USA Kindle Store Bestseller Analysis November 10 2013

USA Kindle Store Bestseller Analysis November 10 2013

Good news!

I do an analysis of the bestsellers in the Kindle store from time to time, and looking at today versus January 7th, the top twenty bestsellers have dropped on average seventy-five cents…from $5.52 to $4.77! That’s about 14%.

Seriously, that’s a lot of money. There were three books in the top twenty over $9.99 in January, and only one right now.

That’s not to say that there aren’t major publishers in the top twenty: there are. Presumably, the end of the Agency Model for e-books for five publishers in the USA (brought about by a legal action by the US Department of Justice) has really lowered those prices by enabling price competition between outlets (and letting Amazon discount, which they do on many things).

Interestingly, if we broaden the comparison to the top fifty, it’s not as big a drop. They were $5.94 in January, $5.52 now. That’s forty-two cents: only about half as much a percentage drop, seven percent.

Here are the current prices for the top fifty:

Rank	Publisher	Price
1	Random House	$6.59
2	Random House	$2.90
3	Hachette	$6.62
4	Thomas & Mercer	$4.99
5	HarperCollins	$6.99
6	Penguin	$4.79
7	HarperCollins	$1.99
8	Macmillan	$3.99
9	Penguin	$5.99
10	Hachette	$7.64
11	Lake Union	$4.99
12	Simon & Schuster	$6.87
13	Indie	$0.99
14	Random House	$0.99
15	Indie	$0.99
16	Indie	$1.49
17	HarperCollins	$3.99
18	Hachette	$6.62
19	Penguin	$11.93
20	Montlake	$3.99
21	Simon & Schuster	$7.64
22	HMH	$7.69
23	Indie	$7.47
24	Macmillan	$10.91
25	HarperCollins	$6.99
26	Scholastic	$7.40
27	Indie	$0.99
28	Montlake	$4.99
29	NYRB	$9.99
30	HarperCollins	$11.93
31	Hachette	$3.63
32	Simon & Schuster	$4.74
33	Random House	$6.99
34	Penguin	$6.59
35	Hyperion	$5.99
36	Hachette	$7.64
37	Indie	$2.99
38	Indie	$2.99
39	Grand Harbor	$4.99
40	Random House	$10.99
41	Penguin	$11.99
42	Indie	$0.99
43	Random House	$2.90
44	Indie	$0.99
45	Indie	$0.99
46	Scholastic	$6.99
47	Penguin	$3.99
48	Hachette	$7.64
49	Macmillan	$5.52
50	Scholastic	$5.12

Comparing the features of the books (and I added whether or not they qualify for Kindle Matchbook), I think some of the figures are skewed here. There are a couple of books in the Kindle First program: they are published by Amazon, but have not yet been actually released. They don’t have some features showing (the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, for example), which I fully expect they will have when they are actually released. That makes the number of books in the top twenty with some of these features artificially low.

Rank	Publisher	Price	TTS	X-ray	Lending	KOLL	WSV	KMB
1	Random House	$6.59	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
2	Random House	$2.90	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
3	Hachette	$6.62	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
4	Thomas & Mercer	$4.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
5	HarperCollins	$6.99	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
6	Penguin	$4.79	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
7	HarperCollins	$1.99	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
8	Macmillan	$3.99	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
9	Penguin	$5.99	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
10	Hachette	$7.64	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
11	Lake Union	$4.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
12	Simon & Schuster	$6.87	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
13	Indie	$0.99	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
14	Random House	$0.99	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
15	Indie	$0.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
16	Indie	$1.49	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
17	HarperCollins	$3.99	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
18	Hachette	$6.62	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
19	Penguin	$11.93	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
20	Montlake	$3.99	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

• TTS: 85% (January: 85%, November 18 2012: 85%)
• X-Ray: 95% (January: 95%, November: 90%)
• Lending: 25% (January: 55%, November: 45%)
• KOLL: 10% (January: 35%, November 25%…if the two Kindle First books have it after being released, this would jump up to 20%)
• WSV: 35% (January: 50%, November: 45%…it’s also possible the two Kindle First books will get this. If so, that brings the percentage to 45%)
• Kindle Matchbook: 5%

In January, I was suggesting that Amazon was making progress in not needing the tradpubs (traditional publishers) as much. I may not have properly counted the impact of the Agency Model in that: with the Agency Model ending, Amazon can discount the tradpubs’ books more now, which may drive them up in the ranking. Lower prices are likely to mean more sales, especially in a case when that makes them more like their independently published competitors.

Five of the top fifty are published by Amazon…that’s down from six in January.

Ten of them are indies: the same as January.

So, the tradpubs have a somewhat better position now than they did in January. I didn’t count the New York Review of Books as an indie…if I did that, it would be the same.

Summing up, I’d say prices having dropped on tradpubs lowered the average price…that’s the biggest message to me in this.

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

Round up #219: Kids need books, Black Friday deal revealed?

Round up #219: Kids need books, Black Friday deal revealed?

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

Mini-review: Teenagers from the Future

Teenagers from the Future: Essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes
edited by Timothy Callahan
text-to-speech, lending enabled (no X-Ray, no Whispersync for Voice)
$4.99 at time of writing (can be borrowed through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library at time of writing)

Writing about popular culture and treating it as Significant Art can be tricky.

In some cases, it appears that the author really isn’t a fan or understands the genre all that well, but rather enjoys applying academic skills to any subject…sort of like trying to figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, without really believing there are angels…or caring about dance.

On the other side, you have “fans who write”, who don’t necessarily write all that well, but are enthusiastic and simply want you to believe that Superman is as deep as Shakespeare, with an understanding of the latter consisting mostly of education by Leonardo DiCaprio and Olivia Hussey. 😉

While Teenagers from the Future is almost by necessity uneven (being a collection of essays by different authors), it falls into neither of the above categories.

I found it both insightful and entertaining.

I read the Legion when it was first published, and haven’t really kept up with its development in subsequent reboots…but I find that it’s generally much more difficult to spoil comics for someone than to spoil a book. They aren’t always about this or that particular plot twist…sometimes, even if you know the plot, it doesn’t affect your enjoyment of it.

What is the Legion?

Well, it’s kind of a bizarre concept, at least the way I knew it…and that’s part of what makes it work.

In the future, a group of teenagers, inspired by the adventures of Superboy (Superman when he was a boy) in their distant past, form a club of superheroes (yes, they have super powers…although in some cases, their powers would be normal on their home planets). They then interact with Superboy, through time travel.

Okay, that’s strange enough initially…super powered fans and the complexities of time travel.

However, the Legion was not your typical comic series. For one thing, they killed off a major character quite quickly.

For another, they had a group of reject applicants (the Substitute Legion) with powers that were either pretty useless (one could turn into a statue…not a moving statue, just a statue: another could change the colors of objects), or were dangerously unpredictable (Infectious Lass, for example, who could generate diseases…but not control reliably which ones or who they affected).

All of that was obvious to me when I was first reading it.

Not so obvious was some of the social commentary. As John G. Hemry writes in this collection in the essay, “Liberating the Future: Women in the Early Legion”, by the 30th Century, women were treated a lot more equally (usually).

The Legion was often led by Saturn Girl, and there wasn’t anything considered to be unusual about a woman leading the group (often into combat…and the female Legionnaires fought like the male ones, punching people, when not using their powers).

I wonder how much that did influence readers of the comics. I suspect that Legion readers were much more comfortable in the 1960s and 1970s with female bosses (whether the employees were females or males) than the average person.

I also enjoyed the “The Legion’s Super-Science” by James Kakalios. It includes an analysis of how the Legion’s “flight rings” might actually work.

One thing about the Legion: they celebrated intelligence, not just fighting ability. Kakalios points out:

“In Adventure Comics #321, June 1964, when Lightning Lad is locked up for the rest of his life for ‘betraying’ the Legion by  ‘revealing’ the  secret  of the Concentrator, his cell has buttons for the three essentials of life: food, water, and books!”

I don’t think you have to be a Legion fan (there are still many) to enjoy the book…but I do think it would help. 😉 This might be another good gift for a Baby Boomer geek (the Legion started in 1958).

Best Buy Black Friday Kindle HD deal?

I’ve written before about

http://bfads.net/

my favorite source for information about sales on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving).

Thanks go to a reader, though, who gave me a heads up in a private e-mail to this

ZDnet story by Sean Portnoy

I hadn’t started planning for the day yet, but according to them, a Best Buy employee mentioned some Black Friday deals during an interview with a local TV station in Arkansas, and one of them was the

Kindle Fire HD 7″, HD Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB – Without Special Offers

for $99.99.

At least, I think that’s the one: the “Blueshirt” says, in this

Arkansas Matters video

that it is usually $199.99. Well, I don’t know of any configuration that gets you as high as $199.99 at Amazon.com for the Kindle Fire HD, but that’s the closest.

“Doorbusters” like this often disappear quickly and are in limited quantities, so even if this is a nationwide deal, you can’t be sure you’ll get one.

Interestingly, doing a

BFads.net search for Kindle

at this point only shows deals on Fires, not on other models. That will likely change in the next couple of weeks, though.

Amazon may also offer deals: two years ago, they had a big deal on Kindle books on Cyber Monday (the Monday following Black Friday).

Eek! A mouse!

This is a bit weird! Here is a picture from Amazon’s own Lab126 of a wall of Kindles and Kindle insides:

https://twitter.com/AmazonKindle/status/398554536035360768/photo/1

It’s certainly nostalgic to look at it (it sort of looks like a room of hunting trophies), but what appears to be a Kindle Keyboard has a mouse attached to it!

There’s another one that could possibly be a color display on a large screen EBR (E-Book Reader…not a Fire), but it s more likely just a picture in a frame. 🙂

Kids need books!

I was actually shocked by this

UK Children’s Commissioner survey

This

The Telegraph article by Sam Marsden

highlighted the significance of technological gadgets to the young people:

“Invited to say what they could not live without, 8.9 per cent of those questioned said their games console, 5.7 per cent said their mobile phone, 4.3 per cent said music and 3.4 per cent said sweets or chocolate.”

However, while “reading books” (and “school books” as a separate category) were in the questionnaire (I checked), I don’t see them being mentioned in the article or in the summary.

I’m sure quite a few of you would have listed that quite high when you were children, as would I. As a kid, I would have ranked books higher than “sweets or chocolate”. We didn’t have game consoles or mobile phones, and perhaps (based on the illustration in the questionnaire), these children are only answering that question around p-books (paperbooks), thinking that if they had a computer and/or a phone, they could still read books.

That’s my hopeful hypothesis. 🙂

What do you think? Does what we read for entertainment influence our social paradigms? When you were a kid, where would books have ranked among “things you need”? Higher than television, music, or pets? Do kids now think of p-books as something old-fashioned, and a different category than the books they read on their devices? 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. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

Tolerance of Imperfection, or, the zipper-suit non-exclusion

Tolerance of Imperfection, or, the zipper-suit non-exclusion

I wrote yesterday about a Miracast adapter that lets me watch whatever is on my  Kindle Fire HDX 7″, HDX Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB – Includes Special Offers‘ screen on my TV.

I mentioned that, with some streaming video, there was perhaps a half second lag between the audio and the video, and that I found that “tolerable”.

One of my readers, Marvin, suggested that people accepting that level of performance contribute to lower quality devices in the market.

That was a fascinating concept to me, and as all of the best comments on this blog do, it got me doing some self-examination.

I am a tolerant person. 🙂

I tolerate different opinions and customs in others, but I also tolerate imperfection in content and devices.

I can sum up my reasoning on that with a phrase that is used in the medical field (which is where I work in my “day job”, training people and optimizing workflows): “The benefits outweigh the risks.” 😉

I’ve seen people say that they won’t read any books with typos in them (or a typo a page, or “too many typos”, or wherever they set the bar*). Well, I have to say, I wouldn’t have gotten to read some of my very favorite books if that was my standard.

When I used to write some movie reviews back in high school, I judged movies on two things: what they were trying to do, and how well they did it. A movie could set low production quality expectations and deliver really well on story, and I would feel it was more enjoyable for me than a movie that was exquisitely produced, but was just going for a middle of the road concept.

Part of this, I’m sure, is being a geek.

It’s different now, but it used to be that science fiction, fantasy, and horror movies couldn’t get much of a budget. They were perceived as being attractive primarily on their concepts: they could play in a drive-in, and the production quality didn’t have to be good. The point was to go see a “monster movie”, not to marvel at accurate or convincing art design.

Geeks like me don’t reject a movie because we can “see the zipper” on the monster suit.

I’ve really enjoyed a lot of “zipper-suit movies”: my life is richer because I have seen them.

For decades, if we had rejected movies because the effect was imperfect, we would have seen no movies.

Now, obviously, you can say that the performance of a device is different from budget limitations in a movie, but I think there is a parallel.

Suppose someone said, “I hate the flash when you go to the next screen on a Kindle. I’m not using one until they get rid of it”. Certainly, for the first several years of the technology, they would not have had a Kindle…and all the advantages that can bring you.

I have seen people say they are angrily sending back their Kindle Fire HDX’s, because of some blue/purple tinging you can sometimes see around the edges.

I’m not saying that’s wrong to do. People have different levels of tolerance, and different things irritate them (as anybody who has ever been in a relationship knows). 😉

Part of this may also be me being a generally optimistic, positive person. I’ve had people in software classes I used to teach get quite upset because of a failure of, say, Excel to do something they thought it should do. I’ve said before, “If you are waiting for the perfect car, you’ll still be riding a horse.” I tend to find enjoyment in what’s around me, happening now. Does everything always go perfectly at work? Nope. However, I do wake up saying, “Oh boy, I get to go to work today.” 😉 My Significant Other pointed out to me that I’ve always thought that wherever I worked was the best company in that industry. On reflection, that seems statistically unlikely… 😉

Another issue is how much you tend to do more than one thing at once, and how much you tend to focus on one thing. Both modalities have their advantages and disadvantages.

I tend to want to have several things going on at once. I think that’s why I can be a very good proofreader of other people’s work. I can read the book, and enjoy it, at the same time that I am paying attention to errors or inconsistencies. Stopping to highlight something doesn’t make me lose the mood or flow of the scene.

I know that’s not true for everybody.

Getting back to Marvin’s original (presumably rhetorical) question about how I can say that a half-second delay is “tolerable”, it’s because it is tolerable for me.

It would take a stronger person than me to find the two-minute delay tolerable…

I always try to write my impressions of something in a way that you can decide whether you would like it or not. I try to give you the information.

Part of that information is how I feel about it. I probably have readers who have been reading me pretty much every day for several years now. They have their own ideas about who I am and what I tend to enjoy more. They can use that baseline to help them determine how they would react to something.

That’s how I’ve always looked at reviews of books, movies, TV shows, and others.

I pay attention to who the reviewers are (I always read bylines, and you’ve probably noticed that I tend to credit the writers when I link to other articles…although they aren’t always listed). There are reviewers where I know that, if that person didn’t like, I probably will. 😉

Does my willingness to accept flaws contribute to there being more flawed products? Perhaps. My own intuition is that there needs to be an interest demonstrated before the investment will be made to reach perfection. What company would spend a lot of money to develop a perfect Miracast adapter before they even know what the market is for that product? If some people will buy a product (a book, a gadget) with flaws, even if others won’t, it suggests that a similar unflawed product might have broad appeal. We got Star Wars in 1977 partially because people were willing to watch Flash Gordon in 1936, despite the wobbly flights in it. Would we have had Gravity if people didn’t watch Captain Video? Would we have the Kindle Paperwhite now if Amazon had wanted to wait until they had a perfectly functioning device?

The bottom line on this, I guess, is that I tend to be inclusive of my options rather than exclusive. I’m okay with imperfection.

I suspect that people like me are in the minority on this. I think we early adopters, as I wrote in We are not guinea pigs, tend to be more tolerant of imperfection, and pave the way for better products to come.

What do you think? Should I refuse to use a Miracast adapter until there is no lag? Would that accelerate development of the technology, or slow it down? Do you have set exclusions (“I won’t watch anything in black or white”, or “I won’t read anything without an index”)? Do you think this is hypocritical on my part, since I won’t knowingly buy books with text-to-speech access blocked? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post. Thanks again to Marvin for inspiring this post!

* There is a famous story about Winston Churchill (there are many of those), which I am going to paraphrase here. Supposedly, Churchill said to someone at a party, “Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?” “Yes.” “Would you sleep with me for two dollars?” “Of course not! What kind of person do you think I am?” “We have already established that: now, we are just haggling over price.” 😉

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

A Miracast adapter that works with the Kindle Fire HDX

A Miracast adapter that works with the Kindle Fire HDX

I’m happy to report that I have now tested the

NETGEAR Push2TV Wireless Display HDMI Adapter – Miracast and WiDi (PTV3000)

with my

 Kindle Fire HDX 7″, HDX Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB – Includes Special Offers

This is a device to allow the “mirroring” of the KFHDX screen on to a TV where the latter has an HDMI in port.

In other words, I can see everything which is on my Kindle Fire on my TV.

This is done wirelessly, unlike the previous Kindle Fire HD (not the current generation Kindle Fire HD, which has neither wireless TV connection nor an HDMI out cable port…to my knowledge, it can not be displayed on a TV).

I had tried another Miracast adapter (the iPush), and the sound and the video were terribly out of sync (the video might lag a couple of minutes behind the audio on a movie).

The Netgear is recommended by Amazon:

About Wireless Display Methods for Kindle Fire

It does cost about $60 (the iPush was more like $30), and I did need to buy another cable with a standard HDMI on each end. I bought the

AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters) – Supports Ethernet, 3D, and Audio Return [Newest Standard]

for $5.79.

It works well…not perfectly, but acceptably well.

Prime video (streaming and downloaded) looked and sounded fine.

I streamed from another site, and there was maybe half a second of lag on the sound…tolerable.

Sometimes, there was a bit of breakup in the image, but I also found that acceptable.

I tried to test it out a bit, so I went across the room (a good, oh, four meters or so), and it worked just fine.

It didn’t seem to really need line of sight.

Important update: it definitely isn’t line of sight…it’s more like a wi-fi network. I have a place in the family room where I have a charger for the Fire. I can have it plugged in in that room, pair it with the Netgear, start a stream running, and watch that stream in the bedroom (down the hall and in a different room entirely). No problem.

It did work in the Origami case, but when I closed the case (putting the Fire to sleep), it would stop broadcasting. That made sense, of course, but I did want to test it.

I tried a video and an app. It was nice to be able to control everything from the other side of the room…that part was better than having an HDMI cable directly from the old Kindle Fire HD.

The device itself is quite small…much smaller than I thought from the picture on the product page. It is perhaps as long as your palm and half as wide. That’s pretty unobtrusive.

My TV does not have a USB port, so it does need to be plugged into a wall outlet, as well as cabled to the TV’s HDMI. You can likely hide all that pretty much behind the shelf or the TV. The device does have a blue “ready light” on it, but I’m not finding it too bright at this point (I have a problem with that with some ready lights, probably due to my superior night vision, which may in turn come from some color vision deficiency I have).

Set up was easy: plug it in, tell the KFHDX to Mirror (Swipe down from the top on the homescreen, go to Settings, then Display & Sounds). Within about six seconds, the two of them found each other (the name of the Netgear appeared on the Fire). Tapping it caused it to connect, again in under ten seconds, and that was it). Pretty similar to pairing a Bluetooth phone (without having to enter a code).

Turning off the TV meant pairing it again the next time, but again, that’s an easy process.

I haven’t used it enough to determine battery drain yet.

The one thing that has failed for me so far is updating the device*. Amazon recommends that you have the latest update, and so does Netgear. I was able to get to the Netgear site and download the update on to my Kindle…but it downloaded as an .exe file, and I don’t seem to be able to launch it (should be an APK for an Android device, right?). I may play around with that part a bit more, but it does work well enough now.

So, I now have TV in that room again! I haven’t had it since eight of our Kindles were stolen when our house was burglarized recently.

Bottom line: it isn’t perfect, but if you are willing to pay $65 (approximately, counting the cable) to mirror your KFHDX to your HDMI equipped TV, I think  you’ll find it worth it.

It’s possible Amazon will still release a TV device, but it is interesting to me that they are recommending this one if that’s the case. I was thinking they might release two (an inexpensive “dongle” and a full-featured, Roku like device). I’m now thinking it may be more likely that they’ll only do the latter.

* Update: I have successfully updated it, and am satisfied with it now. I’m only seeing a tiny lag, and I haven’t seen audio and video out of sync unless it was also out of sync on the device.

Thanks to my reader, Americanchild, for posting how they updated it, and to my reader, Jacopo, for reminding me that I hadn’t come back to update this post with how I did it (although I had written about it other places).

Here’s the key concept. The Netgear is going to create its own wi-fi (not Miracast) network, and you can only get to the necessary website to do the update on that network (not on your regular household network). The sequence below is important, for that reason.

1. I downloaded the latest software update from http://downloadcenter.netgear.com/en/product/PTV3000. I did it directly from my Fire, first, but you can do it from your PC and then transfer it.

2. Press and hold the Push2TV button on the side for several seconds (I think it started flashing).

3. Next, connect your Fire to the Push2TV wi-fi network. This is different from mirroring: you are going to connect in the same way you connect to your regular network

4. Use a browser (Silk, or something else if you have it) to go to http://192.168.3.1

5. Follow the instructions there. It takes several minutes to do the update, and at the end of it, your Fire should return to your home network.

Hope that does it for you. If you have questions, you can let me know.

Next

Bonus story: Fire at the Internet Archive

I’ve written about the Internet Archive before, and I was sorry to hear about the recent fire there. As they report in this

announcement

some physical items waiting to be digitized (and then made available free to you and me) were lost, but it sounds like it was mostly equipment which was damaged.

They are asking for donations for repairs: you can choose your own amount.

I plan to donate something myself…up to you, but I thought some of you might also want to help.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

Amazon saves brick-and-mortars? AmazonSource

Amazon saves brick-and-mortars? AmazonSource

Bookstores selling Amazon selling.

That’s basically what’s happening with a new, innovative…even mind-boggling program from Amazon announced in this

press release

Here is the key concept:  your local bookstore can sign up for a program with Amazon. They then sell Kindles in the store, and the store gets ten percent of the purchase price of the Kindle store books you buy on it for the next two years.

It’s an extraordinary idea, and certainly, some bookstores may jump on it.

After all, it may feel like they are going to get ten percent of e-book sales for two years without doing anything…free money, right?

I’m a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, and a big fan of Amazon…but like the Golden Ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, entering the magical world of a genius may not always have positive results. 😉

At the site for the program

https://source.amazon.com/

Amazon calls it “completely worry-free”.  They say:

“If you decide that e-readers and tablets aren’t the right fit for your store, we’ll buy back any tablet, e-reader or accessory that was on your first order, no questions asked.”

This is short-term thinking for the store. If you can get into it with no risk on the hardware, and you simply sit back while the money rolls in from e-book purchases, why not do it?

I’m not telling people not to do it.

It certainly could be a benefit.

It also feels a bit to me like Amazon may have just started a two-year death clock on the independent bookstore, though.

When you sell one of your customers a Kindle, you may be selling them on the idea that they don’t need to come into your store any more.

You get some money from their Kindle store purchases for two years. When those two years are up, you don’t…and will your customer then stop buying e-books from Amazon? Seems unlikely.

For this to work for stores, people have to continue to buy both e-books from Amazon and p-books (paperbooks) from the stores. Yes, many people buy both. One of the questions is going to be whether or not the customers will continue to buy their p-books from your store, when you’ve sold them a Kindle Fire HDX 7″ that lets them buy the same p-book online from Amazon.

I would think that p-book discounts may start showing up in our Special Offers when this deal gets rolling (maybe early next year).

There are a lot of subtleties and complexities to this, and when books are written about Amazon fifty years from now, this may be seen as one of their most brilliant moves.

• It’s great PR (Public Relations): “Amazon saves Mom & Pop bookstores”
• Customers feel like they are “donating” to their local stores
• Every bookstore that joins becomes a salesperson for Amazon
• Every bookstore that doesn’t join loses a competitive advantage with their customers
• People who buy Kindle Fires, in particular, will buy other profitable items, partially because they may become Amazon Prime members. That may make sense in terms of what it will cost Amazon. Buy $200 a year in e-books from Amazon, it only costs them $20 (plus administrative costs). Will they earn more than that $20 on your other purchases (“diapers and windshield wipers”)?
• Veteran booksellers are incentivized to get people to buy Kindle books. Those booksellers may then start writing reviews and blogs, and become Amazon Associates, and make much more of a transition to online (and specifically Amazon)

Amazon has a cost for this for about two years: how many of those bookstores will still be around in two years doing what they are doing now?

If Amazon launches real digital storefronts for bookstores (perhaps something like I wrote about here: Hey, Amazon, buy this: BookAnd), I think many of them may go that way.

It gets even more interesting.

There are actually two programs as part of this announcement. One is for bookstores, and includes the e-book component. The other is for other stores, and gives them a deeper hardware discount, but no e-book cut.

That part about non-bookstores is fascinating. This certainly may mean that your local convenience store, hardware store, grocery store, and so on, start carrying Kindles.

They also risk opening their doors to the wolf, but in a very different way. Depending on weekly (perhaps daily) content sales is different from “Somebody kicked in my door and I need a replacement right now”.

Here is something else: it isn’t available in every US state, just these:

Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin

Why is that?

I suspect it has to do with how friendly the state is to Amazon, especially tax-wise. I know California and Amazon (after a messy situation) worked out a deal and are now effectively partnering (Amazon now has fulfillment centers there). I also understand that Maine and Amazon are in dispute right now…and Maine isn’t on the approved list.

Another thing: Amazon is not requiring exclusivity. A store can continue to sell Kobo devices, for example. There may be legal strategy behind that, but there will also be the idea for people that they support the bookstore if they buy the Kindle (in a different way than the other devices). Additionally, space is at a premium in stores (you are always fighting the rent), so will people really allot space to several different brands of devices? You know who used to do that? Borders…and they aren’t around any more.

Do I think this is an evil move by Amazon? Not at all. If I was managing a bookstore still, I’d probably do it.

It feels more like…Amazon is giving stores two years to get their things together as the world of bookselling transitions. Some people may see that as an eviction notice, but maybe it is more like a reverse mortgage: “We’ll pay you now for ownership later.”

I should be clear: I don’t think this wipes out independent bookstores, because many of them don’t need to make a profit. They are there because people love to be in a bookstore, both from the selling and buying sides. They love the community feel and the expertise of the sellers. They like being in the company of other booklovers and, yes, thousands of books all around you. Those stores, and that experience, will be around for a long time.

However, strictly in terms of business, I think the clock is now ticking…

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

Round up #218: Fire vs Air, help with images?

Round up #218: Fire vs Air, help with images?

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

Glitch or techno-tulpa?

So, this one is weird, and I thought my readers might be able to help.

I’m reading a pre-publication copy of the sequel to Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg. After I wrote the review I linked there, the author, Derek Swannson, commented on it. I sent my proofreading notes from reading it (as I’ve done with other books). Outside of a bit of e-mail correspondence, we still don’t know each other, but Derek asked me if I would read the upcoming sequel and again give proofreading notes (and perhaps editorial suggestions).

Proofreading is fun for me (it’s multitasking while reading…two things which I think play to my strengths), and I wasn’t given a timeline, so I agreed. After all, I thought parts of the first book were excellent.

Here’s the strange part:

As I was reading the book, shortly after a section that mentioned Akkadian (an ancient language from Mesopotamia, two “pages” of largely non-English text appeared in the book on my Kindle Fire HDX 7″. It replaced some of the narrative.

Given the reality twisting nature of the book, I thought perhaps they were intentional…maybe it represented a psychological or dimensional shift, and that it would be explained to us later.

I e-mailed Derek: that appears not to be the case, and it seems it hasn’t been reported by other people with galley copies.

I took screenshots of the mystery pages. You do that by doing the power button and the volume down* button at the same time…you’ll see an animation of the page to let you know it is happening. I’m going to reproduce them here, but I have to warn you first: if you can read them, the material might include obscenities and explicit content:

I’m not an expert on languages, even though my adult kid is a linguist. The first one looked to me like simplified Chinese, with overlapping characters. The second one sort of looked like Thai, but I wasn’t at all sure.

I thought maybe some of you might know. I did ask Derek’s permission before publishing it here.

It was a good thing I took those screenshots, because it disappeared afterwards!

If I go to home and reopen the book, the text looks normal. I’ve also had it happen where mostly just the font (and the second sample may be just a weird font) changed. Go to home, reopen, and it looks okay.

I have never seen this in any of my other books.

It seems possible (both to Derek and me) that it’s just some sort of glitch. The Kindle Fire has some translation ability (“long press”…hold your finger or stylus on a word for about a second, then tap “Translate”), and perhaps it was just translating the text for some reason.

It also just seems oddly appropriate to the book. 🙂 That’s why I humorously coined a new term for Derek, a “techno-tulpa”. As I understand it, a tulpa is a concept in Buddhism wherein someone brings something into physical being by thinking about it. A “techno-tulpa”, then, would be something you bring into existence in technology by thinking about it…sort of like the old concept of “thoughtography”. I know, I know…some of you (a very, very few) are saying to me right now, “You can’t be Serios.” 😉

Others of you are ready to move on to another story 😉 so I’ll do that. If you do have any insight into those images, I’d appreciate hearing it.

Fire beats Air

That headline sounds like something out of rochambeaux, or perhaps a battle of elementals in a role-playing game (RPG). 😉

Instead, it’s how the reviews seem to be going on the Kindle Fire HDX versus the iPad Air.

That’s not good for Apple: you don’t want your competition to be seen as cheaper and better.

Oh, it certainly doesn’t mean that the Fire is better at everything, but let’s take display quality as one element. That’s a place where Apple was clearly perceived as being a market leader.

This

c|net story by Brooke Crothers

reports an assessment by DisplayMate that ranks the KFHDX 8.9″ as better than the iPad Air.

In the original

detailed analysis by Dr. Raymond M. Soneira

you’ll see the Fire besting the iPad Air repeatedly (the Google Nexus 10 is included in the comparison, but it is due for an update, being a year behind, and doesn’t really challenge the others).

I strongly recommend the article for those of you who want the technical comparisons. For everybody else, there is this quotation (and it wouldn’t surprise me if you see it excerpted by Amazon):

“Most impressive of all is the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, which has leapfrogged into the best performing Tablet display that we have ever tested, significantly out-performing the iPad Air in Brightness, Screen Reflectance, and high ambient light contrast, plus a first place finish in the very challenging category of Absolute Color Accuracy.”

When you add in Mayday (the live tech help on the Fire), I think we may see Amazon gain quite a bit of marketshare. Doesn’t make me worry about Apple, of course, but it makes me feel even more secure about Amazon’s future in the hardware business.

A reader also sent me this

ZDNet article by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

in a private e-mail (thanks, reader!).

It’s a lot less geeky, comparing things that “regular folks” want to know, like battery life and accessories. The conclusion includes:

“The iPad Air is a great tablet, but the Kindle Fire HDX is better.”

Again, that’s a plus for Amazon…

Buzzfeed: “The 23 Best Parts Of Being A Book Lover”

This one is for fun…

by AriannaRebolini

It doesn’t really focus on e-books, though. Hmm…let me throw in a few of those:

• Never being without something to read
• Having the freedom to read from five different books…on the same errand
• Not having to worry about cracking the spine
• Sharing books with your family…across the country
• Reading classic books from around the world…for free

Mackenzie Bezos gives The Everything Store 1-star

This does strike me as a bit odd.

In Amazon’s review guidelines, they say that this is not allowed:

“Sentiments by or on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product (including reviews by publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product)”

I think it’s reasonable to suggest that a review by the Significant Other of the subject of a biography would fall into that category.

That’s why it feels a bit strange that the first ever 1-star review of

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

on Amazon comes from MacKenzie Bezos:

1-star reviews of The Everything Store

There are two other 1-star reviews: one dated the next day, and one which references MacKenzie Bezos’ review.

The book averages 4.4 out of 5 stars with 52 reviews (it’s worth noting that MacKenzie Bezos’ review has 78 comments…more than there are reviews of the book itself).

I’m certainly not arguing that MacKenzie Bezos shouldn’t express an opinion…even publicly. I think a dialog is great for the readers. I’m just not sure that a customer review is the right place for it, given the guidelines. Balancing that, though, I have to admit that I like reading Jeff Bezos’ own reviews…and arguably, the Amazon CEO has a financial interest in the success or failure of any products Amazon sells. That seems a bit more removed than this, though.

What do you think? How important is it to Apple that tech reviewers think their products are the best? What are the best things about being a reader (or specifically, an e-reader) for you? Is it legitimate that MacKenzie Bezos do a customer review of a book about Jeff Bezos? What are those images from the Crash Gordon book? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

* This might be me, but I always feel like the volume rocker is backwards on the Kindle Fire. With the screen facing me, and the camera on my left, I push the left-hand button and the bar extends to the right, and the right-hand button and the bar shrinks to my left. The buttons “go the right way” if I have the Kindle Fire upside down from that (with the camera on my right), but that seems to be “wrong way round”. For one thing, Amazon’s own Origami cover opens like a book (moving the cover to your left) only in the first position. Anybody else feel like that? Maybe the Origami cover was designed for a right-to-left language…

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

“Thank you, FAA” 15% off Kindle, Kindle Fire today only

“Thank  you, FAA” 15% off Kindle, Kindle Fire today only

Cute!

Not only cute, but a significant cash savings.

On the front page of Amazon, they have a nice cartoon of a Kindle Paperwhite 2, and a couple of Kindle Fires (although these are not the Kindles listed in the same splash with a discount…the illustration doesn’t match the actual discounted models), sitting on a plane.

Today only, to celebrate the FAA’s recent ruling allowing the use of PEDs (Personal Electronic Devices) basically throughout the flight, Amazon is offering a 15% discount with a special code (ThnksFAA…note that there is no “a” in the first part).

The splash has:

• Kindle (“Mindle”) for $59 instead of $69
• Kindle Fire HD 7 for $118 instead of $139
• Kindle Fire HDX 7″, HDX Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB – Includes Special Offers for $195 instead of $229

Those are great deals!

Remember, this is today only, you must enter the code (so don’t use 1-click), and I would guess this only applies in the USA.

I would not sit on this waiting for a better discount before the end of the year, at least on the Fires (which are new models).

Enjoy!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

Smile.Amazon: support your favorite charity by shopping

Smile.Amazon: support your favorite charity by shopping

Shopping at Amazon is easy, right? Some might say it is too easy… 😉

Wouldn’t it be nice if supporting your favorite charity was that easy? Especially if you could give them financial support without giving them any of your own money (although that can certainly feel rewarding)?

Amazon has now made that possible.

All you have to do is go to

http://Smile.Amazon.com

pick your charity, and shop as you always do at Amazon!

Your charity will get 0.5% of your purchase…spend $100, and they get fifty cents.

There’s really not that much more to it.

Amazon has done things with charitable giving before, but I like how easy this is…and how they have so many charities available. I used to sit on the Board of a somewhat obscure group, and it showed up: they say they have almost a million organizations.

Amazon announced it in this

press release

Naturally, Amazon needs the bank information to be able to directly deposit money. Organizations can register here:

https://org.amazon.com/

What happens if your organization doesn’t register and someone chooses your group?

Amazon will hold on to the money for up to four calendar quarters. They’ll try to contact you to get you to register (which is free). If you don’t register after that time, they’ll distribute the money to other charitable groups.

Not every product is eligible, and the ones which are will be marked on the item’s Amazon product page.

I did a quick check: it looked to me like Kindle hardware was, but I wasn’t seeing Kindle e-books which were (although I didn’t check very many). I did specifically check a book published by Amazon, in addition to others, and didn’t see the information. The

agreement

does indicate that some digital products will be eligible.

I don’t see much reason not to do this. 🙂

Amazon again changes things in a positive way, in my opinion. This could get a lot more money (read: opportunity) to these organizations which have been recognized by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) as being non-profits (some types are excluded).

One other thing: I know some of my readers are Amazon Associates. Your current links will not direct people to this site.

I checked with Amazon on this, and this is part of their reply:

“You can easily link to the AmazonSmile home page or a product detail page by using the following format to construct your links:

Home Page: http://smile.amazon.com/?tag=your_Associates_ID
Detail Page: http://smile.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/?tag=your_Associates_ID

To make your link to an items detail page functional, replace ASIN with the 10-digit ISBN or ASIN of the product, and replace your_Associates_ID with your Associates ID or Tracking ID.

The ASIN is listed on the product detail page at Amazon.com under Product Details. Your Associates ID and Tracking ID can be found on the left of your screen when youre signed into Associates Central. Your Associates ID will be listed under Signed in as.”

An organization can both be the beneficiary of someone shopping and get a referral fee…that’s explicitly okay.

I do have a few things I’d like to highlight:

• There is no cap on the donations (Amazon will not stop donating because a certain dollar value is reached)
• There are no deductions for administrative fees
• This is free both for the shoppers and for the receiving organizations
• The donations actually come from Amazon, not from the shopper…so the shopper does not get a tax write-off
• Organizations can opt out, if they want
• While you are shopping, you’ll see a banner at the top reminding you of which organization you chose. You can click or tap “Supporting” there to make a change
• You are going to get to http://Smile.Amazon.com in your browser (on a computer, tablet, or phone). I don’t believe you can do this while using the Amazon shopping app at this point, or when shopping directly from a Kindle (unless you use the browser there)

More questions?

About AmazonSmile

Please consider this option during the holiday season…and I can certainly see organizations themselves (many of which buy things from Amazon) shopping the site.

Here’s my suggested new motto for them:

“Shop ’til it helps!”

🙂

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them

Monthly Kindle Deals for $3.99 or less each: November 2013

Monthly Kindle Deals for $3.99 or less each: November 2013

Amazon does the Kindle Daily Deal, which discounts (usually) four books a day (often general fiction, a romance, a science fiction/fantasy book, and a kids’ book). That used to often be to $0.99, but I’ve noticed lately it’s more likely to be $1.99…or higher. Oh, and recently, it’s been five books commonly, not four…they just can’t seem to give us enough discounted books from which to choose! 😉

They’ve also been doing Kindle Monthly Deals for $3.99 or less each. That’s a recent rebranding: they used to say it was “100 Books”, but that’s also gotten to be more…there are 117 for this month at the time of writing.

Those prices only apply to the USA, and one weird thing is that some of the books seem to sell out at that price sometimes (or become unavailable for some other reason).

It’s also interesting…about 48% of the books in the USA Kindle store are $3.99 or less (1,067,377 of 2,231,990). Still, these are on sale, and that’s worth something. 

I’m going to list some of the $3.99 or lower ones that caught my eye…I’m not necessarily recommending them, but I do think they are interesting.

The ones I list also don’t block text-to-speech access*…but I think blocking it is becoming rarer.

Hallowe’en Party (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
by Agatha Christie
3.9 out of 5 stars, 64 customer reviews
$2.99 at time of writing

The Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple Mysteries)
by Agatha Christie
4.3 stars, 78 reviews
$2.99 at time of writing

Nice! You can get either (or both) of a Hercule Poirot and a Miss Marple!

For a Few Demons More (The Hollows, Book 5)
by Kim Harrison
4.3 stars, 254 reviews
$1.99

I read the first book in this series, and quite enjoyed it…it felt more like Stephanie Plum than the recent Stephanie Plum’s. 😉 You do need to be tolerant of vampires in your books, though. Interesting that this sale is on the 5th book in the series…

Midnight in Austenland
by Shannon Hale
4.0 stars, 135 reviews
$2.99

A sequel to the popular (and movie-inspiring) book about a Jane Austen-based theme park.

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime
by John Heilemann, Mark Halperin
3.6 stars, 885 reviews
$2.99

Everybody was talking about this book at one point…

Ex-Patriots
by Peter Clines
4.6 stars, 145 reviews
$2.99

It’s the second novel in a series of superheroes and the zombie apocalypse…wait, before you skim to the next one, do check out the rating above. 😉 Looking at the numbers and ratings of the books on the list so far, though, it’s clearly suggested that people judge different types of books on different scales…and that perhaps different demographics are more or less likely to write reviews.

Mystic River
by Dennis Lehane
4.2 stars, 688 reviews
$2.99 at time of writing

This well-known novel is also part of the Kindle Matchbook program…so, if you did want to buy the p-book (paperbook) also, perhaps to give as a gift or donate, you could get this even cheaper…$1.99. In this case, you could get the mass market paperback as a bargain book (I checked, and it does have the Kindle Matchbook information on the bargain book’s Amazon product page) for $3.20 (although there were only 9 left when I saw it). So, your choice would be: $5.19 for both the mass market bargain book (and it may be indicated as a bargain, perhaps by having a corner cut or a magic marker line on the bottom of the pages) and the Kindle book, or $2.99 for just the Kindle book.

The Memory of Earth (Homecoming Saga)
by Orson Scott Card
3.7 stars, 123 reviews
$2.99

No surprise to see a deal on an Orson Scott Card book with the Ender’s Game movie opening. By the way, I did read today that Card is not getting any money directly from the movie…which may give an interesting additional perspective on those who are boycotting it because they don’t agree with Card’s personally stated views. The other people who are involved with the movie (some of who are publicly on the other side from Card on that issue) will be hurt if you don’t see the movie. Of course, sales of Card’s books are likely to go up more if the movie is a bigger success, so it’s complicated.

Exit to Eden
by Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling
3.7 stars, 113 reviews
$2.99

It was a bit odd to see this listed as being written by Anne Rice and Anne Rampling, since they are the same person. 🙂 It’s categorized by the publisher as erotica.

The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
by Ernesto Che Guevara
4.1 stars, 104 reviews
$2.99

Certainly of historical interest, and the source for the movie, my understanding (I haven’t read it) is that it is also just a good read…

The Tin Drum (Danzig Trilogy)
by Gunter Grass
4.0 stars, 26 reviews
$2.99

Great to see a backlist book like this in this group! It was published in 1959, but in 1979, an Oscar-winning adaptation brought it a much larger audience.

Thy Neighbor’s Wife
by Gay Talese
4.3 stars, 24 reviews
$1.99

This was an incredibly influential non-fiction book about the business (and other things) of sex in America. If you look at the openness and mainstreaming of attitudes about sex from the 1950s until the dawn of the AIDS era in the 1980s (the book was first published in 1981), you can see seismic cultural shifts.

The Making of the President 1960
by Theodore H. White
4.5 stars, 40 reviews
$2.99

Another non-fiction title that was solidly in the public consciousness…this one might make a good gift for someone into politics and/or the Kennedys.

Seekers: Return to the Wild #3: River of Lost Bears
by Erin Hunter
4.7 stars, 35 reviews
$1.99

Very popular children’s book series…

The Space Vampires
by Colin Wilson
3.3 stars, 13 reviews
$1.99

How did this one get in this list? Oh, that’s not because I don’t know who Colin Wilson is (I certainly do, although I associate the author more with non-fiction), or that it wasn’t made into a movie (it was directed by Tobe Hooper), but it just doesn’t seem…to have that much broad appeal.

Geek Wisdom
edited by Steven H. Segal
4.3 stars, 57 reviews
$2.79

Yes, I bought this one. 😉 My Significant Other might benefit from reading it, but I’m sure that won’t happen. 🙂 We geeks share a lot of common culture, and this book consists of essays looking at some of the lines we often use with each other…and what they mean. I would definitely look at this as a small holiday gift for a geek you know. I get the impression it won’t be that accessible to a non-geek, though.

Those are a few I noticed. If you saw anything else you think me and my readers would like to know about, feel free to comment on this post.

Enjoy!

* A Kindle with text-to-speech can read any text downloaded to it…unless that access is blocked by the publisher inserting code into the file to prevent it. That’s why you can have the device read personal documents to you (I’ve done that). I believe that this sort of access blocking disproportionately disadvantages the disabled, although I also believe it is legal (provided that there is at least one accessible version of each e-book available, however, that one can require a certification of disability). For that reason, I don’t deliberately link to books which block TTS access here (although it may happen accidentally, particularly if the access is blocked after I’ve linked it). I do believe this is a personal decision, and there  are legitimate arguments for purchasing those books. 

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

Round up #217: Kindle Fire HDX giveaway, Kindle First

Round up #217: Kindle Fire HDX giveaway, Kindle First

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

Prime members get another perk

Still not a Prime member? How about this one?

Kindle First

You can choose one of a select group (this first time, there are four) of books to own (not borrow) for free…the month before it is published! These are books being published by Amazon Publishing.

I fot one: sure, why not? All of these say that will be $4.99 when published, and there are interesting books here. For me, there is sort of no reason not to do that.

Why is Amazon giving Prime members free e-books?

To make more people want to be Prime members, and to retain the ones they have. This is in addition to the one book a month you can borrow at no additional cost.

It’s worth them spending quite a bit of money to get people to become and stay Prime members, because Prime members spend a lot more. Those Prime members also spend it on physical goods (what I shorthand as “diapers and windshield wipers”), where there is more profit typically than on digital goods.

Nothing very tricky about this (although it is only available to U.S. customers), but here is the

Kindle First help page

“Place your trays in the upright position…”

…and keep reading!

Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration put out this

press release

which announces that

“…Passengers will eventually be able to read e-books, play games, and watch videos on their devices during all phases of flight, with very limited exceptions.”

“Eventually” turned out to be today, at least for Delta.

Airlines need to get approved by the FAA to do this, and they don’t have to do it, but I expect most will.

It’s not quite “read any time you want”, but it does equalize e-books and p-books (paperbooks) for the most part. For example, there is this:

“7. During the safety briefing, put down electronic devices, books and newspapers and listen to the crewmember’s instructions.”

They aren’t separating what they call PEDs (Personal Electronic Devices…Kindles, tablets) from p-books.

This is great!

I don’t really like to buy paper content any more, I really prefer to have it electronically. One reason for that is the increasable text size, but I also don’t like to have it afterwards (how things change!). I also have some concerns about the ecological impact of manufacture and distribution of paper-based goods.

I have, though, bought paper magazines to read on flights, just during take-off and landing (yes, it would be hard for me to go that long without reading something on a plane).

Now, that’s not necessary.

As always, the flight crew can tell you to put it away, and the hard part for them may be enforcing that things are in “airplane mode”…but it will make their jobs otherwise somewhat easier.

I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t think there could be any significant risk to an aircraft with a device on in airplane mode (in the modern era), or they wouldn’t let them in the cabin. With this review, that’s been shown to be the case.

Amazon is giving away six Kindle Fire HDXs

In conjunction with the The Hunger Games: Catching Fire movie, Amazon is running a sweepstakes where there are three winners…each of which gets two Kindle Fire HDX 7″, HDX Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB – Includes Special Offerss:

Kindle Fire HDX “Catching Fire” Sweepstakes Official Rules

The top two prizes also include going to the Premiere of the literary adaptation, which is poised to open very well…it’s possible it will be the second biggest US box office weekend of all time (although not necessarily in constant dollars).

Good luck!

Wow! Three good news stories…and the optimists smile and nod knowingly. 😉

Update: Miracast

I thought I’d update this, and just found something since I posted.

The new Kindle Fire HDX does not have an HDMI out, but it has Miracast  capability  (which is a way to wirelessly send what is on your tablet to your HDTV with an HDMI input).

I wrote recently about getting an iPush device to try (for $32.19). It hasn’t been satisfactory, due to a time lag between the audio and the video. You can hear the audio significantly before you see the video…talk about spoilers. 😉 You might hear the ending of the movie two minutes before you can see it.

It’s possible improved wi-fi would help, but I do have thirty days to return it and may do that.

The news is that Amazon is now recommending a specific device for this purpose (Miracast mirroring with your Kindle Fire HDX). They are recommending (on this help page: About Wireless Display Methods for Kindle Fire) this one:

NETGEAR Push2TV Wireless Display HDMI Adapter – Miracast and WiDi (PTV3000)

which is $57.53 at time of writing.

I’m going to try it: I should have it Tuesday.

I’ll let you know how it works. One thing: they are making a big point about doing the latest update, which I’ll do.

The reviews are not great at 2.9 out of 5 stars, but this is a good example of where digging a bit deeper into them can help.

My hypothesis was, if the update made a big difference, that the more recent reviews would tend to be better.

It was nice to see the Netgear team answering questions!

The most recent three reviews were a 5, a 4, and a 5.

However, they did go 1, 2, 3 after that, in that order.

Looking at the content, I’m not convinced that I’ll have the same issues as the 1-star…there could be a user factor there in the ability to set it up. That person also is quite negative, which always tends to make me think I won’t have the same experience as the reviewer.

The next thing was to search for reviews that mentioned the Kindle Fire. An October 27th review specifically said, “I don’t miss the HDMI port on my Kindle Fire HDX because the Push2TV works!” That was a 5-star review.

So, I’m not as concerned about the total review average, but again, I’ll be testing this and will report back.

Thanks to Colleen for the heads-up on this!

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