July 2015 Kindle book releases

July 2015 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.…

However, it’s worth noting that pre-ordering at a low price will tend to preserve that price. Back when the Agency Model was solidly in place, Amazon couldn’t guarantee that books sold by the publishers using that structure wouldn’t go up in price after you pre-ordered them. It wasn’t likely, it was just that Amazon couldn’t control it. We have started to return to the Agency Model, but Amazon is allowed to discount in some circumstances.

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 4,770 (at time of writing…more than 500 fewer than last month) July releases in the USA Kindle store:

July 2015 USA Kindle Store releases (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Of those, by the way, 902 (about fifty more than last month) are in

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

about 19% (almost 3% more than last month…a combination of fewer overall books  and more KU books).

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

In the past several  months, the top four had been the

Kindle First (at AmazonSmile)

picks for this month.

Amazon no longer does the “New and Popular” search as a default, but does “Featured”. Presumably, a human being picks those titles in some way…and the list is clearly not the same. Yes, the top book is a Kindle First book, but they aren’t the top four. It’s an interesting choice, on Amazon’s part. I like curation, generally, but I think of Amazon’s book search results based on impartial data, but that’s not the case any more.

The other thing is that some of those Kindle Unlimited titles are way up on the list. I’m concerned (and I’ve alerted Amazon about it) that people are confused: they think they are pre-ordering a KU borrow, when they are actually pre-ordering a purchase. In other words, they may be thinking they’ll get the book at no additional cost, and actually be charged for it. Amazon has confirmed for me: you can not pre-order a borrow from KU.

Okay…books!

• Libraries, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Enabling Access and Promoting Inclusion by Paul T. Jaeger and Natalie Greene Taylora
• Never Die Alone (A Bentz/Montoya Novel Book 8) by Lisa Jackson
• From Small Screen to Vinyl: A Guide to Television Stars Who Made Records, 1950-2000 by Bob Leszczak
• Words and Rules: The Ingredients Of Language (Science Masters Series) by Steven Pinker
• Adapting Science Fiction to Television: Small Screen, Expanded Universe (Science Fiction Television) by Max Sexton and Malcolm Cook
• Ideal by Ayn Rand
• The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán
• William Shakespeare’s The Clone Army Attacketh: Star Wars Part the Second (William Shakespeare’s Star Wars) by Ian Doescher
• Sex, Sadism, Spain, and Cinema: The Spanish Horror Film by Nicholas G. Schlegel
• Down Among the Dead Men (A Detective Peter Diamond Mystery) by Peter Lovesey
• The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: A Nomad Memory by Jon Curley and Burt Kimmelman
• Batman: Arkham Knight Vol. 1 by Peter J. Tomasi and Bogdanovic,Viktor
• Animal Creativity and Innovation (Explorations in Creativity Research) by Allison B. Kaufman and James C. Kaufman
• The Bourbon Kings by J.R. Ward
• Nemesis (FBI Thriller, An Book 19) by Catherine Coulter
• Speaking in Bones: A Novel (Temperance Brennan Book 18) by Kathy Reichs
• Brush Back (V.I. Warshawski Novels Book 17) by Sara Paretsky
• Morna’s Legacy (Box Set #2): Scottish Time Travel Romances (Morna’s Legacy Series) by Bethany Claire
• Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Memoir, Recipes, and More by Dianne Jacob
• Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?: Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era (Culture, Labor, History) by Shannon King
• National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of the World (National Geographic Little Kids First Big Books by Elizabeth Carney
• The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (and a number of other Ellery Queen books) by Ellery Queen
• How Memory Works–and How to Make It Work for You by Robert Madigan
• Deliberate Receiving: Finally, the Universe Makes Some Freakin’ Sense! by Melody Fletcher
• The Science of Conjecture by James Franklin
• Justice Society of America: A Celebration of 75 Years by Geoff  Johns and Roy Thomas
• Real People and the Rise of Reality Television by Michael McKenna
• A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak
• Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years by Michael E. Newton
• The Cthulhu Wars: The United States’ Battles Against the Mythos (Dark) by Kenneth Hite
• Naked Greed (Stone Barrington)Jul 14, 2015 | Kindle eBook
  by Stuart Woods

Well, again…quite the mix!

Enjoy!

Join thousands 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.

The most reviewed Amazon devices

The most reviewed Amazon devices

There are a lot of things you can say (and think) about Amazon product reviews.

Might some of them be from “sock puppets” (fake people created by the product manufacturer to write good reviews)?

Sure.

Could some reviews by for political purposes…say something is bad when really, you disagree with the philosophy of it or its creator?

Absolutely.

Might some be compensated without the review reader’s knowledge?

Undoubtedly.

However,  I think that many, most likely the majority, of reviews are from people sincerely giving their opinions.

Actually, that doesn’t matter much when doing a comparison of the number of reviews of similar products. It seems likely that the noise to signal ratio is going to be similar for similar products.

When we are talking about Amazon hardware, though, we do need to take into account that they cover more than a seven year period, so it may be reasonable to assume that the general evolution of customer reviewing has an impact. My guess is that more recently introduced items might have more reviews for that reason.

With all of that taken into account, I still think that looking at the number of reviews for Amazon hardware can give us an indicator of customer engagement.

I think that more reviews suggests more engagement with the device.

I have been absolutely shocked at the number of reviews that the Amazon Echo has gotten in a time period which is less than two days: 16, 371 a time of writing!

There are different circumstances here, since only people who got an invitation could get the device directly from Amazon (some people bought them off eBay and that kind of thing), but this still seems huge!

Here are the number of reviews for other current Amazon hardware:

1. Fire TV Stick: 43,379
2. Kindle Paperwhite 2: 41,872
3. Kindle Keyboard (Kindle 3): 42,733
4. Amazon Fire TV: 29,415
5. Kindle Fire HDX 7: 28,700
6. Fire HD 7: 26.467
7. Kindle Fire 1st generation: 23,722
8. Kindle Paperwhite 1: 21,587
9. Fire HD 6:  18,480
10. Kindle 2: 18,260
11. Amazon Echo: 16,371
12. Kindle Fire 2nd generation: 14,289
13. Mindle (my name for the fifth generation Kindle): 13,688
14. Kindle Touch: 9,199
15. Mindle Touch (my name for the current “entry level” Kindle): 9,197
16. Kindle 1: 8,011
17. Fire HD Kids Edition: 7,548
18. Fire Phone: 7,231
19. Kindle Voyage: 5,554
20. Kindle DX: 5,272
21. Kindle Fire HDX  8.9: 4,604

Update: I’ve added non-current models, and integrated them above.

I have to say, I found myself nodding in confirmation at some of the order above.

Clearly, there is some correlate with price. The least expensive item is at the top, pretty much (configurations matter) the most expensive at the bottom…but that isn’t a through line.

Numbers 1, 2, 4, and 5? I use those every day. Number 21? Yes, probably my least favorite one that I owned (it was quite big…mine was stolen in a home break-in, but I had it long enough to understand it pretty well).

The Echo is going to jump way up: remember, it hasn’t even been released to the general public yet.

It’s possible that I’ve missed something above, and I don’t have all the shadings, but I am finding it an interesting ranking!

What do you think? Does number of reviews even matter? If it does, is it a measurement of customer engagement in any way? Would you say that the rankings reflect in any way how much you engaged with these devices? Is the number of Echo reviews so skewed by the roll-out methodology that it is hyper-inflated…or deflated? Will the Echo become part of people’s lives, or is this mostly due to early customers being Prime members (and presumably, more aligned with Amazon)? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands 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.

Amazon echo owners now able to write reviews on Amazon

Amazon echo owners now able to write reviews on Amazon

Update: as June 23rd, the general public can now pre-order Amazon Echo (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) with an “in stock” date of July 14th.

I am just on my phone, so just a quick note on this. I got an email from Amazon today telling me that I can now review the Amazon echo on the site.

That is, perhaps, another indicator that they will open it for general public purchase soon.

The email said in part:

“Thank you for being one of Amazon Echo’s earliest customers—your input has helped shape its evolution. Now you can share your experience with other customers by leaving a review.

Always ready, connected, and fast. Just ask.“

I probably won’t write a review until at least this evening, but I will be interested to see what people say.

Update: I did already write a review, and I will link to it later. Holy moley! There are already over 12,000 reviews, and it is running at 4.5 stars out of five!

Update: here is my review…and now it is 4.5 with 13,086 reviews. That is, by the way, more reviews than the Kindle Touch (but not as many as the Kindle Paperwhite 2).

Bufo’s review of the Echo on Amazon (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Join thousands 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.

More than a million books in Kindle Unlimited

More than a million books in Kindle Unlimited

I’ve been a happy member of

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

Amazon’s “all you can read” subser (subscription service) which is $9.99 a month.

The number of books available through it has been growing pretty rapidly, and I noticed today that it is over one million titles (in the USA Kindle store).

When the entire Kindle store launched back in 2007, it didn’t even have 100,000 titles…this is ten times as many!

Now, interestingly, in my

Snapshot: June 1 2015

there were 3,530,378 total titles, and 984,701 in Kindle Unlimited (27.9%).

Today, those numbers are 3,588,503 and 1,006,072 (28.0%).

Let’s see: that’s 58,125 titles added overall and 21,371 added to KU…so about 36.7% of the books added were added to KU.

That’s a lot!

I’m still guessing one of the Big 5 trade publishers may join KU this year (at least with some of their backlist), but that wouldn’t up the total numbers all that much. The tradpubs (traditional publishers) are a tiny minority of the books published to the Kindle store each month. They are a lot more of the money generated than they are of the units sold, of course.

I find that there are plenty of books I want to read in KU, and that it does tend to encourage me to read books which are more expensive.

We’ll see how Amazon’s new royalty plan changes what’s in KU (it may mean fewer short books), which I wrote about recently:

Pay by the page read: Amazon revolutionizes royalties

Let’s see…by the end of next year, it wouldn’t surprise me if a third of the books in the Kindle store are in KU…

Join thousands 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.

Amazon announces Paperwhite 3 with exciting new…um…

Amazon announces Paperwhite 3 with exciting new…um…

I love my Kindle Paperwhite 2.

In fact, I didn’t “upgrade” to the top of the line Kindle Voyage because I’m more than satisfied with what I have.

The Voyage is only one of two Kindle models I haven’t owned (the large-screen Kindle DX is the other one).

So, when Amazon e-mailed me to let me know about the new release (pre-order for June 30th) Kindle Paperwhite 3:

All-New Kindle Paperwhite, 6″ High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi – Includes Special Offers (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I went right to the product page to see what they’ve done to justify a new generation…partially for you, my readers, and partially to see if I might want to upgrade.

Well, my assessment is…this is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

It has a better screen (same 300 pixels per inch as the Voyage…that has to do with how “sharp” it looks).

It gets the new Bookerly font, and a new “typesetting engine”. They feature these elements of that improvement:

• Hyphenation and improved spacing
• Improved character placement (better kerning! ligatures!)
• “Beautiful page layout”
• Large fonts, without compromises

Sure, all of that will make for a better reading experience. For those who use the largest font size, it may be significantly better.

When we see the inevitable questions in the Amazon forum about, “Is it worth upgrading?” my feeling is that for most people, getting rid of a PW2 for a PW3 is probably unnecessary.

However, for people who are getting a first EBR (E-Book Reader), or if you just need to get another one (and maybe your “old” PW2 is staying in the family), you will get more for the money ($119 for the least expensive version…the same price as the PW2).

I know some (but not most) of you have been skimming this article to see if they added text-to-speech (TTS…software that reads a book out loud to you), the answer is no.

Still no audio capabilities (which might have induced me to get the new one).

Comparing the features, there is an obvious question: why buy the

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

for $80 more (which is one dollar more than the cost of the lowest priced Kindle…you could get two Kindles, including one with a built-in light, for the price of a Voyage)?

The Voyage is a bit lighter and smaller, it has light-sensing technology, and it has “page press” (which lets you less intrusively change to the next page).

It’s quite possible they are also going to “refresh” the Voyage, although it will continue to sell because it is the top of the line (that, in and of itself, has a value).

Might they add TTS to a refresh of the Voyage? We have to be honest and say that really adds cost if you are going to have onboard speakers, and changes the use profile considerably (since it would presumably also add music and audiobooks). I think a wearable for music, audiobooks, and TTS is a possibility. No screen for sight-reading, and  perhaps Bluetooth for the audio.

I can see that working. I would guess it could even be a ring (people’s wrists are getting busy). Hmm…maybe Bluetooth it to a Fire TV to have a screen interface for complex content management, and voice recognition for the simple stuff (“Read Alice in Wonderland”) or a simple content selection display on the ring. Bluetoothing to headphones (I’d use it with my ARCTIC P324 BT (Black) – Bluetooth (V4.0) Headset with Neckband – Headphones with integrated Microphone – Perfect for Sport (at AmazonSmile*), for example) and speakers would probably also be necessary.

Just to be clear, this is a good thing. You get more for the same price. That will benefit first time EBR buyers, people having to replace an older model, someone buying a gift, or if you are just expanding your fleet of devices.

This is coming out after Fathers’ Day (it can be pre-ordered before), which seems a bit odd. I was going to say that this was likely to be the only EBR announcement before Fathers’ Day from Amazon, and it might be…

Here is the

Press Release

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

The Secret Garden (Michael Hague Signature Classics) (at AmazonSmile*)

for $1.99 (instead of $3.99).

This is a true children’s classic, with a justifiably lauded illustrator.

Remember again (re-remember? 😉 ) that you can buy it for this price as a gift, and delay the delivery until the appropriate gift-giving occasion. This might be a great gift for a child…or for an adult who loved it as a child.

It is also available through

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

What do you think? Will this new Paperwhite make you upgrade? Does it make it more likely that you’ll buy one as a gift? How important is TTS to you? What other EBR (or other hardware, besides the Echo) will Amazon introduce this year? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands 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.

 

Pay by the page read: Amazon revolutionizes royalties

Pay by the page read: Amazon revolutionizes royalties

For as long as anyone in the publishing business can remember, it’s been about selling books.

It hasn’t actually mattered if anyone read the book or not…just whether they bought it.

Oh, sure, if someone read it (and enjoyed it), you were more likely to get good word of mouth out of it, which could result in more sales, but when you are looking at the initial calculations, it’s just the purchase that matters.

Amazon is changing all that…at least for independent publishers in their

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

and KOLL (Kindle Owners’ Lending Library) programs (through KDP Select).

They took a step in the new direction with KU originally, when someone had to read ten percent of a book which was borrowed before the publisher (which might be just the author) got paid for the borrow.

That was more of a threshold thing, though. You have to prevent someone from borrowing a bunch of books and not reading them, just to get the author (who might be a friend) a royalty.

In the new system (starting July 1st), you get paid based on the number of pages read.

That completely up ends the game!

A book has to be good…all the way through…for you to get the maximum payment.

The current KU system has benefited short “books”. I wrote about that before: how, for example, a winning strategy would be to break a book on ten great TV series into ten separate books.

This changes that.

Obviously, if they counted screens of text displayed, this would be easy to game. You could just put one letter per screen. 🙂

Amazon is smarter than that.

As detailed on this

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Help Page

Amazon has come up with a way to do the calculations. This is their explanation in a short excerpt from the referenced page above:

“To determine a book’s page count in a way that works across genres and devices, we’ve developed the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count (KENPC). We calculate KENPC based on standard settings (e.g. font, line height, line spacing, etc.), and we’ll use KENPC to measure the number of pages customers read in your book, starting with the Start Reading Location (SRL) to the end of your book. Amazon typically sets SRL at chapter 1 so readers can start reading the core content of your book as soon as they open it.

This standardized approach allows us to identify pages in a way that works across genres and devices. Non-text elements within books including images, charts and graphs will count toward a book’s KENPC.”

I’m sure they’ll also take into account reading speed in some way so you can’t just flip through the screens.

I suspect they’ll also be able to tell if you bounce around. If you are reading an anthology and skip a story, I assume that story won’t count. In other words, you can’t just jump 100 pages into it and give the publisher credit for 100 pages read.

While this currently only affects borrows, I think readers would like it if it was also the case with purchases.

Wouldn’t you just love this? No padding in an anthology. No clunker pieces in a non-fiction collection.

Of course, I’m portraying it in its best possible light…I tend to do that. 😉 I’m assuming Amazon will count actual pages read (by judging how long you stay on a page…our devices can already calculate our reading speed). If they don’t, we could get a lot of filler.

Another negative might be that it could be harder for new authors to get exposure. One way that happens now is that you stick an untested author’s story into an anthology with other better-known works…sometimes with public domain works.

However, there is one more very interesting thing about this to me.

You can’t do it with p-books (paperbooks).

That could really create a bifurcated system…what makes you money in an e-book might not be what makes you money in a p-book…and vice versa.

A great (and perhaps misleading) cover could work in a p-book…but if only gets people to read the first ten pages, it could fail as an e-book paid by the page.

This could lead to a much greater degree to books published in only one of the two formats. If you are only going with one, I think you are going with e-books (much lower risk). I’m not going to say that’s part of the secret agenda here, but it’s fun to speculate….

One last thing: in a way, this is a throwback to the pulp era when authors were paid by the word. Not the same, of course. In this case, it’s not that you benefit purely from tremendous output in a variety of genres (which was the case for many writers back then), but only if people actually read it.

Fascinating, and I need to think about this a lot more…

What do you think? If you are a reader, what do you think about this? If you are an author? Publisher? What flaws are you seeing in the idea? I didn’t address this, but does it mean the money will come in more slowly? For example, I read some books over the course of years…a chapter here, a chapter there. I might love a book like that, but use it as a “palate cleanser” between novels. As I think about that, is that bad for an author/publisher? It would be like getting residuals from having done a sitcom on TV…lump sums (like big advances) can help finance the next book, but this could help you have a smaller amount of money all the time…could help you live. Oh, and what does this do to advances, if it spreads over to purchases? Would they not give you a big advance if they didn’t know people would read the whole book? That could affect certain brand name authors, who shall remain nameless. 😉 I definitely want to hear from my readers on this…feel free to share your thoughts with me and my other readers by commenting on this post.

Join thousands 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 #299: Alice in translation, sorry we don’t publish books by people like you

Round up #299: Alice in translation, sorry we don’t publish books by people like you

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

Restoring a p-book (paperbook)

One reason I like e-books is they don’t decay.

No question, some of the p-books I own are in much worse shape than when they were first published. In some cases, I bought them that way. In others, despite how careful I am, they have decayed

I have paperbacks (decades old) literally held together with rubber bands.

Some of my Oz books, more than a century old, seem quite fragile.

While a digital file can become corrupt, generally, when I download an e-book from Amazon (from the Kindle store or my archives/Cloud), it’s in pristine condition.

There is (or should be) a rush around the world to digitize p-books to preserve them.

This

EBOOK FRIENDLY post by Ola Kowalczyk

includes a video of a craftsperson doing an amazing job restoring a really damaged p-book.

We have to realize that this beautiful work doesn’t reconstitute the pages, glue, and other materials. Books are printed on different quality materials, and some simply decay more rapidly than others. When I talk about $50 novels, I expect them to be printed on long-lasting materials. Regardless, this restored book is looks glorious!

Correcting an imbalance…through further discrimination?

It would be hard to argue that males aren’t overrepresented in many areas of publishing (especially in mainstream reviews and prizes).

In this

Independent article by Sophie Lewis

a Senior Editor pledges to publish no books written by men in 2018.

Is that the right way to go?

Not getting published is less of an issue now than it used to be…at least, not being traditionally published. You have the option to independently publish.

It’s funny…I would be more accepting of this, I think, if the company was founded to only publish books written by women. Since it wasn’t, this is a take away.

Echo check-in

The

Amazon Echo

Amazon’s ambient computing device, still says it will be in stock on July 8th. I also still think that may be a general public release date for the device…or, at least, an open pre-order date.

I got an e-mail from Amazon recently asking me about participating in Echo customer feedback, including focus groups and even house visits. They wanted me to agree to it during the next six month period. That gave me pause for a minute, that they might be waiting six months to release it…but that would miss the holiday season, and I don’t think that’s happening. 🙂

I also asked people in the Amazon forum, and several people said they got similar e-mails some time back.

I’ll still guess early July.

They also asked me a lot of questions about how I use it and what improvements I would like to see. One of my main request was to have the Echo control our

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

My Significant Other currently finds it complex to navigate to our Fire TV and make a choice. It would be so much easier to say, “Alexa, show me Master Chef on Hulu+ on Bufo’s Fire TV.”

Well, AFTV News,  in this

post

came up with a very complex workaround that allow you to control your Fire TV right now verbally with the Echo.

If you are not afraid of a multi-step geeky process, it’s an interesting read…and even the author calls it a “proof of concept”.

I suspect we’ll get an easier method before or at the same time as the general public availability.

Something recently added? Alexa will now tell me the time of sunset and sunrise, which it didn’t do before.

One of my regular readers and commenters, Harold Delk, told me about this blog:

Love My Echo
oo
It’s an interesting blog by April F. Hamilton (The Digital Media Mom).

The information seem good, and the site looks good in terms of design.

I wonder if the name is just a case of parallel creative evolution. 🙂 I’ve had that happen, where I independently came up with something that someone else did…I think “phablet” is one of those, for example. There was also a time that two of us wrote a piece on Amazon purchasing the English language as a joke…that happens.

I do think there may be some confusion, though…although April’s site is much more graphically intense than mine. 😉

I was also amused when someone who had read my very first book jokingly suggested I write one on the Echo…apparently unaware of my books since that one and of this blog. 🙂 I’ve already mentioned that I might write something on the Echo, although I’ve been super busy lately. It would probably be entitled, “Love Your Amazon Echo: the ILMK guide to Amazon’s Ambient Computing Device,” or something pretty similar (that would parallel an earlier book of mine. I would probably include a notice that it isn’t connected to April’s site, though…even though that seems a bit…yes, I’ll go with ironic, since I’m amused by it. 😉

Alice Through the Linguist’s  Glass

Alice in Wonderland is turning 150 years old…and  this is a great

Wall Street Journal article by Brenda Cronin

about all of the translations!

Not just into other European languages, but into hieroglyphics…even emoji!

I think the fact that our adult kid is a linguist might influence me on this, but that’s one of the most fun articles I’ve read in some time!

What do you think? Have you read a book in translation…and ever felt it was as good or even better than the original?  Have you ever read or seen anything in Esperanto (one of the Alice translation languages)? I have, by the way, and no, I couldn’t understand it. Are you holding on to any really damaged copy of a p-book for sentimental reasons? If you think there is unfair discrimination against women in the publishing world, what, if anything should be done about it? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands 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.

AAP’s (Association of American Publisher’) 2014 report: the huge growth was in…

AAP’s 2014 report: the huge growth was in…

According to this

Publishers Weekly article by Jim Milliot

the AAP (Association of American Publishers) has released its final figures on book industry sales for 2014.

You can see a lot of the specifics in the article, and I don’t want to take too much away from that (I recommend you read it if you want to get a sense of the future-building trends).

I want to just highlight a couple of things.

First, there was generally growth. Oh, not across every genre and every format, but overall, the publishers grossed more. They also generally had higher unit sales.

The latter is probably the more important if you care about how many people are reading (or how much they are reading). If the public as a whole reads 100 books in one year, and 200 books in the next year, they read more books in the second year. Of course, I suppose that if the books were on average less than half as long, they’d be reading less. 🙂

I always try to be careful about asking the right questions.

One of the things I do is “performance improvement”. I look at processes, and see what I can do to make it better.

I’ve had quite a bit of training on this, but I often find that it doesn’t really address the important question.

Let me give you an example.

I was given a sample problem.

A recreational tourist spot is concerned because people are catching fewer of a specific sportsfish. Before we go further, let me say that I am a vegetarian and don’t fish. 🙂 However, that doesn’t mean I can’t address a hypothetical. 😉

We were given specific figures for two years, and asked to formulate a proper “problem statement”.

Well, you could plunge right into trying to solve the problem of why they aren’t catching as many of that species. We were even given a guess by them, that it had to do with barbed hooks and catch and release.

They’ve told us “what’s wrong?” which is the first question we are supposed to ask.

However, my second question would always be, “What’s bad about that?”

That’s because I don’t want to waste time and effort “fixing the problem” if it isn’t really the problem.

Does the place really care if people aren’t catching as many of one type of fish?

Probably not.

They care if they are making as much money as they were.

They might assume that people are less happy, and therefore less likely to come and spend money.

What if, though, they are catching fewer of that fish…because they are catching more of another fish they like better?

What if they are spending more time (and money) in the resort arcade, and less time fishing?

That’s what you need to determine: what’s bad about that?

It might also be, “What would be good about that?” You are usually trying to remove something bad or add something good. The bad exists now; the good is an (currently non-present) aspiration. Of course, the good may be more of something they have now, but the volume they want doesn’t exist now.

What we often really trying to influence is how people feel about things, since that will tend to influence their behavior.

So, my guess is that publishers selling more units means that people are reading more books, and I think an increase will suggest that will happen more in the future…but I don’t know for sure.

The growth in gross could indicate more sales, but may indicate higher prices. Since the book sales were up 4.6%, and the unit sales increased a smaller 3.7%, that suggests that prices are rising faster than unit sales.

Second, there was a particular figure that was literally two orders of magnitude higher (the “tens” is an order of magnitude, the hundreds is another, the thousands is another…that’s pretty much the way it works) than any other figure in the tables in the article!

It is also, I think, highly significant.

“Trade books” are the books you would have bought in a bookstore: not textbooks and that sort of thing, but fiction and popular non-fiction.

Looking at “Trade Book Sales by Format”, comparing 2014 to 2013, the standout was a new category: e-book subsers (subscription services).

They went from .3 million dollars in 2013 to $13.5 million in 2014, a more than four thousand percent increase!

You might immediately guess that was due to the launch of

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

on July 18th of 2014, but it’s unclear if the AAP figures would be impacted that much by KU.

Indies (independent publishers, like me) make up the bulk of KU…and they aren’t members of the AAP.

However, even though none of the Big 5 (the larges US trade publishers: Simon & Schuster; Penguin Random House; Hachette; Macmillan; and HarperCollins) are currently participating in KU (I’m thinking that at least one may join before the end of the year, at least for some backlist titles), other traditional publishers are (Scholastic, for example, is both a member of the AAP and in KU).

The article says

“For both 2013 and 2014, estimates for the entire industry are based on actual sales supplied by about 1,800 U.S. publishers, from which AAP extrapolates by using a variety of sources to estimate sales for publishers that don’t report data.”

That means the AAP is at least guessing at the sales for the non-reporters.

My guess is that subsers are going to see even bigger growth in 2015 versus 2014.

Then, they may slow down.

I think they have a limited, but significant, appeal.

They are most cost effective for (in the aggregate for the user of the account) people who read a lot.

In the case of KU, you can have ten books out at a time. A family with four readers will tend to get more value out of KU than one person…unless that single person reads a lot, and the family doesn’t.

As a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, my guess (there is a lot of guessing, in this post) 😉 is that the majority of books in a single year are bought by people who don’t buy a lot of books. 🙂

That may seem odd, but look at it this way.

Let’s say that ten percent of the people are “serious readers”…they read a book a week.

We’ll work with a population of 100 people to make this easy.

The casual readers read…let’s go with four books a year.

The ten serious readers read about 520 books a year.

The casual readers read 360 books a year.

However…

At the holidays (including things like Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, graduation, birthdays…) those casual readers buy books for the serious readers, and for other casual readers.

Hm…according to this

Bookmarket.com article by John Kremer

17% of the total books sold are given as gifts.

If my 880 books above represent 83% of the sales, that would make about 1,050 total (rough guess). Let’s make this easy…and say that half of the books are bought by serious readers.

I think the bigger market for subsers is serious readers…so based on all that geeky, highly speculative math stuff I just did 😉 I wouldn’t expect subsers to get easily beyond 50%.

Regardless, that’s a lot of room for growth. 🙂

You can give KU as a gift. If KU gets a Big 5 publisher, and/or people really start to perceive as being a good way to encourage kids to read (I’m hoping Amazon is working on marketing for that…showing a kid saying, “I can’t find anything to read I like”, that sort of thing), it could get higher.

I’d be impressed if the subser sales doubled next year, and were half again as high in 2017.

I’ll keep an eye on it…

What do you think? Will subsers continue to grow? Were my numbers above so speculative as to be silly? 🙂 If you think so, what are your guesses? If we could include indies, how much would that change this? Would e-book growth be much higher? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands 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.

The Big Deal: Kindle books up to 85% off through June 28th

The Big Deal: Kindle books up to 85% off through June 28th

Amazon saves us money on e-books in so many ways, but I do think it’s fun when they do the Big Deal. It’s over 500 books this time (529 at time of writing…almost 160 fewer than last time).

The Big Deal: Kindle Books Up to 85% Off (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

These are typically e-books which are genuinely on sale…they aren’t just cheap to begin with. 🙂

When the sale is over, they tend to go back up in price…although they may be reduced again later, of course.

Remember, as always, that you can buy e-books as gifts and delay the delivery until the appropriate date. You can also print out the gift and just hold on to it, so you have something to wrap. 😉 In that case, you don’t really need to specify to whom it goes, so these can also be good “emergency gifts” (we always keep a few of those around).

Do check the price before you click or tap that “Buy button”…these prices may not apply in your country (and I have readers in a lot of countries) 🙂 and I think it’s possible for books to go in and out of the set.

One more thing: some of these books are also available through

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

as part of the $9.99 monthly membership. It feels to me like Amazon sometimes uses the sales to promote KU, although there are now enough KU books that it may just be coincidence. On the other hand, they may be able to more freely discount the books which are in KU, so that may be part of it as well.

Here are some that caught my eye:

The City and the Stars (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: Vanamonde)
by Arthur C. Clarke
4.4 stars | 199 reviews
$1.99 (KU)

Avengers, Vol. 1: Avengers World (Marvel NOW!) (Avengers (Marvel NOW!)Graphic Novel)
by Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena
3.9 stars | 45 reviews
$3.99

Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star
by Tab Hunter and Eddie Muller
4.3 stars out of 5 | 146 customer reviews
$1.99 (also available through KU…Kindle Unlimited)

BLACK (Hard-boiled noir detective mystery)
by Russell Blake
4.0 stars | 222 reviews
$0.99 (KU)

The Ghost Bride: A Novel (P.S.)Aug 6, 2013 | Kindle eBook
by Yangsze Choo
4.3 stars | 389 reviews
$0.99

Sweet Revenge (Sisterhood Book 5)
by Fern Michaels
4.5 stars | 157 reviews
$1.99

Sharcano (Sharkpocalypse #1)
by Jose Prendes
3.5 stars | 71 reviews
$0.99 (KU)

The Witch and the Gentleman (The Witches Series Book 1)
by J.R. Rain
4.2 stars | 307 reviews
Free

You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind MatterApr 29, 2014 | Kindle eBook
by Dr. Joe Dispenza
4.7 stars | 405 reviews
$2.99

The Elusive Lord Everhart: The Rakes of Fallow Hall Series
by Vivienne Lorret
4.0 stars | 28 reviews
$0.99

The Reluctant Midwife: A Hope River Novel
by Patricia Harman
4.6 stars | 87 reviews
$1.99

Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
by Shauna Niequist
4.6 stars | 196 reviews
$2.99

Ever After (Lost Love Series Book 2)
by Karen Kingsbury
4.6 stars | 167 reviews
$2.99

Outlaw
by Ted Dekker
4.6 stars | 283 reviews
$1.99

The Vow: The True Events that Inspired the Movie
by Kim Carpenter and Krickitt Carpenter
4.3 stars | 809 reviews
$2.99

Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart
by William Alexander
4.5 stars | 83 reviews
$1.99

Who’s Writing This?
by Dan Halpern
3.3 stars | 3 reviews
$0.99

Eight Black Horses (87th Precinct)
by Ed McBain
3.9 stars | 24 reviews
$1.99 (KU)

Magic 101 (A Diana Tregarde Investigation Boxset)
by Mercedes Lackey
4.4 stars | 111 reviews
$0.99

Black Widow Vol. 1: The Finely Woven Thread
by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto
4.7 stars | 20 reviews
$3.99

My Best Friend, My Blanket (Peanuts)
by Charles Schulz
4.7 stars | 28 reviews
$0.99

Cult Horror Movies: Discover the 33 Best Scary, Suspenseful, Gory, and Monstrous Cinema Classics (Cult Movies)
by Danny Peary
4.3 stars | 7 reviews
$1.99

Cult Midnight Movies: Discover the 37 Best Weird, Sleazy, Sexy, and Crazy Good Cinema Classics
by Danny Peary
5.0 stars | 2 reviews
$1.99

The Dead Man Vol 1: Face of Evil, Ring of Knives, and Hell in HeavenFeb 21, 2012 | Kindle eBook
by Lee Goldberg and James Daniels
4.0 stars | 86 reviews
$1.99 (KU)

The Shrinking Man (RosettaBooks into Film)
by Richard Matheson
4.3 stars | 99 reviews
$1.99 (KU)

I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can
by Barbara Gordon
4.0 stars | 178 reviews
$3.99

Alias the Saint (The Saint Series)
by Leslie Charteris
3.6 stars | 13 reviews
$1.99 (KU)

Those were just some of them, of course…if you see another in the deal you want to recommend to my readers, you can comment on this post.

Enjoy!

 Join thousands 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.

Taking away a child’s reading “privileges”

Taking away a child’s reading “privileges”

For a child, is reading a privilege…or something else?

After reading this

Publishers Weekly article by Josie Leavitt

I am making a Vulcanian effort to control my emotions as I write this post. Like Mr. Spock, I am using mental discipline to reassert the dominance of my logical processes over my irrational response.

That reaction is one of horror, disgust, even making a mad dash over the cliff towards anger (which is a plunge I very, very rarely take).

What’s causing that?

A parent punishing a “willful” child by taking away reading “privileges”…for a week.

Having raised a child, I understand the frustration that can lead you to try to find another way to influence behavior.

Some people introduce a negative into the child’s environment to try to change something. That could be yelling, for example, or threatening something (sometimes hyperbolic…”Do you want me to turn this car into the oncoming traffic?”).

Another option is to promise something good for good behavior.

A third way is to take something pleasant out of the child’s life.

I remember doing that.

My Significant Other and I agreed that we would never take away our child’s (literal) security blanket (named “Stripes”), and we never did.

One time, though, I took away a favorite videotape (Parachute Express).

Honestly, I don’t even remember if that was effective.

It had a big emotional effect, sure, but I don’t recall if it actually changed the behavior. It wasn’t for a long period of time, and the tape just went into the garage temporarily.

It did change the situational balance in the short term, though, I remember that.

Take away reading?

Never.

I would never do that.

Reading is a positive…not only a huge positive for the child in the long run, but a benefit for the adults even in the short run.

What child is misbehaving while reading a book?

Maybe they aren’t participating in the way you want in something (some families have “no reading at the dinner table” policies…of course, not many families eat that way any more, I think), but they aren’t actively doing something wrong.

I think one issue here for me is the question of how fragile is the desire to read? Could you break a child’s habit of reading by doing something like this, or, like the Jurassic Park dinosaurs, will reading find a way to survive?

Many adults would testify…you can be a serious reader, and then get to a situation where you aren’t. Starting up again is like having been a runner, taking a break for two years, and then trying to run a marathon straight off. Reading takes commitment, it takes effort…you need to withdraw to some extent from other things to do it, and there are a lot of temptations.

The parents in this case weren’t, I’m sure, trying to send a message that reading is bad. However,  for the child, that association seems apparent to me. “I’ve been bad, I’ve been reading, they are taking away my reading, and now, apparently, I’m good…so I shouldn’t read.”

A child (this is a nine-year old) is going to assume that a parent is trying to protect them…if they remove something from the environment, it must be because it is a negative, not because it is a positive.

Children should always be encouraged to read, not discouraged from it.

That’s true even if they are reading things you think are silly (geeks like me really understand that).

Nothing will empower your child more, or make them more empathetic, in my opinion, than reading.

Okay, I think I’m calmed down at this point…my breathing is back to a normal respiration rate. 😉

I do want to mention that this child was really into reading

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

(the PW post is written by the child’s bookseller). I love that it is an older series like that that was helping this child build a bright future in and for the world as a reader.

What do you think? Would stopping a child from reading ever be an appropriate action?  Can a guardian make a child a reader? Can a guardian break a child from being a reader…and if so, how hard would that be to do? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands 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.