Freebie flash! Quiet, Shepard

Freebie flash! Quiet, Shepard,

As usual, I don’t vouch for these books, and they come from companies that are not (to my knowledge) blocking text-to-speech. As promotional titles, they may not be free for long. Note: these books are free in the USA: prices in other countries may vary.

Quiet as They Come
by Angie Chau
published by Ig Press

The way this is listed at Amazon is a bit confusing.  For example, it says the paper length is 200 pages.  However, it seems that what you are downloading for free is the title story in a collection…the page length count refers to the collection, not this one story.  This sounds interesting, though: the collection has to do with people from Vietnam coming to America and how that affects them.  I’ll download the story, personally.  It only has six reviews on Amazon so far, but those are all fives.

The Lord Is My Shepherd
The Psalm 23 Mysteries #1
by Debbie Viguie
published by Abingdon Press (a faith-based publisher)

This sounds like it has possibilities.  Viguie is a Young Adult author (the Wicked series).  This book is a mystery (the first in a series).  Here’s an excerpt from the product description:

“Cindy and Jeremiah come from two different worlds, even though they work right next door to each other. Cindy is a strong Christian who lives a normal but somewhat dull life, working as a church secretary. Jeremiah is a Reformed rabbi with a mysterious past full of danger and excitement. But one eventful Easter/Passover week, the two find themselves working together to solve a murder and stop a serial killer from striking again.”

I’m guessing this won’t be gruesome or have explicit sex scenes, given the publisher.  You know…a G-rated serial killer story.  😉

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

Flash! Kindle app to come pre-loaded on some Droids and the Fascinate

Flash! Kindle app to come pre-loaded on some Droids and the Fascinate

Well, the Kindleization of the world continues.  🙂

Verizon and Amazon announced today

Press Release

that the Kindle Android app will come pre-loaded on the Droid 2, Droid X, and Fascinate.

Sure, people could download it…but they won’t have to do that.

Actually, I was jokingly going to suggest that they have the Kindle app on shopping carts in the grocery store, but a great idea just occurred to me.

They could put the Kindle app on airplane seatback media screens (some planes have them).  You’d log into your account, and have access to your books.  They can do internet in flight, so that would work. 

Of course, I know that tends to be expensive…and I doubt they’d be E Ink screens.

Maybe it’s not such a great idea.  🙂  I was just trying to prevent people from leaving their Kindles in those seatback pockets.

There do seem to be some real opportunities, though.  The Kindle on mass transit…Kindle in a cab…Kindle in the waiting room at the doctor’s.  I’m picturing a built-in reflective screen.  It’s just a fantasy, I guess, and I’d probably read my own Kindle by preference.  Hmmmm…what about an E Ink screen built into a table at Starbucks? 

Fascinating…if we can get people reading in as many places as they watch TV shows…well, that wouldn’t help one of our greatest exports (visual media), but it might make for an interesting cultural shift…

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

Flash! Win $100,000 from Amazon!

Flash! Win $100,000 from Amazon!

Amazon has done some great contests before…and this is another good one.

You probably know about Amazon’s Wish List feature.  You can create multiple Wish Lists.  You can make them public or not…up to you. 

One thing a lot of people may not realize is that you can add items to your Amazon Wish Lists from pretty much any website.

Yep…add items from http://www.thinkgeek.com or http://www.lastexittonowhere.com or http://www.wickedcoolstuff.com/ or…you know, some place less geeky.  🙂

What happens is when you add something from another website to your Amazon Wish List, you’ll be able to enter the sweepstakes.  One entry per week (regardless of how many items you add) from October 11, 2010 through December 19, 2010.

For more information about how to create a Wish List, or how to sweepstakes works, see this page:

Amazon’s Wish Lists are Universal sweepstakes

Just a little bit more about how this works.  You install the

Universal Wish List button

It’s going to be a favorite for you in your browser…you might have it in your Links toolbar.  You go to a website, get to the product page for something you want, and click the button.  It will ask you to which list you want to add it, and that’s about it.  You will have to install it on each computer where you want to use it.

I’m not quite sure how this works for Amazon.  Do they get paid by the websites?  Maybe.  I know some websites have an Add to Amazon Wishlist button.  You might guess they are getting referral fees when people buy it…but when you buy it, you are buying it from that website…not Amazon.

So, honestly, I’m not sure why Amazon is willing go give the winner ten $10,000 MasterCard gift cards for doing this…but it’s okay with me.  😉

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

How to enjoy your text-to-speech

How to enjoy your text-to-speech

I like text-to-speech, and listen to it for hours a week in the car.  However, I know a lot of you really, really don’t like it…really.  Hmmm…what’s a stronger word than detest?  😉

Well, I feel sorry for you, honestly.  I mean, what do you listen to in the car?  Music?  Talk radio?  Each other?! 😉

So, I thought I’d give you some ideas that might help you find the pleasure in text-to-speech. 

1. Try easing into it.  Listen to every other word.  Or, start with the volume all the way down and sssllllloooooowwwwwwwlllllyyyy edge up the sound over the course of a month or so

2. Ask your Kindle to open the pod door

3. Pretend one of the greatest minds in the world is explaining the brief history of something to you

4. From time to time, call your Kindle a multisyllabic alliterative insult…”You egregious e-book!  You monotonic machine!  You catatonia-creating Kindle!” (Hey, it worked for Dr. Smith)

5. Have your Kindle read you a really steamy romance.  It’s always easier to be friends after you’ve had a good laugh

7. Close your eyes.  The increased focus may help your understanding (NOTE: not recommended when you are behind the wheel of a moving car…unless you are in one of those Google driverless cars)

8. Write something in Notepad for your Kindle to say.  Maybe if you have it say something obsequious with your name in it, you’ll think it is worth it

9. Read out loud to your Kindle…maybe you just feel guilty because you aren’t taking turns

10. Try listening to VoiceOver on the iPad for ten minutes  😉

Just kidding on that last one.  Some of my best friends have iPads.  🙂

A little more seriously, do try varying the speed and gender of the voice…that can matter. 

I really think that part of it is that I have a pretty good idea where the book is going a lot of the time.  I generally don’t have any trouble figuring out who said what, because I can imagine how the dialogue is going in the book.  I’m not saying that’s indicative of anything good, by the way.  I just suspect writers and other kinds of storytellers may be able to keep the characters separated well…even when they sound the same.

One thing I used to do in improv which would sometimes amaze people: if somebody is saying something reasonable…not intentionally using made up words or non sequiters…I can usually appear to be saying it at the same time.  It’s not really the same time…it’s the tiniest beat behind.  I also have to look at the person intensely to do it.  I can’t do it in a language I don’t know, and poetry is much harder.  It’s an empathy thing, partly…something educators should be good at doing.  It’s fun…try it on your friends!

I am really pleased to have text-to-speech.  It’s wonderful in the car…listening to a Father Brown mystery is much more entertaining than most of my other options.  When people ask me to compare the NOOK (sic) and the Kindle, it’s definitely one of my biggest pluses for the Kindle.

I wish more people enjoyed it…

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

Flash! Amazon announces “Kindle Singles”

Flash! Amazon announces “Kindle Singles”

Have you ever bought a Kindle “book” and been disappointed that it was really a short story or article?

Well, Amazon is now going to create a separate section in the Kindle store where everything in it will be between 10,000 and 30,000 words…Amazon says that’s the equivalent of 30 to 90 pages approximately (although that’s not how the traditional 250 words per page works out). 

They’ve announced it in this

Press Release

 The use of the term “single” is a bit odd to me.  My first thought with a “single” is a little 45 RPM with that yellow plastic adapter thingy.  Too old?  😉  Yeah, I know, we download MP3 singles now.  Still, I think of a single as one part of a whole…but I know that’s old-fashioned, too. 

Amazon says that these singles are “…the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated.”

It does sound like they are pushing for non-fiction here, and established writers. 

If you are interested in publishing for this section, you have to be “considered” for it.  You contact them at

digital-publications@amazon.com

Is this a good idea?  Yeah, I think so.  The paper publishing world had some artificial restrictions on it.  You might not have thought about it that much, but when I managed a bookstore, we had to deal with the physical limitations of the shelves.  If a book or magazine was too big or too small, we just couldn’t display it very well.  If a paperback was too skinny, people didn’t want it.  If it was too big, that could be a tough sell.

Let’s say that the typical cost of a paperback at that point was…oh, $3.95.  Could we have sold a bunch of books at a quarter of that length for $1?  Probably not…they would have looked inexpensive.  The cost of selling would have made the $1 books more expensive for us…so ideally, they might have been more than $1.

The cost of selling is very low with e-books, so that’s less of an issue.

I can absolutely see one of these really taking off.  It’s a bit like pamphleteering in the 18th Century…I can see Thomas Paine having used this.  🙂

Oh, one last thing: I do wish they would put a word count on the Kindle product page for all titles…you can’t really tell the size by the KB count.

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

Freebie flash! Relentless, Truth, Dollar…and more!

 Freebie flash! Relentless, Truth, Dollar…and more!

As usual, I don’t vouch for these books, and they come from companies that are not (to my knowledge) blocking text-to-speech. As promotional titles, they may not be free for long. Note: these books are free in the USA: prices in other countries may vary.

The Truth About Negotiations
by Leigh L. Thompson
published by FT Press (a business publisher)

The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams
by Trent Hamm
published by FT Press (a business publisher)

Relentless 
Dominion Trilogy #1
by Robin Parrish
published by Bethany House (part of Baker Publishing Group, a faith-based publisher)

Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance
by Paul W. Farris, Neil T. Bendle, Philip E. Pfeifer, David J. Reibstein
published by Wharton School Publishing (an business education publisher, part of Pearson)

Tahn
by L.A. Kelly (aka Leisha Kelly)
published by Revell (part of Baker, a faith-based publisher)

The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond
by Bill Hybels
published by Zondervan (a faith-based publisher)

What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Sex: A Guide for Christian Men
by Ryan Howes, Richard Rupp, Stephen W. Simpson
published by Baker (a faith-based publisher)

By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me
by Sinclair B. Ferguson
published by Reformation Trust Publishing (a faith-based publisher)

Alfred Sloan’s Way
by New Word City
published by FT Press (a business publisher)

The Truth About Leading Teams: The Essential Truths in 20 Minutes
by Martha I. Finney
published by FT Press (a business publisher)

Redemption
by Karen Kingsbury, Gary Smalley
published by Tyndale House (a faith-based publisher)

Sin’s Daughter
by Eve Silver
published by HQN Books  (a romance publisher…part of Harlequin)

CEB New Testament
by Common English Bible

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

Using your Kindle as a notepad

Using your Kindle as a notepad

When people on the street ask me if I have a pen, I always want to say, “No, do you need a keyboard?  I have three of those.”  😉 

Why would I carry a pen?  I almost never use them.  It’s not like I write checks…I have a debit card.

I was pretty amused to see the obsolescence of the pen as a plot point in a recent Fringe episode.

I don’t even make notes with pen and paper.  I use my Kindle.

Yes, I mostly read on it, and it’s not as easy as typing on a laptop, but it does work.  I use it in a practical sense at work fairly often.

I’ve mentioned that before, and I’ve had some people ask me how to do it, so I thought I’d do a post to explain it.

You can’t create a document on your Kindle…you can add notes to existing documents.

You could just make a note in the book you are reading.  That’s how I started, and that works okay.   It’s just a little weird to remember which book it was.

There are some advantages to using a Kindle store book to make your notes.  The biggest advantage is that the notes are stored for you automatically at

http://kindle.amazon.com

That means you can copy and paste from that website right into an e-mail or a document, and that can be convenient. 

However, I’ve created a text document using Windows, and put that in the Documents folder on my Kindle using my USB cable.  I called it Notepad, but you could call it whatever you want.   I just add notes to that.  That makes them easy to find, and I delete them when I’m done.  The disadvantage is that I need to connect the Kindle to my computer if I need to actually copy the notes.  They’ll be in your MyClippings.txt file.    Most of the time, my notes are just for my use, so I don’t typically have to send them anywhere. 

One odd thing, though: I was making a note, and I edited it several times during a meeting.  Only one note showed on the Kindle, but MyClippings.txt had a separate note for every time I edited it.

How do you make the notes?

It’s easy…

Menu-Add a Note or Highlight

Then, you just type your note.

You can hit “enter” without ending the note.

To type numbers on a K3, you can either use the Sym key or use Alt and the top row of letters.

They go left to right, so

• Alt+Q=1
• Alt+W=2
• Alt+E=3
• Alt+R=4
• Alt+T=5
• Alt+Y=6
• Alt+U=7
• Alt+I=8
• Alt+O=9
• Alt+P=0

To put in symbols, like : / @ and so on, use the Sym key.

When the Sym button is pressed, you can continue to use the keyboard.  However, to finish up, you’ll have to hit the Sym key again. 

You’ll see the option either to Save the note or Save & Share.  If you Save & Share, your note can also go to Twitter or FaceBook, if you’ve set that up.

How do you find the note again?

Just open the book or file.  Then

Menu-View My Notes & Marks

You can edit it by hitting “enter”, delete it with delete key, and share it with Twitter or Facebook.  My notes are often longer than I can see easily, so I’ll hit enter, but just not actually edit it.

That’s about all there is to it.  If you send texts, you’ll probably find thumb-typing on the Kindle pretty easy.  I type quickly, but text embarrassingly slowly.  However, I do think making these notes is improving my texting speed…a collateral benefit.  😉

There are some utilities you can buy from the Kindle store to serve as a notepad.  These will have the advantage of backing up your notes to that Kindle.Amazon.com site.  For some people, it might be worth a dollar to get the file on your Kindle easily and to have that backup.  You won’t open the document and see your notes immediately…it will be like notes in the text file I use.  You’ll still have to call up the note, either by selecting the superscript number or doing Menu-View My Notes & Marks.

Notepad Plus

Notepad for Kindle

Note to Self

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

B&N’s PubIt! vs. Amazon’s DTP

B&N’s PubIt! vs. Amazon’s DTP

“Heya, heya, heya!  Step right up!  You say you wanna be an author?  You say you want your immortal piles of prose to take their rightful places along side the literary greats?  You wanna make a buck on a book?   You say you’ve tried going to publishers…that you could wallpaper a room with rejection letters?  Well, why should THEY get decide if you’re an author or not?  Let Mr. and Mrs. Reader decide!  And you know how much it is going to cost you?  Not ten thousand dollars!  Not five thousand dollars!  Not one single dime!  That’s right…you can become the next F. Scott Fitzgerald absolutely free!  You there…you look like the writer type…you can put two words together, right?  You’ve got a story to tell!  Well, there’s a world of readers out there, hungry to read what you have to say!  They WANT to pay you…they want to make you the toast of the town!  They want to get you one step closer to that Nobel Prize!  So, come one, come all!  Who’s next?”

 Self-publishing is one of the most important elements that e-books bring to us.  However, it can be good and bad…“It was the best of words, it was the worst of words.”  😉 

If you’re an author, you may find the options confusing.  It’s pretty clear where the big book markets are.  Amazon, for sure.  Barnes & Noble?  Yes.  There are other ways to go (SmashWords, iBooks, your own website?), but these are definitely two of the biggies. 

If you are also an EBR (E-Book Reader) owner, you know you basically had to pick one.  You can certainly own both a NOOK (sic) and a Kindle, but you can’t share books from one to the other.

Well, here’s the good news…you can publish your book in both!

Both Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) and Barnes & Nobles’ PubIt! use non-exclusive contracts.  Even after you publish your book with one or the other, you can still publisher wherever else you want to do that.

Since PubIt! is new, I thought I’d give you a comparison of the two.  For disclosure’s sake, I should mention that I’ve used the DTP, and yes, gotten royalties from it.  My experience has been pretty good…I had one weird thing happen where they temporarily removed a book, but they straightened it out. 

Royalties

Let’s get right to it.  🙂 

Amazon offers two plans.  One is a 35% royalty, and the other is a 70% royalty.  Why the difference?  With the 70% plan, you agree to more guidelines: price between $2.99 and $9.99; no purely public domain books; at least 20% below the print list price; allowing text-to-speech; and a couple of others. 

PubIt! also has two plans.  For books in Amazon’s 70% range, they pay less…65%.  However, for books in Amazon’s 35% range, they pay more..40%. 

That doesn’t give you a clear winner.  I’d say the most popular books are in the 70%/65% range, but if you want to do a ninety-nine cent book, you’ll make more with B&N…but not a lot more.  On the other hand, it you are writing a photography book, a technical book, or a textbook, all of which could sell for a lot more than $10, that 5% could matter. 

Content

B&n has a pretty strong content policy.  You can have things that are legal (like books with explicit sex) that are prohibited by B&N.  It makes sense to protect yourself legally, so I can completely understand prohibiting libelous and infringing material.  But material that is “offensive”, “harassing”, or “intentionally hateful”?  I may not like books like that, but it’s interesting that B&N is going to accept your book or not based on your emotional intent.  Hmm…Amazon also prohibits “offensive” material.  Looking at these two, I’m not sure that they are all that different.

Payment Terms

This is also very similar…approximately sixty days after the end of the month in which the sales happen.

DRM (Digital Rights Management)

If you don’t want your book to use DRM, both services give you the option to use it or not.  (Thanks to reader Dave for correcting me on this…I had misread it).

Store programs

Each store has their own special programs…notably, Amazon has text-to-speech, and Barnes & Noble has LendMe, which lets owners loan a book to one other person for fourteen days.  B&N compells you to comply.  Amazon pays you more if you do. 

Overall

My thoughts generally on this is that it would make sense to do both.  Why not expand the potential market?  I don’t think it makes sense with my Kindle oriented titles, particularly, although I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have them in B&N, too.  My one concern with going with B&N is I’ve had bad customer service experiences with them online and on the phone (never in a store).  That hasn’t happened for me with Amazon…quite the opposite, it’s always been good.  The sales I’d generate for something called I Love My Kindle in the B&N store might not be worth the risk of a bad experience.  With some other titles I may do, though, it might be.

My recommendation?  Do them both. 

Doing either, by the way, also gets you on the iPad, PCS, Macs, and so on.

I also need to be very clear here that I haven’t mentioned anything that isn’t in the public information.  Nothing confidential has been revealed.

You can see the Terms for each of them here:

PubIt! Terms

PubIt! Publication and Distribution Agreement

DTP Digital Publication Distribution Agreement

Have you used PubIt!?  Any experiences you want to share?  Feel free to leave me a comment. 

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

Review: Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery

Review: Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery

Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery
Billy Boyle #1
by James R. Benn
published by  Soho Press

“The Norwegians had their own commando units that worked with the British Special Operations Executive. Together with SOE units, they were conducting hit-and-run raids along the Norwegian coast, blowing up fisheries and fish-oil-processing plants. That sounded pointless until I read that fish oil was a key ingredient in making nitroglycerin. War certainly is educational.”
–Billy Boyle
Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery
written by James R. Benn

It’s not only war that is educational…Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery is likely to teach you a thing or two.

Don’t let that put you off, though.  Like any good lesson, you don’t focus on the learning…it’s the ability to make the facts mean something, to connect them to the learner personally, that makes it work.

This is no dry history book.  It’s a visceral historical mystery…but that’s just sticking a label on a good yarn.

Billy Boyle is a Boston cop.  Not a grizzled old veteran…leave that to his father.  He got on to the force, and helped out in homicide investigations, but he’s no Sherlock Holmes.  He’s just a cop, doing his job.

When World War II comes up, the family figures they can get him a good position with his uncle, and keep him off the frontlines.

Yeah, that might work…but his “Uncle Ike” happens to be Dwight David Eisenhower. 

That might make it sound like a wacky comedy, but it’s not.  Benn brings an authenticity to these characters.  One of the interesting points to me is how Boyle’s Irish family doesn’t really want to help out the English.  That makes perfect sense, but it isn’t really something I’ve considered before.  Boyle’s reaction to war-torn London is reasonable, and while he’s not your stereotypical hero, he’s a solid joe.

That last description gives you a sense of how Boyle talks.  It’s not hard to understand.  I really admire that this isn’t a gimmicky book, throwing all kinds of 1940s slang at you.  It’s there, but it doesn’t seem out of place.  One of the clever pieces is having one of the other characters be interested in how Americans speak, which allows Benn to explain an unusual term…not that I generally needed it.  I’m pretty familiar with the period, though, having read literally hundreds of books from the 1930s and 1940s. 

This is a mystery…there are clues, there are suspects, and it’s all set against the background of World War II.  It’s not noir, and it’s not exactly pulp…it’s a novel.

There is violence, but not gore, and nothing sexually explicit.  It reads like a 1940s Warner Brothers movie.  That includes having a strong female character, and a dogged hero just struggling to put the pieces together.

I enjoyed this one…it kept me involved, and I was excited to get to what would happen next.  It’s not fast-paced, and that works.  It was amusing, exciting…and yes, one scene in particular, where a character describes a wartime incident, moved me.

It’s also the first in a series…now up to five titles.  If you enjoy it, you’ll be able to look forward to more.

I want to mention that I got Billy Boyle when it was free in the Kindle store, and then it went up in price (that’s not unusual).  As I write this, though, it is free again…presumably, for a limited time.  If it sounds interesting to you, I wouldn’t wait.

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

Freebie flash! Desperate, Shadow, Sister, Clockwork Vampire

Freebie flash! Desperate, Shadow, Sister, Clockwork Vampire

As usual, I don’t vouch for these books, and they come from companies that are not (to my knowledge) blocking text-to-speech. As promotional titles, they may not be free for long. Note: these books are free in the USA: prices in other countries may vary.

Kell’s Legend
The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles #1
by Andy Remic
published by Angry Robot  (a publisher specializing in “modern adult science fiction, fantasy and everything inbetween”)

The description makes this sound like a fast-paced pulpish novel…I’ll give it a try. 

Sister of the Bride
by Susan Mallery
published by HQN Books  (a romance publisher…part of Harlequin)

Shadow Bound
by Erin Kellison
published by Leisure Books Publishing, (part of Dorchester, a publisher of romance, horror, Westerns, and thrillers)

Debut paranormal romance…

Divorced, Desperate and Dating
by Christie Craig
published by Love Spell (part of Dorchester, a publisher of romance, horror, Westerns, and thrillers)

It’s a romance and a mystery…this one was free before and it’s back.

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