters walk into a plot….

I think Wicked has considerable value as a work of art, even if I don’t personally like its sensibility.

I don’t think a derivative work damages the original…even though many people may first become familiar with something through an adaptation or derivation (I would guess the vast majority of people in the world know MGM’s Oz much better than Baum’s).

I’m curious what you think, though. Do you feel like classic characters and books need to be “respected” by not being portrayed in ways other than the original? Is it okay for later authors to change their inner motivations? What do you think when a book labeled a children’s book is “updated” with sex and explicit violence? If that’s clear to the audience, is it still some sort of “violation” of the characters?

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.

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

NOOK loses PC & Mac apps

Thanks to “Mooncat” in the Amazon Kindle forum for the heads up on this

TeleRead article

which I have confirmed.

The

Barnes & Noble page for NOOK apps

no longer lists apps for Windows (except Windows 8) or Macs.

Their free apps are now:

• iPad
• Android Tablet
• NOOK Kids for iPad
• Windows 8 Tablet
• iPhone (&iPod touch)
• Android SmartPhones
• Windows 8 PC
• NOOK for Web

Compare that to

Amazon’s free Kindle reading apps:

• iPad
• Android Tablet
• Windows 8 Tablet
• iPhone (& iPod touch)
• Android SmartPhones
• Windows 8 PC
• Kindle Cloud Reader
• Windows Phone
• Blackberry
• Mac
• Windows 7, XP, & Vista

This is one of those things where you just want to say, “You did what now?”

It seems like a weird move, especially with Microsoft having put all the money into the NOOK line that it has. Why no Windows phone? Why drop support for the kinds of Windows PCs that are typically running in schools and businesses (I’m guessing most of those haven’t gone to Windows 8 yet)?

It’s just one of those odd moves. Okay, sure, there may be Customer Service costs connected with them, but it may not be much. You’ve moved away from institutional support, which is one place where the money is. Yes, they could use the NOOK for Web support (similar to the Kindle Cloud Reader), but that’s really not the same.

Maybe this is preparatory for some move by Microsoft that provides some alternative to the NOOK reader?

Get a free digital Superman comic by signing up for an Amazon newsletter

With Man of Steel opening June 14th, and getting some buzz, Amazon is giving away the digital version of the recent Superman comic reboot:

Sign Up for the Amazon Comics Newsletter and Get a Free Digital Comic

Actually, DC rebooted a bunch of things with the “New 52″. You can see the details on this deal above, but it goes through July 21st and is just for first time subscribers to the Amazon Delivers Comics newsletter.

Honestly, I have serious doubts about the movie, but as always, hope it’s good.

For those of you not familiar with modern comics, this one, by George Pérez, is not really written for younger children.

Oh, and while this will look better on a Fire (partially due to the color), it’s not limited to the tablets. It’s available for these devices:

• Kindle (what I call the “Mindle”)
• Kindle Touch
• Kindle Paperwhite
• Kindle Fire
• Kindle Fire HD
• Kindle Cloud Reader
• Kindle for Windows 8
• Kindle Keyboard
• Kindle for iPad
• Kindle for Android

\S/

No more recently delivered list at MYK

We used to be able to go to

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

and see which items went to which Kindles recently. That appears to have been removed. That will complicate things for some people with many people on their account…and there is no limit to the number of devices which can be registered to an account.

I’m thinking this might be because of

Whispercast

which is Amazon’s relatively new way to manage multiple Kindles. I still intend to sign up for it myself at some point to test it out. They just may be trying to migrate people to that service.

“The Princess has stopped.”

I see (and answer) a lot of the same questions, over and over again, in the Kindle forums. I don’t mind that: I know that even though I’ve seen it a thousand times, the person wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t new to them.

However, it is still fun when I see something that is new to me.

In this

Amazon Kindle forum thread

a poster reported (and even provided a link to) an error message on a Kindle Fire that said

The Princess has stopped.

Somehow, that just seems like a great line…like something destined to become an internet meme.

You could use it when someone complains about something having been taken away from them. It would suggest that providing it was a sort of gift from royalty, and that gift has now ended.

Complaint: “Barnes & Noble took away the NOOK for Mac app!”

Response: “The Princess has stopped.”

Complaint: “I can’t see which device got which Kindle book any more!”

Response: “The Princess has stopped.”

I suggested it might be an app that has failed…the poster doesn’t have the situation resolved at the time of writing.

Kindle hardware now available through Amazon in China

This is a huge (although not unanticipated) move by Amazon!

Kindle hardware (both RSKs…Reflective Screen Kindles, and Fires) are available through

http://www.amazon.cn

I think the key thing here is the presence of the RSKs. There are certainly competitors for tablets in China, and there are EBRs (E-Book Readers), but the Paperwhite may be able to really grab some marketshare.

There are 1,322 reviews for the Paperwhite at the time of writing, with an average of 4.7 out of 5.

It’s interesting to read those reviews, although using Google translate can be challenging. They do seem to be generally positive.

The price is ¥ 849.00…about $138.47 at time of writing.

The Kindle Fire HD is ¥ 1499.00…about $244.48.

It didn’t look to me like they had videos, but they had apps, including local apps…there has already been an appstore there.

We’ll see how this goes, but this could be a nice influx of cash (if not profit) for Amazon, which could help Kindle development around the world. It could also mean more Chinese language books in the USA Kindle store, although that doesn’t seem to me to have followed directly with other international expansions.

Three characters walk into a plot…

It’s the second Saturday of the month, and that’s when my post appears in

The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing

a blog specifically for authors.

This time, my post is

Three characters walk into a plot

about using public domain characters in Kindle Worlds works (and I describe three particular ones as examples). Even if you aren’t an author, I think you might enjoy that one. There has been a bit of a roiling response in comments over the licensing agreement, and whether or not fanfic authors need be concerned about rightsholders coming after them if they put up free unauthorized works involving copyrighted characters.

Well, I like the mix of stories in today’s round-up! If you have any comments (roiling or not),  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.

There is a lot of buzz in the news right now about alleged US Government connections to tech company data.

There are some odd elements to the reports, but let’s put the basic idea as the Government gathering mass amounts of data, presumably about user activity (not about internal company functioning) from some major companies. According to this

The Atlantic article

those companies are (in order of when collection supposedly began):

• Microsoft
• Yahoo
• Google
• Facebook (and “ok” follows the name on the PowerPoint slide)
• PalTalk
• YouTube
• Skype
• AOL
• Apple

Notice who isn’t on that list?

Amazon.

Amazon is famously protective of users’ privacy, having fought State government requests for data in court.

Is that what happened here? Did Amazon say “no” when everybody else above said yes?

Actually, there are some good reasons why that might not be the case.

First, the intent here would hypothetically be to detect illegal (and likely specifically terrorist) activity. One way to do that would be to first build patterns for what is normal, then detect things that don’t fit that pattern.

That’s essentially the way very young humans learn, as I understand it. You figure out that this is the normal process for dinner. Then, when that pattern isn’t matched, that event stands out…and may become one of your earliest memories.

That’s also how Behavioral Recognition Systems Labs AISight system works. That’s an artificial intelligence system in use now in San Francisco (and other cities) that watches security video, learns normal patterns (on its own), and alerts a human agent for additional review when something seems strange.

It makes sense to me that the Government would want lots of data on phone calling patterns, for example (not on individual’s phone calls). If I told you that somebody made ten phone calls within one minute to ten different numbers in a country that person had never called before…and in each case spoke to someone for five seconds (the calls were actually answered), you would immediately know that seemed odd. Software, first, has to learn what is normal to be able to sound an alarm.

So, Amazon may not be on the list because there aren’t enough patterns of  communication between individuals on it to trigger alerts. Do people communicate with each on Amazon? Not very directly. They could in Amazon’s forums. They could leave reviews, and comment on the reviews, using secret code words. Honestly, I don’t think Amazon is a likely way for criminals to communicate.

Could having data from Amazon about which books are bought be informative? Sure, but that’s not the kind of data that’s being discussed here.

We could, then, think that Amazon is not on this list (presuming that the list is at all accurate) because they aren’t useful for the purposes of PRISM.

However…

Did you notice who else isn’t on the list?

Twitter.

Twitter would definitely be interesting if you were tracking communications.

I think there is another reason Twitter might not be in PRISM (if PRISM even exists…I have to keep emphasizing that). The Library of Congress already archives all public tweets. It’s possible that the Government can analyze useful Twitter data without any secret stuff happening. After all, there are many places where you can get Twitter data. For example, you can go to

http://www.tweetfeel.com/

enter a term, and see tweets about it with their sentiment analyzed.

It could be, therefore, that Twitter’s person-to-person communications are already public enough.

I don’t know if these reports are accurate, and this isn’t really the right forum for me to discuss whether I think the program would be good and/or legal.

It does seem appropriate for me to say that it wouldn’t surprise me that Amazon wouldn’t be on a list like this, because first, they don’t have much of this kind of pattern building communication data, and second, the data that they do have like that (forums and comments on things) are already public and wouldn’t need to be part of a secret program. Similarly, Tweeting is basically public.

Remember that the concept here is not asking “What did Bufo Calvin tweet?” It’s “How many tweets are normal for people at what time of day?”, that kind of thing.

It’s also worth mentioning geolocation, which would likely matter. Certainly, my Kindle Fire typically knows where I am, since I’ve enabled location based services. It’s likely that my Kindle Paperwhite could be geolocated. Even though that sort of data is probably available to Amazon, I still don’t think it’s that useful for criminal investigations. I suppose if it turned out that there were a hundred purchases at the same time of day in a place which had never purchased a Kindle book before, that might be intriguing…but it’s not like data that involves communication between two or more people.

While I would like it to be true that Amazon is particularly protective of my privacy, I don’t think the PRISM stories prove that.

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