July 2014 Kindle book releases

July 2014 Kindle book releases

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

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

These aren’t necessarily the most popular of the pre-orders…I’m just going to list ones that catch my eye. Since we might not agree on that, here’s a link to the 3,570 (at time of writing) March releases in the USA Kindle store:

July 2014 USA Kindle store releases (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shoppint*)

As usual, I won’t be deliberately linking to books which block text-to-speech access blocked**.

By the way, some of the prices seem particularly high to me this time. You can always list books for free at

eReaderIQ.com

and they’ll let you know when a book drops in price an amount you specify. I think that is the most useful site on the web for Kindleers. I’m not associated with them, although we have had some correspondence.

To Kill a Mockingbird (at AmazonSmile)
by Harper Lee
literature & fiction – classics
pre-order for July 8

I think this will be one of the best-selling e-books of the year. People have been waiting for it to become legally available (well, not everybody waited) for years.

The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee (at AmazonSmile)
by Marja Mills
biographies and memoirs
pre-order for July 15

Mills literally moved in next door to Harper Lee to write about the author…nice companion piece to TKaM being released!

The Book of Life (at AmazonSmile)
by Dorothy Harkness
romance – fantasy
pre-order for July 15

The end of the trilogy begun with A Discovery of Witches…

The City (at AmazonSmile)
by Dean Koontz
romance – fantasy
per-order for July 1

Interesting to see the publisher classify this Koontz book as a romance…

Power Play (An FBI Thriller) (at AmazonSmile)
by Catherine Coulter
suspense
pre-order for July 8

Koontz is romance, Coulter is suspense…got it. 🙂

A Perfect Life (at AmazonSmile)
by Danielle Steele
family saga
pre-order for July 22

From one of the most popular authors ever…

Cut and Thrust (Stone Barrington) (at AmazonSmile)
by Stuart Woods
suspense
pre-order for July 15

From the unstoppably popular author…close to thirty New York Times bestsellers!

For All Time: A Nantucket Brides Novel (Nantucket Brides Trilogy) (at AmazonSmile)
by Jude Deveraux
romance
pre-order for July 1

Oh, wait…did I make a big deal about nearly thirty NYT bestellers? Deveraux has over forty!

Sight Unseen (at AmazonSmile)
by Iris Johansen, Roy Johansen
crime fiction, supernatural
pre-order for July 15

This one sounds interesting…both Johansens are recognized authors.

The Last Town (The Wayward Pines Series, Book Three) (at AmazonSmile)
by Blake Crouch
horror, mystery
pre-order for July 15

I read the first one of these…it was worth reading. This series is soon to be a Fox TV series. It’s also traditionally published by Amazon.

Diary of a Mad Diva (at AmazonSmile)
by Joan Rivers
humor, biographies and memoirs
pre-order for July 1

New York Times bestselling author…that’s the first thing that comes to mind for Joan Rivers, right? 😉

The Giver Quartet Omnibus (at AmazomSmile)
by Lois Lowry
children’s
pre-order for July 1

Want to read up before the movie is release? Four title omnibus for $14.99.

The High Druid’s Blade: The Defenders of Shannara (at AmazonSmile)

The long-running fantasy series…

Enjoy!

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

** 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. 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.

Advertisement

Amazon’s infinite stockroom

Amazon’s infinite stockroom

This may be one of Amazon’s biggest disruptions yet…and it could really benefit small publishers.

According to this

The Bookseller article by Benedicte Page

Amazon UK is pushing for new contract conditions with small publishers.

One of them I don’t like, and could run afoul of anti-competition agencies. That’s the so-called “MFN” (Most Favored Nation) requirement.

Essentially, having an MFN means that you can’t sell your product at a lower price anywhere else. In this case, it would mean that publishers would have to give Amazon as good as they give anybody else…including themselves.

MFNs haven’t been inherently found to be illegal, but they were a problem in the legal action taken against the Big 5 publishers for conspiring to raise e-book prices.

It feels to me (and I’m not a lawyer) like restraint of trade, since it controls what you do with another entity. That may be subtle, but I think it’s different from paying somebody for exclusive rights. Again, it’s just my feeling about it, but exclusive rights says, “Sell this just to us.” An MFN says, “We will control the pricing even when we are not part of the sales chain.”

The other rumored condition, though, is far more significant as far as I am concerned.

When I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore, we would  occasionally  have someone come in who wanted us to carry a book they had self-published on a contingency basis.

In that situation, we don’t pay them anything for the book unless it sells.

They think that doesn’t cost us anything, which would demonstrate a lack of understanding about retail, as far as I was concerned.

In a brick-and-mortar, one of the biggest things you are battling is rent. Every day a book sits on a shelf, you lose money, because you have to pay the rent on the space under that book.

That’s one reason why books may turn over pretty quickly: if a book sold five copies the first day, three the second day, and one the next day, you might return it to bring in something hotter.

So, contingency was never risk free for the store.

However, what if the book did sell well? Wouldn’t that be worth it?

Books have a short sales cycle in a store. There just aren’t that many people who are going to come into a bookstore every day, and you have a core of regulars. If a bunch of your regulars buy a book as soon as it is released, they don’t buy it again, typically. Book sales are front loaded in most (but not all) cases. You need the book when it is hot…waiting a week can really cut into sales.

So, I would say to the self-publisher: “If I need ten more of these tomorrow, could I get them?”

Their answer would always be, “No.” It might take them weeks to get more printed.

That was why I would tell them I couldn’t carry it. A traditional publisher could drop ship me books that fast…certainly within a couple of days.

If a Random House author went on a local radio talk show (which was a huge driver of book sales), I could ask for a hundred more and get them while people still wanted them.

The little, independent publisher simply couldn’t compete, because they didn’t have the supply infrastructure.

That’s also been true online.

If you want a p-book (paperbook) from a small publisher, it might take weeks for Amazon to get it, even if they can then send it to you in two days.

Amazon has a solution (according to sources).

They are reportedly telling the small publishers that, if the publisher is out of stock, Amazon wants the right to print the book themselves.

Amazon has a huge “print on demand” operation already:

CreateSpace

I think most of the writing I’m seeing about this doesn’t adequately recognize what a game changer this would be.

Let’s take an easy example.

An author publishes a horror novel with a small press.

They print 500 copies, which seems likely to be adequate.

Stephen King writes about loving the book.

Suddenly, demand is huge.

Amazon could sell 10,000 copies tomorrow…but the publisher only had 500 for everybody…and it will take them two weeks to print more.

Under the reported proposal, the publisher has given Amazon the file from which to print the book, and Amazon just prints it themselves and gets it to the customers.

The publisher still gets paid.

My guess is that Amazon doesn’t need to charge them much (anything?) for having had to print it. The cost of printing a book is actually a small portion of what creates the consumer price. There are a lot of people costs (editors, cover artists, the author), marketing costs, and other things involved beyond the paper and ink.

The book now shoots up the bestseller list, and becomes an even bigger hit (competing strongly and directly with large publishers’ products).

If Amazon couldn’t print the book, they would likely lose the vast majority of those sales…some people would wait for it, but I think most would not.

Now, in the writing about these contract proposal rumors, the feeling is that publishers are pushing back against this one.

They don’t want Amazon to control the process…they may be concerned (not unreasonably) that the quality of the book might suffer. In the scenario that I’ve proposed in the past that new novels might cost $50, that includes them being printed in a much higher quality way than we usually see now…or that we would expect from print on demand.

What this does, though, is level the playing field between small publishers and the big tradpubs. Amazon becomes the back-up “factory” for the little guys.

In the same way that we’ve seen huge successes in e-book publishing for independents (where no factory is necessary), we would see gains for small publishers in p-books.

I also don’t see this being a problem under anti-competition laws.

This would further weaken the bargaining power of the Big 5 with Amazon, since little pubs could also have blockbusters.

I suspect this will come to the USA as well, if it hasn’t already.

What do you think? Would this be as big a deal as I think it would be? Will publishers push back against it to keep Amazon from having too much control…even if it might benefit them? What can the Big 5 do to maintain their marketshare? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

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 #260: kids’ books at Food Banks, B&N splits, app giveaway

Round up  #260: kids’ books at Food Banks, B&N splits, app giveaway

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

Barnes & Noble “consciously uncouples” from NOOK

According to Barnes & Nobles’

press release

and other sources (including a Jeffrey Trachtenberg piece in the WSJ which was behind a paywall), they plan to split into two entities by the end of the first calendar quarter of next year.

One part will be NOOK Media (the devices and the content), and the other part will be the retail segment, which includes the brick-and-mortar stores.

It seems that the new sail (the NOOK) with which they had outfitted their corporate ship has become an anchor. 😉

This short excerpt tells the tale:

“Device and accessories sales were $25 million for the quarter and $260 million for the full year, declining 30.1% and 44.8%, respectively, due to lower selling volume and lower average selling prices. Digital content sales were $62 million for the quarter and $246 million for the full year, declining 18.7% and 20.6%, respectively, due primarily to lower device unit sales.”

On the other hand, the retail segment was definitely…um…less bad. 😉 Core comparable sales were down 3.1%, but overall, things were pretty flat…which is a considerable improvement.

The stock rose, according to CNN Money

http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=BKS

over 13% this week…and it’s risen more than 50% this year.

Not everybody thinks this is the death knell of the NOOK

Motley Fool article by Dan Newman

but it’s not exactly a victory march, either. 😉

Barnes & Noble is having a NOOK book sales on beach reads…and since Amazon tends to match prices, that means they are likely to be discounted in the Kindle store as well. I did check, and did see the price matching, although I didn’t check them all:

Barnes & Noble Beach Reads sale

Here are a few of the ninety titles:

• Oceans Apart by Karen Kingsbury
• Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews
• Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich
• Four Friends by Robyn Carr
• Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers

E-book revenues more than three times mass market revenues in 2013

This

Publishers Weekly article by Jim Milliot

has the stats from the Book Industry Study Group for 2013.

Sales in the trade sector (this group doesn’t include textbooks, kids books, or professional/scholarly books) dropped 2.3% (we’re talking about cash, not units), but other sectors grew.

In terms of formats, I’ve written before about how e-books are largely replacing mass market paperbacks as far as market positioning goes: relatively cheap and convenient. MMPs were down another 6.7% to $781 million…which you can compare to e-books having $3.03 billion.

Hardbacks (again, we’re talking revenue, not units) were still much higher than e-books, at $5.14 billion.

I don’t want to take too much away from the article…if you like to see these sorts of stats, I recommend it.

Through Saturday: over $100 worth of apps for free!

Amazon alerted me through e-mail (which I really appreciate…it lets me help you) about thirty-one apps they are giving away, just through tomorrow (Saturday).

There are always lots of free apps at Amazon, of course, but these are ones for which you would normally pay.

Over $100 in apps…free (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I just figure I’ll go ahead and get all of the ones, if I don’t already have them. With apps,  you can get them for “Cloud Only”, so they don’t take up any memory on your devices unless you choose to use them.

This set includes apps that are generally pretty well-rated, and it has Splashtop and a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

One interesting thing: some apps (like Plex, which is part of this deal) are compatible both with my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

and my

Amazon Fire TV (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Since it’s basically the same operating system, I suspect that some of the apps I already own for my KFHDX will also work with my

Amazon Fire Phone (at AmazonSmile)

when I get it at the end of July.

They won’t all be cross-compatible: if a game/app is designed to work with the Fire Phones dynamic perspective (which I call “dyper”), it won’t be able to do the same thing on the Kindle Fire. They might be able to make two different versions of it available, though, which it would seem like must be the case with the Fire TV and the Kindle Fire.

Children’s books given away at Food Banks

I love this story!

When our now adult kid would have birthday parties growing up, we normally did them at the Food Bank (that was our kid’s choice). It was actually a lot of fun. We would reserve a time, and we’d show up with maybe ten or fifteen people (kids and guardians). We would sort food donations and box them up. It was hard work, and you had to do it right (one big part was checking expiration dates, and looking for damaged containers…like moldy peanut butter). We got to bring our own music, though, and we could crank it up! We’d spend an hour or so (I think that’s right), and end up with a whole palette of food for people!

Afterwards, we’d invite people out to pizza or something like that.

It felt really good to be able to help.

Well, it would have felt even better if we could have given out toys, too, which is what happened recently in England, according to this

The Telegraph story by Martin Chilton

The book that was given away was Super Duck, by Jez Alborough (not available in a Kindle edition), which I understand is popular in England.

When we buy our Toys for Tots donation every year, I do think it’s a good thing to get well-known brands, like Spider-Man. I just figure that has to make the kids feel more “normal”, since many of them see the commercials just like everybody else.

Bravo to the charity Booktrust for arranging this!

Lemony Snicket endorses Spencer Collins

Daniel Handler (A.K.A. Lemony Snicket (at AmazonSmile)) provided verbal support to our

ILMK Reader Hero #3

Spencer Collins, according to this

Huffington Post article by Ed Mazza

That likely ups Spencer’s cool quotient with the kids…not that Spencer needs that. You may recall that our Reader Hero put up a Little Free Library…and it was ordered taken down by the City Council. This issue is still unresolved (you can click our link above to add your support), but we particularly salute Spencer for approaching this by reading up on city codes to work within the system and in a mature and responsible way.

Full disclosure: one of my relatives knows Daniel Handler, although we’ve never met.

Mary Rodgers reported dead

Mary Rodgers (at AmazonSmile)

the author of Freaky Friday (not available in a Kindle edition) and a handful of children’s books, including the sequel

Freaky Monday (at AmazonSmile)

has reportedly died.

The book was a bestseller, and was adapted memorably more than once (some of will think first of Jodie Foster…others of Lindsay Lohan).

She also wrote plays (including Once Upon a Mattress), and was the child of Richard Rodgers (of “and Hammerstein” fame).

The book will live on.

The Measured Circle free Flipboard magazine continues to grow

On Monday, I gave you an

Update on my free Flipboard magazines

Well, the readership continues to grow! I have to say, this may be the most dynamic growth of anything I’ve done creatively.

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

had 716 readers on Monday…and 1,109 at time of writing! That’s more than half again.

Interesting… 🙂

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you 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.

Romancing the Tomes: four new Kindle Worlds open

Romancing the Tomes: four new Kindle Worlds open

Amazon sent me this

press release

announcing the addition of four new worlds to

Kindle Worlds (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

That’s the Amazon-created platform that licenses works from the copyright holders, and then allows anybody to write within those worlds (and within certain guidelines). Amazon gets a cut, the rightsholder gets a cut, and the author gets a cut.

It’s commonly conflated with fan fiction (fanfic), although they really aren’t the same thing. Fanfic is unauthorized, and typically non-commercial. This is commercial publishing, just like other books for sale at Amazon, and expressly authorized (without review by the publisher of each individual work).

I was just thinking about KW the other day, kind of wondering how it was going. There are a lot of properties I would like to see them get, and I would certainly consider writing in some of those.

There are works already in these Worlds (in order of most works to fewest):

• The Vampire Diaries (142)
• Silo Saga (94)
• The World of Kurt Vonnegut (42)
• Pretty Little Liars (41)
• G.I. JOE (33)
• Harbinger (27)
• John Rain (27)
• Wayward Pines (22)
• Gossip Girl (19)
• Veronica Mars – the TV series (16)
• Unity (15)
• The Foreworld Saga (13)
• Bloodshot (12)
• Archer & Armstrong (11)
• Shadowman (7)
• XO Manowar (7)
• The Abnorm Chronicles (5)
• The Lizzy Gardner Files (5)
• Ravenswood (4)
• The Dead Man (4)
• Eternal Warrior (1)
• Game For Love (1)
• Quantum & Woody (1)
• The Callaways (1)

These are the new worlds, according to the press release (at least one is represented above):

• Barbara Freethy’s The Callaways—The hit series from the best-selling Kindle Direct Publishing author of all-time on Amazon
• Bella Andre’s Game for Love—The sizzling series about the superstars women lust after from the New York Times best-selling author
• H.M. Ward’s The Arrangement—The steamy, sexy New York Times best-selling new adult romance series with over a million copies sold
• Lucy Kevin’s Four Weddings and a Fiasco—The sweet, contemporary romance series from the USA Today best-selling author

In terms of how well they are doing, here are the bestsellers:

Kindle Worlds bestsellers (at AmazonSmile)

The bestselling one is in one of the new worlds, Game for Love, and doesn’t have an overall rank yet.

The second bestselling one is in the John Rain world, and it is ranked 21,428. That’s actually very high: top ten percent.

While Amazon has to think about where it spends its money, I think we’ll see more Kindle Worlds licensing announcements this year and next.

Rightsholders have to consider: if Amazon is going to have difficult relationships with publishers (such as the one evidenced by what I call the “Hachazon War”…Hachette and Amazon), they may want to make sure they are on the Amazon publishing ship as it sets sail.

This new group, all romance authors, is an interesting one.

It looks to me like these series were all published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, although it is hard to be sure.

That should be good news to some of the authors who read this blog. It’s been one of the questions: my guess is that there are many authors who would like to license their books to Kindle Worlds, and it hasn’t happened yet.

The license costs Amazon money, of course, and at this point, they need to still be impressing people with the selections.

That doesn’t mean that every individual title has to be excellent…the way this is done, there is no way to guarantee that.

However, they do (presumably) want to attract big name Worlds. I want them to get things like The Addams Family and The Man from U.N.C.L.E…., media tie-ins. Sure, I’d love for them to get Star Trek and Harry Potter and such, but I think these other properties are underserved in publishing.

To do that, it has to look like a “real thing”, and that requires recognizable names.

I wouldn’t say that all four of these authors are known to the majority of the public (although Barbara Freethy would be recognized by many serious readers).

They are, though, all successful.

I think these new books show a bit of a shift.

Getting Kurt Vonnegut was a brilliant move, and these new ones show that they aren’t just trying to woo the media elite, but the “working authors”…and that’s a good thing.

Amazon=innovation, and Kindle Worlds is definitely part of that.

What do you think? Are you interested in Kindle Worlds? What Worlds would you especially like to read…and is there a World that would get you to write something? Is Amazon strengthening its market position in a way that it will become less dependent on tradpubs (traditional publishers)…and if so, what will that mean for future negotiations and Kindle store availability? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you 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.

Heads up! LTO Acer Chromebook for $59! 3:15 Pacific

Heads up! LTO Acer Chromebook for $59! 3:15 Pacific

These are going to sell out quickly at $59!

It’s an Acer Chromebook for $59 (usually $199.99) for $59 (70% off).

They are only doing 5,000 of these.

A Chromebook is a laptop that is really web-based. You aren’t going to use it to install software like you are used to doing with old laptops, and you don’t store a lot of files on it. If you just want something to access things on the web, though, these are good.

The one I think it is (Acer C720 Chromebook (11.6-Inch, 2GB), but I can’t tell for sure) has a very respectable 4.4 stars with 1,354 customer reviews.

Buy this for yourself, or for a gift…or it could be a really valuable donation.

These are special limited time offers, which are only available to Kindle Fire owners.

What happens is you can get a text to alert you to an upcoming deal (details in the links below). You don’t get much warning…maybe an hour (about half an hour in this case).

The deal also appears on the sleep screen of your Fire, and you can find it under Offers on the homescreen (all the way at the end).

Then, you say you want to “learn more”. You’ll get to a screen with a countdown clock. As soon as the clock gets to zero, you need to click to have a chance to get it.

They have typically been selling out in seconds.

Here is information on the program:

• Limited Time Special Offers only on Kindle Fire
• Limited Time Special Offers only on Kindle Fire at AmazonSmile…benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*

As I’ve written before, I look at these LTOs (Limited Time Offers) sort of like buying a lottery ticket: I don’t expect to get one (win), but its exciting if I do! Of course, the “ticket” doesn’t cost me anything.

These LTOs are one of the best arguments for having Special Offers…and yes, a good argument for having a  Fire (at AmazonSmile)!

Did you get one? Do you have any other comment on this? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

One more thing: I’ve had a couple of readers say that they never even saw the offer. As far as I know, these go out to every eligible Kindle Fire in the USA. A few possibilities occur to me:

• They either bought a Kindle Fire without Special Offers, or bought out of the offers later. You have to be subscribed to those in order to get these deals
• They weren’t connected to wireless in time for it to update
• They didn’t check the Offers tab (I don’t always see it on the sleep screen)

It might not have been any of those, but those three would have done it.

===

New! Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you 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.

Round up #259: read to your kids, Prince of Tides

Round up #259: read to your kids, Prince of Tides

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

KDD: Prince of Tides

One of today’s Kindle Daily Deals (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) is

The Prince of Tides (at AmazonSmile)
by Pat Conroy
4.5 stars out of 5, 501 customer reviews
$1.99 at time of writing

Very successful and made into a movie, this is a good one for your guest Kindle, or just for a read for you. 🙂 It’s almost thirty years old at this point: I’m sure some people wonder why a “classic” like this isn’t available legally free on line. 😉

Supreme Court rules against Aereo

According to this

The Guardian article by Dominic Rushe

and other sources (I have the TV on in the other room while I write this, so I can listen to CNN), the Supreme Court has just ruled against “rebroadcaster” Aereo.

This is a copyright issue at heart, and I think a lot of people generally expect those to go in the direction of more access in the future…but this one didn’t.

For example, my guess is that it is legal to digitize a p-book (paperbook) you own to turn in into a digital file for your own use (sort of like using a DVR to record a broadcast program), but to my knowledge, that has not been established. I’ve been thinking that it will be solidly established at some point, and nobody is hunting anybody down at this point, but it hasn’t happened yet.

This is a bit different, though, because Aereo is a commercial enterprise.

Aereo uses antennae to pick up over the air signals, and then stream them to subscribers.

They argued that they were an antennae company, not a streaming company…at least, that’s my understanding. Picking up the signals by antenna is legal, of course: it’s the way they got to consumers that was in question.

This could impact literary content, at some point, as hardware becomes more capable of digitizing things. That ability will be one of things I test early on my Amazon Fire Phone (at AmazonSmile)…on something in the public domain.

13 single issues of magazines, $0.99 each

I do read magazines on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

both from the Kindle store, and from Zinio.

I often mention the roughly ten thousand paperbooks I have on shelves in  our home…but I also have quite a few old magazines.

Many years ago, there was a store going out of business (I think) in my town, and I bought a wooden magazine shelf…I think I paid $5 for it.

I’m sure we’ve paid more than that in gas hauling it around when we’ve moved over the years. 😉

It’s about a person tall and a couple of people wide, and has a lot of horizontal slots…you can put maybe ten issues of a magazine in one, and still see the top one to see what title it is.

My intuition, though, is that some people haven’t even tried magazines on their Kindle Fires.

One reason for that is that the experience on a non-Fire Kindle just didn’t approach that of paper.

For me, the Fire’s experience of reading a glossy magazine often exceeds paper.

Yes, one reason is the “digital extras” you may get. I’ve been an

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (at AmazonSmile)

for a very long time. I’m not usually big on watching the trailers they include, but I do listen to song samples sometimes. They also may include a video interview, and that can be quite an enhancement.

Pictures look great, and while not all magazines give you the text + pictures mode of

National Geographic (at AmazonSmile)

I’ve been able to zoom photos and have used that to show off the Fire’s screen. On the HDX, you can triple tap pretty much any screen (not videos) to magnify it, then use two fingers together to drag it around.

Why don’t more people read magazines on their Fires?

While you can get a 14-day free trial (or thirty day, in some cases), those renew automatically…and I think it concerns people. A year-long subscription is a lot more than most people pay for an e-book.

Amazon is having a

Ninety-nine cent single issue sale (at AmazonSmile)

for one week only.

I’ve bought a couple of single issues of magazines and newspapers from the Kindle store over the years. There was something specific in them that I wanted, but I didn’t really want a subscription.

Well, if you want to try out reading a magazine without worrying about a renewal, you may want to get one of these during the sale:

• Eating Well
• More
• Do it Yourself
• Family Circle
• Better Homes and Gardens
• Every Day with Rachel Ray
• Fitness
• Traditional Home
• allrecipes
• FamilyFun
• Midwest Living
• Parents
• Wood – by Better Homes & Gardens (um…it may be a good thing they included the subtitle…) 😉

Michael Hart, The Grandfather of E-Books

This is a nice

Bidness Etc. article by Zoe Jacobson

about Michael Hart, who created Project Gutenberg…which is the reason we have so many free classics legally available to us today.

The article also talks about e-books generally.

I recommend it, although you may need to sign-up to be able to read the whole thing.

AAP recommends reading to your child

I used to work for The American Academy of Pediatrics, so I should mention that first.

According to this

NPR piece with Audie Cornish…transcript and audio

the AAP is specifically recommending reading to children, even infants, every day.

Absolutely.

Not every adult serious reader was read to as a child, but many of us were…and I do think it matters.

They are talking about linguistic development for one thing. Let me give you some of my thoughts on that part of it.

When we read we use many words we might not otherwise use…it’s why so many of us appear to be British when we write, when we may never have been there. 😉

Also, when we read to a child, we are speaking steadily for a period of time. The focus is on words: the words on the page for us, but the words in our mouths for the child. How many people have a “conversation” with a pre-verbal child that lasts as long as

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (at AmazonSmile)

With older children, you are really modeling the act of reading, in addition to other positive elements. When you see the adults in your life reading as, say, a five-year old, you want to read, too. One great thing is that when kids are trying to establish themselves as separate from their intellectual guardians, I don’t think they tend to do that by becoming non-readers…they just read different things. Once you are a reader, you tend to stay a reader, I believe. Reading is like interacting with another person…just time delayed. 😉 Not very many people stop talking to other people…

What do you think? Is digitizing a book for your own use legal? Do you read magazines on a tablet…or perhaps on an non-Fire Kindle? Do you haul old issues of magazines around with you from house to house…and if so, do you ever pull them out and read them again (I do)? Were you the first serious reader in your family? If so, what got you started? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you 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.

 

Books priced at $20.14

Books priced at $20.14

The e-book business leads to some weird pricing.

When I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore, books tended to have prices which ended in ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-five, zero, or maybe fifty.

As a general rule in retail, a price ending in ninety-nine is perceived as a bargain, a price ending in two zeroes (an even dollar amount) is perceived as a quality, prestige item.

I would never have priced a $500 chess set at $499.99…it wouldn’t have sold. Anybody willing to pay that much for a chess set (oh, I managed a game store, too…this wasn’t in the book store) doesn’t want a bargain.

With e-books, though, and actually with other products, too, we see all sorts of price points.

Why? Has the psychology changed?

Well, in a sense. It isn’t human psychology, it’s likely to be robot psychology…algorithms.

An algorithm is sort of a flow chart that takes you through a set of choices…you don’t improvise at decision points, you follow a rule.

You might want to set an algorithm that makes a give e-book at your store one penny less than the lowest competitor’s price.

You can see how that could make for weird prices.

You price it for $10.

Your competitor prices it at $9.99.

Your computer notices that, and drops it to $9.98.

Your competitor’s computer notices, and drops it to $9.97…and so on.

You could have a floor on how low it would go, but before it got there, we could get these odd prices.

I’m always looking for new ways to discover books…something which is out of the box may do that for me.

This time, since it is the year 2014, I thought I’d see if any e-books in the Kindle store were priced at $20.14.

There were!

$20.14 books in the USA Kindle store (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping)

There were 25 results.

The first thing I noticed is that some of the books are available to rent. I wonder if that’s part of the algorithm…if the rental price is a certain percentage of the purchase price, but it is the former that drives the latter. In other words, they say, “We want the rental price of this to be $9.75, and that has to be 25% of the purchase price, so the purchase price goes to $39.00.”

I don’t know that, I’m just speculating. 🙂

Here are ten of the titles:

• Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo (NIAS Monographs) by Ian Reader
• Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places (RAND Studies in Policy Analysis) by Robert J. MacCoun
• CNC Machining Handbook: Building, Programming, and Implementation by Alan Overby
• Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks by Nancy Bisaha
• Treating Bulimia in Adolescents: A Family-Based Approach by Daniel Le Grange and James Lock
• Teaching Literacy in Third Grade (Tools for Teaching Literacy) by Janice F. Almasi
• Lezioni di sociologia storica (Collezione di testi e di studi) (Italian Edition) by Massimo Paci
• Exchange-Traded Funds For Dummies by Colin Davidson and Russell Wild
• Winnicott na Escola de São Paulo (Portuguese Edition) by Elsa Oliveira Dias and Loparic Zeljko
• Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Women’s Rights (Oxford Portraits) by Miriam Brody

I think I can be pretty confident there that there are some books you didn’t know were available. 🙂 It also tends to refute the idea that e-books are just popular, genre titles. That does tend to be the majority, I think, but lots of things are covered.

The genre thing was true of mass market paperbacks in the beginning, too.

What happens is that it is hard to lure the brand name authors into a new format. Their agents don’t know what the market possibilities are, so they don’t know what kind of deal to negotiate.

They may just stay out of it for a while, until they can see what is going to happen. That happened with e-books…we are “missing” a lot fewer titles than we used to be.

Without brand names, how are you going to sell the books?

Genres.

It’s a way for the reader to be able to predict something about the content, even if that something is quality. 😉 There are some people who will are willing to read any vampire book, or romance, or mystery. They may have preferences, but they like the topic more than the author.

I’m often surprised when people I consider to be serious readers can’t tell me who wrote the book they are currently reading.

I’m big on knowing who the authors are, and crediting them…you may have noticed I tend to do that with news story links, as well.

At any rate, the smaller market nature of these titles is an indicator that the e-book market has matured past that early genre heavy stage.

The Mary Wollstonecraft one intrigues me…

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you 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.

Sign up for a newsletter, get a book free

Sign up for a newsletter, get a book free

Amazon must know that when you sign up for a free newsletter from them, you are more likely to buy books (or perhaps, other things).

After all, it costs them money to produce them…and now, they are having promotions where, when you sign up for the newsletter, you can get a free e-book (from a certain set).

However, you can’t just keep signing up for different newsletters and get a bunch of books: typically, if you are subscribed to any newsletter already, you are ineligible.

For example, there is the Teen & Young Adult Newsletter:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_416972742_2?ie=UTF8&docId=1002656771&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&pf_rd_r=1J84PCY5S68QYNS1P18K&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1818396342&pf_rd_i=154606011

It says:

“Until 11:59 p.m. (PT) June 29, 2014, first-time subscribers who are not currently subscribed to any Kindle newsletter qualify for a promotional credit to get one selected Kindle book for free (choose from one of the selected Kindle books below)”

You can choose between

• Remnants: Season of Wonder by Lisa Tawn Bergren
• Cursed by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Extracted (The Last Imperials) by Sherry D. Ficklin, Tyler Hall Jolley

For the Kids Newsletter, you can pick between

• Desmond Pucket Makes Monster Magic by Mark Tartulli
• Snoopy: Cowabunga! by Charles M. Schulz
• Diary of a Real Payne Book 1: True Story by Annie Tipton

Sign up for the Kindle Daily Deal, and you have twelve choices, including one I’ve actually bought before:

Review: Brain Rules

Want a complete list of possible e-mail subscriptions from Amazon (not just Kindle, but all of them)?

Browse E-mail Subscriptions (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I’m not eligible: I already subscribe to a newsletter (and have for years).

Choose carefully…but enjoy! 😉

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you 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.

Update on my free Flipboard magazines

Update on my free Flipboard magazines

It’s rare that I think of something as really a new type of content.

Twitter was that, certainly. Those 140 (or fewer) character tweets created a different medium, and that shapes what’s in it.

I also feel like Flipboard magazines are a new way to express yourself…and I’m surprised at the success mine are having!

The main idea is that you can use the

Flipboard (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

app, which I read every morning anyway on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

to “flip” articles into a magazine of yours, which you make available to other people for free.

You can also get an extension for Chrome which allows you to do it with websites (most of my flips come from things I read in the Flipboard app…except in the case of one my magazines, which I’ll explain below).

It’s really about your curation…your taste and editing skills.

You put in what you think is interesting, or what you think other people will think is interesting.

You generally don’t write anything additional about it, unless you are using the browser extension. In that case, you can add a short caption about it (which you can not edit later, by the way).

I’ve been on Twitter since December of 2009, have 3,490 tweets at the time of writing…and 300 followers.

I started my first Flipboard magazine not three months ago…and have 1,105 readers!

I’ve also flipped 2,411 articles in that time.

Does that mean that Flipboard is more influential than Twitter?

Nope…I’m sure the highest profile Twitter accounts do a lot more than the highest profile Flipboard magazines…but for someone like me, who isn’t going to be a top echelon person in either place, Flipboard is working comparatively very well.

You get a lot more as a Flipboard reader, since you get full articles to read (you may have to click a link or two after seeing a good summary and perhaps an image, but it’s easy).

I thought I’d give you a rundown on my magazines and how they are doing (at time of writing…it changes rapidly).

I’m going to do this in order from the biggest number of readers to the smallest number.

The Measured Circle

“A geeky mix of pop culture, tech, and the weird world”

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

• 716 readers
• 2,088 page flips (by other people of my article choices)
• 1,102 articles

This one is inspired by my blog, The Measured Circle. The blog has never been very popular, and unlike this one, I don’t write in it (on average) every day (I sometimes go a week).

It is eclectic, but you’ll see a lot of things on geek topics, tech, and “weird world” (“Bufo’s Weird World” was my first e-zine, back before we called them blogs).

I’d say its primary purpose is…fun!

To give you a sense of it, here are the most recent ten articles (and their sources):

1. Han Solo in Carbonite Life-Size Figure Giveaway (Sideshow Toys)
2. ‘Lost’, ‘Stargate Universe’ actors among 14-person cast of Wachowskis’ sci-fi Netflix (Entertainment Weekly)
3. The Convenient Monster: Nessie TV Cryptofiction Reviewed (Cryptomundo)
4. James Randi: An Honest Liar (Cryptomundo)
5. 9 Extremely Impractical Marvel Illustrated Swimsuits (Topless Robot)
6. Things We Saw Today: Tiny Captain Marvel Cosplay (The Mary Sue)
7. It’s Kristian Bruun, Graeme Manson and John Fawcett from Orphan Black (Reddit)
8. Tech Wars…1913 style (I found this article at the Library of Congress)
9. Clone Club, Prepare for Tonight’s Orphan Black Finale With These Beautiful Episode Posters (The Mary Sue)
10. The Eight Funniest Recurring Themes in the Original Star Wars Trading Cards (Topless Robot)

ILMK (I Love My Kindle)

“The long-running blog about the world of e-books and publishing, which is one of the most popular blogs of any kind in the Kindle store, brings you related news stories”

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

• 385 readers
• 14,860 page flips
• 1,083 articles

This one is based on my blog, ILMK (I Love My Kindle). They aren’t the same, though. I write original material in the blog itself. I told myself that I’d average 1,000 words a day, and I do. I write a lot of different things, often providing analysis and opinion.

For the Flipboard magazine, none of that happens…you just get articles from other people (unless I flip one of my own in there).

It does allow me to do some different things.

For example, I can more easily flip ten different articles on a new piece of Amazon hardware into the magazine than I can link to them in the blog. Linking in the blog takes some work: it’s simple to flip (just a couple of clicks or taps).

There are also times when something is too short to warrant a full post in the blog. Those types of things go into my Round-ups, but I don’t do those every day.

Another thing? I do a lot more images in the magazine: it’s just more compatible with it. My blog is read on non-Fire Kindles, and images are tougher there.

1. What’s Next for E-books in Libraries? (Publishers Weekly)
2. A book that watches you – it’s not a concept any longer (video) Ebook Friendly)
3. Audible Summertime BOGO Sale (Books on the Knob)
4. It’s All About Storytelling (Publishers Weekly)
5. The World is a Book – A4 Travel Quote Print. Father’s Day Gift. Gift for Him. (Etsy)
6. Reading to a child (cartoon) (E-book Friendly)
7. Literature is the agreeable way of ignoring life (Pinterest)
8. ILMK Reader Hero #3: Spencer Collins
9. Book Community Board (Pinterest)
10. The publishing industry isn’t dead – but it is evolving (The Next Web)

As I look at those, I think that E-book Friendly may have posted some of the others as well. What can happen is that I run into a bunch of them from one source in sequence…that’s making this one look a bit less source diverse than it actually is. That is a great blog, though, and I do recommend it.

The Weird Old Days

“Has the world always been weird? These news stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries bring you tales of lake monsters, the Hollow Earth, ghosts, and more! Edited by Bufo Calvin, of The Measured Circle blog. Note: these articles reflect the culture of their times. As such, they may use terms and concepts which some modern readers will find offensive”

 http://flip.it/ZtmYw

• 50 readers
• 257 page flips
• 177 articles

My original idea on this was that I was writing a book made up in large part of public domain newspaper articles. I was writing pieces to provide context, both because I wanted to do that, and because it would enable me to sell it in the Kindle store (they require original material…nothing purely public domain…that was a policy which evolved over time).

It’s a labor of love, for sure!

I find it fascinating. I’m very interested in how people think about things, and how that has changed over time.

At this point, I’ve been using the Library of Congress’ fabulous “Chronicling America” resource. The negative to that one is that the pages don’t display very well on smaller screens. However, you can click to display the page as a PDF, and that can work quite well.

You also do have to read through the newspaper page to find the article…I also think that’s fun. 😉

I do feel like I’ve made some real discoveries: I just posted one that is about an apparently hoaxed photograph of a UFO (airship)…in 1897!

1. “Was All a Fraud” (Baxter Springs News, April 17, 1897) (that 1897 UFO photo hoax)
2. “Was Not a Sea Serpent” (The Fulton County News, September 15, 1907: a photograph allowed a scientist to identify the creature as a “thrasher” shark)
3. “Hooray! Hooray! Sea Serpent Here” (The Washington Times, June 12, 1907)
4. “Red Sea Serpents” (Deming graphic, March 10, 1905)
5. “Legend of the Great War” (The Mahoning dispatch, August 26, 1921: about the Angel of Mons…the “Great War” is World War I…there hadn’t been a II yet)
6. “WILD MAN OF BORNEO DIES AT 92 YEARS” (Hopkinsville Kentuckian., June 4, 1912: while the “Wild Man of Borneo” appears to have been a pretty standard and recognized acting part in traveling shows, this one presents them as real. Interestingly, they are described as “small”, which would better fit modern reports of some island hominids. The fake ones tended to be big bruisers)
7. “Wild Man Flees to the Capital: Cop Nabs Him” (Lincoln County Leader, November 29, 1912: this is another one which is presented as real)
8. “MODERN WITCH: Visits a Farm and Whole Family is Driven Mad” (The Semi-Weekly messenger, July 21, 1905)
9. “MACHINE BESTS MEN IN GAMES OF CHESS” (The Sun, June 28, 1914)
10. This one had a few articles…one on a cigarette smoking sea serpent, another on a captured lake monster (Los Angeles Herald, September 9, 1906)

Again, this one can go in “flaps” of one topic, because my search sometimes leads me to related articles. I think this gives you some idea, though.

Doc Savage Fanflip

“Doc Savage, the forerunner of Superman and Batman, has been one of my fictional heroes for a very long time. Thanks in part to Doc, I try to better myself to help others, and to do so with “…no regard for anything but justice.” A “fanflip” is my new term for a Flipboard magazine by a fan, dedicated to one topic. I will bring you not only Doc Savage news, but Doc stories and resources from around the web. Think of it as a scrapbook with news.”

http://flip.it/HJShc

• 27 readers
• 172 page flips
• 49 articles

I look for interesting things on the web about Doc. If Shane Black ever gets out the Doc Savage movie, this may get more popular, but I’m happy to ferret out the oddball bits and pieces.

1. Doc Savage Paperback Book Covers by James Bama (The Golden Age Site)
2. Doc Savage (Flickr)
3. Doc Savage (Flickr)
4. Why You Should Care: Doc Savage Edition (Crave Online)
5. Doc Savage Casting Call (IGN)
6. Doc Savage Magazine Volume 4, No 1 (Flickr)
7. Not A Grimm Vigilante Or Stranger From Another World – Chris Roberson Talks Doc Savage #6 (Bleeding Cool)
8. Michael Uslan Talks The Avenger, The Shadow And Doc Savage – Justice, Inc. (Bleeding Cool)
9. Superhero Doc Savage (WGNS Radio)
10. 80 Years of Doc Savage: 1933 – 2013 (YouTube)

I’m also working on another Flipboard magazine, but I’m not ready to release it yet…it needs more content first.

These are not hard to do, and they aren’t taking significant time or creative energy away from my other creative work. I don’t get any money directly from them, although they might lead to more discovery of other things where I do.

Enjoy!

Do you have a Flipboard magazine about which you want to tell me and my readers? Feel free to comment on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you 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.

 

ILMK Reader Hero #3: Spencer Collins

ILMK Reader Hero #3: Spencer Collins

Readers make the world a better place. The I Love My Kindle blog recognizes those extraordinary few who make heroic efforts to expand their minds, their hearts, and their perspectives by engaging with the world’s culture through the experience of literature.

They are our Reader Heroes.

“It’s kind of like I’m in a whole other world and I like that,” he said. “I like adventure stories because I’m in the adventure and it’s fun.”
–9-year old Spencer Collins on reading
http://www.kmbc.com/news/leawood-shuts-down-boys-little-free-library/26552394#ixzz35JzqhPFS

The

Little Free Library

program is a way for readers to selflessly help others share their love of reading by setting up a small outside bookshelf where people can take and leave books.

Spencer Collins set up one of the sites in Leawood, Kansas,with different sections for different types of books.

Spencer is nine years old.

While the act of setting up the library itself shows how Spencer is positively contributing to the community, the story goes beyond that.

The City Council ordered the Little Free Library be removed…because it violated ordinances about “accessory structures” (which are not attached to houses).

How Spencer reacted shows the  resourcefulness that reading can teach you.

Spencer is reading up on the city codes, and is going to challenge the decision.

This Reader Hero didn’t just give up, or get mad, or work outside the system.

If Spencer’s noble actions succeed, the law could be changed,  benefiting  Leawood (and possibly other communities) now and in the future.

Thank you, Spencer, for being a Reader Hero!

—

Readers of ILMK are welcome to express their congratulations to Tyler Weaver and to offer support and encouragement by commenting on this post and/or clicking on the poll below (an additional way to support is below the poll):

—

Spencer also has a

Facebook page

When you click “About” there, you’ll get a number of links, including this one to contact the Mayor and City Council of Leawood:

http://www.leawood.org/council/default.aspx

If you do so, please keep in mind Spencer’s own mature response to the situation.

We hope to send Tyler a Reader Hero t-shirt in recognition (as we have done in the past with a Reader Hero), if arrangements can be made. If you can help with that, comments can be made privately to this post, and any personal information will not be shared with readers. Please indicate that the comment is private.

Thanks to The Mary Sue for the heads-up on this story.

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