10 sales at Amazon at time of writing

10 sales at Amazon at time of writing

Sandisk memory products sale (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Ends at midnight Pacific on Thursday. I saw savings over $100 on a couple of (expensive) items…but lots of savings on even smaller memory disks.

Fire TV Stick (at AmazonSmile*) $24.99 instead of $39.99

Fire, 7″ Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB – Includes Special Offers, Black (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) $29.99 instead of $49.99 (last year for Black Friday it was $5 more)

Fire HD 10″ (at AmazonSmile*) $99.99 instead of $149.99…$50 off!

Zmodo wireless security camera sale (at AmazonSmile*)

Echo Show (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) $179.99 instead of $229.99…another $50 off. This is a big part of our lives.

Kindle, 6″ Glare-Free Touchscreen Display, Wi-Fi – Includes Special Offers (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) $49.99 instead of $79.99

Amazon Dash buttons…half off, so $2.49, and you still get $5 credit! (at AmazonSmile*)

So, Amazon is basically paying you to get a Dash button! Only valid for Prime members

Kindle magazine deals…up to 93% off! (at AmazonSmile*)

Today’s Deals page (Today’s Deals page) (at AmazonSmile*)

All kinds of sales here, including lightning sales which might last an hour (or less, I think). I didn’t want to post any of those on this post since, like me, you may have family events tonight and not see it in time. 🙂 If you do see something you want to mention to me and my readers, you can do so by commenting on this post…but hopefully, people realize that the price may have changed by the time they see it.

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You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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.

Happy bookish birthdays (November 21) to…

Happy bookish birthdays (November 21) to…

• Isaac Bashevis Singer (Enemies, A Love Story) (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
• Elizabeth George Speare (The Witch of Blackbird Pond) (at AmazonSmile*)
• Marilyn French (The Women’s Room) (at AmazonSmile*)
• Christopher Tolkien (The History of Middle-Earth) (at AmazonSmile*)
• Beryl Bainbridge (The Dressmaker) (at AmazonSmile*)

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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. 

Great savings and a great time to give to those less fortunate

Great savings and a great time to give to those less fortunate

We have a family tradition for Black Friday which we really enjoy. We do go physically into stores, early in the morning. However, we have a budget and are specifically shopping for Toys for Tots. After we buy the toys (and books), we take them to a local fire station and drop them off.

It gives us such joy to do that! While our own financial situation is going to change soon, this is something we expect to be able to keep doing.

We think pretty carefully about what we are getting…we want to “fill in the gaps” on what might be donated, for one thing. We try to get some teen things (they tend to get fewer things donated than for younger kids). We like getting brands: even though a child may not have much money or a secure home, they know who Wonder Woman is. We’ll probably get at least one fidget spinner this year. 😉 No batteries, not a lot of pieces (so it’s easy to take from home to home), we like something which might change someone’s life (a world map, a magic trick, a toy veterinarian kit…) and of course, books fit that well.

There are a number of wa,ys you can benefit non-profits when shopping from Amazon.

The easiest thing, which you can do all year round, is shop at

Smile.Amazon.com

It feels just like shopping at Amazon…because you are shopping at Amazon. 🙂

Same prices, same payment methods, same address book, same lists…

The only difference is that you designate a non-profit (and you can search for one…there are many!) and Amazon donates half a percent of your purchases of eligible items (lots of items are eligible) to them.

That’s fifty cents on a $100 purchase. That may not sound like much, but it can make a big difference, especially to a smaller non-profit. Over sixty million dollars have been donated by Amazon

You can change your non-profit whenever you want. We are currently designating Sitters without Borders, and over $15 has been donated to them because of our purchases.

You can click or tap where you designated recipient is, and see what your impact has been (how much to the current designee, how much total has been donated on your behalf).

While this next one isn’t as easy, it allows you to give something which is really needed…and you may get a tax benefit. With Smile.Amazon, Amazon is making the donation and gets any benefit. With this one, you are making the donation. I don’t want to advise you on taxes, so if you aren’t sure, check with whatever or whoever you might use for tax advice.

This
Cloud for Good article by Ashley Papp

takes non-profits through the process of setting up an

Amazon Wish List (at AmazonSmile*)

The harder things about it are that you can’t find them as easily (as far as I can tell, you just have to search) and that you are paying specifically for the item.

If you know the name of the group, then you just enter it as if you were searching for an individual’s name. When I put in “Library”, I found a number of options. When you do this, you are getting them exactly something they need, which can be a lot more valuable than a few dollars.

There are a couple of options! You can also directly donate things…we sort of ended up with an extra unopened

All-New Echo Dot (2nd Generation) – White (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

and are donating it to a local children’s center (where kids typically go after school, not where they live). I’ll include instructions telling them how to block voice purchases. I think this could make a big difference, both in accustoming children to an emerging technology, and in answering questions for them.

So, as you are saving money with holidays on

Amazon Devices (at AmazonSmile*)

and Black Friday sales are available now, you can benefit non-profits buying them through AmazonSmile, and perhaps use some of your savings to donate through an Amazon Wish List.

Do you have other great ways you like to give? Have you or someone you known been the benefit of a gift from a stranger? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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.

Decade 1: the first ten years of the Kindle

Decade 1: the first ten years of the Kindle

Amazon’s CEO (Chief Executive Officer), Jeff Bezos, has referred to the company still being on “Day 1”. In fact, in this year’s letter to stockholders, Bezos said

“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”
—Amazon site with letter and video

Well, if Day 2 is stasis, that means Day 1 is change…and since Amazon first introduced the Kindle

Introducing Amazon Kindle (press release)

on November 19, 2007 (ten years ago), a lot has happened!

I’m working on a book, Because of the Kindle, which will cover the period (largely reproducing posts from this blog, but also including new material). It’s important to me that other people’s opinions also be included, and I’ve extended the amount of time that people can share them with me for possible inclusion at first publication through Monday November 27th. I had originally thought I would have the book out for today, but I had a big technical problem…and quite simply, the book is going to be much bigger than I originally thought. Thanks to everyone who has already given their opinions! Please consider adding your own (or more of your own…more than one is okay), and let other people know! I’m not reaching out to current Amazon employees, but I would love to include more authors, bookstore owners/managers (I’m a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager myself), bloggers, podcasters, reporters, publishers, and of course…readers.

As I’ve been going back through the blog, and doing some other research, I’ve been reminded about some of those things and events. In this blog, I’ll hit some highlights, some things which may spark some memories for you, or illicit some curiosity. I’ll also give you some stats because, hey, who doesn’t like statistics? 😉

Let’s start with this easy one:

The Kindle was the first Amazon device. It was actually considered quite a risk: Amazon was a retailer, not a manufacturer. It’s safe to say that it was “Because of the Kindle” that Amazon was able to go on and try other devices. As of today, it stands at twenty. That’s also based on how Amazon displays them  when I click on the categories from the

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

I could count them as a lot more if I broke it down to “flavors”…memory size, communication methods, and so on, but I think that works. The most recent Kindle EBR (E-Book Reader) is considered ninth generation…so they’ve introduced a new generation about once a year (and I’m actually writing this on November 18th…could be interesting things tomorrow).

Nostalgia break: do you remember…?

• The scroll wheel? It was the first way we interacted with our Kindles. You turned a wheel to move the cursor only up and down on the “page”, then pushed it to select
• The 5-way controller? It was the mighty follow up to the scroll wheel. It was like a little joystick
• Now, we use touch screens…

When the USA Kindle Store debuted, there were fewer than 100,000 titles…now there are about 5.8 million. That’s an average of about 1,500 titles added…per day! Note also that there are now fourteen Amazon country sites. There is significant title overlap between the stores, but I believe there are also titles unique to each store.

Nostalgia break: do you remember…?

• Kindle NowNow? On the first generation Kindle, you could enter a question (about pretty much anything) and a paid human being would answer it. They also later tried live human Amazon device support with the original Mayday, which was highly promoted. Pretty quickly, the “face on the screen” went away
• Playing Minesweeper? Alt+Shift+M started a Minesweeper game…and Gomoku was also available. Of course, we had “Active Content” in early models, and some of those were free and some you purchased. For a while, that was a big part of the Kindleer experience.  January 19, 2010: It’s the games Kindles play

With the Kindle 1, the most expensive price and the least expensive price were the same, since there was only one: $399. Currently (and everything I’m doing here is based on what is available new directly from Amazon), the least expensive one is $79.99 and the most expensive one (with all the options) is $349.99. There have been cheaper Kindles, too. You do get a lot more, including the front light. Memory is another obvious difference. The Kindle 1 had 250 MB of internal storage, which they said could hold about 200 books (non-illustrated, really). The version I listed as most expensive above had 32 GB…based on the same book calculation, it could hold 128 times as many, roughly.

Controversies and We Asked For It

• We originally couldn’t gift books to people…we can now
• The Kindle was originally only available in the USA…it’s now available in many countries
• We couldn’t lend books…we can now (but I don’t think it happens very often)
• Amazon added text-to-speech in the Kindle 2…and the publishers pushed back. There were actually demonstrations over it
• Amazon removed an edition of 1984 from people’s Kindles…they later apologized
• The Department of Justice and (separately) States Attorneys General took action against Apple and big publishers for pricing policies under something called the Agency Model. Customers eventually got settlements
• Amazon removed the “Buy” buttons from Macmillan books in a dispute…it had to do in part with “windowing”, delaying the release of Kindle books after the hardback’s release
• Publishers restricted public library e-book use…there was a lot of variability on that
• Some authors resisted having their books in e-book form initially, notably J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter books were later available through a special website), Audrey NIffenegger (available now), Harper Lee (books now available), and Ray Bradbury (who reportedly said that e-books “…smelled like burned fuel”…books are now available)

That’s a bit of a random summary of the first decade!

I want to really congratulate Amazon on the success of the Kindle, and thank them for everything it has done for me!

The book will go into a lot more depth…remember that you may be part of it if you complete the thought, “Because of the Kindle…”

Just for a fun finish: do you know what these mean? I’ll link to my posts with an explanation:

• Topaz explanatory post
• Kindle Million Club explanatory post
• KOLL explanatory post

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You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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 #166: signed books, Because of the Kindle pushed back

Round up #166: signed books, Because of the Kindle pushed back

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

National Book Award winners 2017

The National Book Foundation’s National Book Award winners were announced yesterday:

Official Site

Congratulations to the winners!

• Fiction: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (not linking because the publisher has chosen to block text-to-speech access**)
• Non-fiction: The History Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
• Poetry: Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart (at AmazonSmile*)
• Young People: Young People: Far from the Tree by Robin Benway (at AmazonSmile*)

Because of the Kindle won’t be out on November 19th

In part because of our recent internet outage (but that’s not the only reason), my next book won’t be out on the 10th anniversary of the Kindle on November 19th. I will do a special post (a “First Decade Snapshot”?) which will commemorate it, and will perhaps serve as a preview of the book.

The good news is that means you can still get me your thoughts! My guess is I won’t publish it before December 1st, and it might be a week or so into that month.

I would have liked to have had it out on November 19th, but it is going to be much bigger than I thought originally. I like how it is shaping up…it was fun to think about “Topaz” files again. 😉

In fact, it’s likely to be so big (it could be perhaps, the equivalent of 1,000 pages) that I may price it at $2.99 rather than $0.99 (and I do intend it to be part of Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)).

I’m interested in your feedback on that, too, since I’m planning to put 20% of the gross royalties into giveaways on this blog. At $0.99, I get about 35 cents per sale. At $2.99, I get $2.09. I have to double-check that I check all the other boxes, but I think that’s right. So, I have to sell about six times as many at roughly a dollar than at roughly three dollars to have volume outweigh the price point. I’m ignoring, in this calculation, royalties from KU. Any thoughts?

It just simply wasn’t going to be ready. It’s not easy to make the decision to hold it back (I’ll potentially miss out on some publicity, and I’m likely to miss Black Friday interest), but I didn’t want to put out something that was clearly incomplete. It’s more important to me that people get value out of it than that it gets the maximum sales.

On the bad side: my Significant Other has to put up with my focus on the book for longer. 😉

Meanwhile, at Barnes & Noble…

On Thursday, November 30th (a week after Black Friday this year), at 10:00 AM Eastern, Barnes & Noble will announce their Second Quarter financials.

The morning timing is interesting…if companies expect to report bad numbers, they sometimes want to do it when the market is closed (to minimize the one day market stock impact). It’s possible that the numbers aren’t all bad…although I don’t expect the NOOK line to have recovered much.

It will be webcast here:

http://investors.barnesandnobleinc.com/events.cfm

They are also repeating a really interesting holiday promotion…literally hundreds of thousands of autographed books:

Barnes & Noble Announces the Return of Over a Half-Million Autographed Books from Acclaimed Authors Just in Time for Black Friday press release

These are genuinely big name authors. They list all these for Black Friday:

 

Adult Fiction Signed Editions

• In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende
• The Christmas Room by Catherine Anderson
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• End Game by David Baldacci
• You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President Donald J. Trump (A So-Called Parody) by Alec Baldwin
• The Midnight Line: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Don’t Let Go by Harlan Coben
• The Alchemist (25^th Anniversary Edition) by Paulo Coelho
• Two Kinds of Truth: A Bosch Novel by Michael Connelly
• Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
• Enigma: An FBI Thriller by Catherine Coulter
• Typhoon Fury: A Novel of the Oregon Files by Clive Cussler
• The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
• Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
• Hardcore Twenty-Four: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich
• Dark Legacy: A Carpathian Novel by Christine Feehan
• Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
• Vengeance by Newt Gingrich
• Camino Island by John Grisham
• The Saboteur by Andrew Gross
• Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks
• Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
• Winter Solstice by Elin Hilderbrand
• Strange Weather: Four Short Novels by Joe Hill
• The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• To Be Where You Are: A Mitford Novel by Jan Karon
• The Whispering Room: A Jane Hawk Novel by Dean Koontz
• The Princess Saves Herself in This One (B&N Exclusive Edition) by Amanda Lovelace
• Merry and Bright by Debbie Macomber
• Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker by Gregory Maguire
• The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
• Fletcher by Tom Perrotta
• Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
• Bonfire by Krysten Ritter
• The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
• Deep Freeze: A Virgil Flowers Novel by John Sandford
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• Exposed by Lisa Scottoline
• Rest in the Mourning by r.h. Sin
• A Beautiful Composition of Broken (B&N Exclusive Edition) by r.h. Sin
• Whiskey Words & a Shovel by r.h. Sin
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
• The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
• Artemis by Andy Weir
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Adult Nonfiction Signed Editions

• You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie
• Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden
• F*ck, That’s Delicious by Action Bronson
• Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life by Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush
• Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast
• I’m Fine… and Other Lies by Whitney Cummings
• What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography by Bruce Dickinson
• The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Come and Get It!: Simple, Scrumptious Recipes for Crazy Busy Lives (B&N Exclusive Edition) by Ree Drummond
• Unqualified by Anna Faris
• Blessed Life: My Surprising Journey of Joy, Tears, and Tales from Harlem to Hollywood by Kim Fields
• Growing Up Fisher: Musings, Memories, and Misadventures by Joely Fisher
• Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken
• The Hollywood Commandments: A Spiritual Guide to Secular Success by DeVon Franklin
• Note To Self by Connor Franta
• What Is It All But Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man by Art Garfunkel
• An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power by Al Gore
• The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt
• I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart
• Of Mess and Moxie: Wrangling Delight Out of This Wild and Glorious Life by Jen Hatmaker
• Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman
• Pretty Fun: Creating and Celebrating a Lifetime of Tradition by Kate Hudson
• Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
• Soar! Build Your Vision from the Ground Up by T. D. Jakes
• Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly
• Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans by Brian Kilmeade
• Why We Don’t Suck: And How All of Us Need to Stop Being Such Partisan Little B*tches by Dr. Denis Leary
• The Autobiography of Gucci Mane by Gucci Mane
• Rhett & Link’s Book of Mythicality: A Field Guide to Curiosity, Creativity, and Tomfoolery by Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal
• Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World by Admiral William H. McRaven
• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap Into Radical Curiosity, and Solve Any Problem by Bill Nye
• Blessed in the Darkness: How All Things Are Working for Your Good by Joel Osteen
• Sweet: Desserts from London’s Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi
• Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites by Deb Perelman
• Unshakeable : Your Financial Freedom Playbook by Tony Robbins
• It Takes Two: Our Story by Jonathan and Drew Scott
• Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated by Shea Serrano
• Unstoppable: My Life So Far by Maria Sharapova
• On Power: My Journey Through the Corridors of Power and How You Can Get More Power by Gene Simmons
• You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
• Two’s Company: A Fifty-Year Romance with Lessons Learned in Love, Life & Business by Suzanne Somers
• Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir by Amy Tan
• Raising Trump by Ivana Trump
• Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
• Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay & a Few of My Other Favorite Things by Loudon Wainwright III
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• A Sick Life: TLC ‘n Me: Stories from On and Off the Stage by Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins
• Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
• Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual by Jocko Willink
• The Seat of the Soul (25th Anniversary Edition with a Study Guide) by Gary Zukav

Signed Editions for Teens

• Thirteen Reasons Why (10th Anniversary Edition) by Jay Asher
• The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo
• Girling Up by Mayim Bialik
• One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake
• The Twisted Ones (Five Nights at Freddy’s) by Scott Cawthon
• Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
• Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas
• Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco
• Renegades by Marissa Meyer
• Eragon by Christopher Paolini
• The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
• Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
• Otherworld by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy by Serena Valentino
• Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
• The Book Thief (Special Anniversary Edition) by Markus Zusak

Signed Editions for Young Readers

• Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
• Serafina and the Splintered Heart by Robert Beatty
• Minecraft: The Island by Max Brooks
• The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
• The Land of Stories: Worlds Collide by Chris Colfer
• Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland
• Spy School Secret Service (B&N Exclusive Edition) (Spy School Series #5) by Stuart Gibbs
• The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris
• I Got This: To Gold and Beyond by Laurie Hernandez
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• In the Deep Blue Sea: Jack and the Geniuses Book #2 by Bill Nye
• Wonder B&N Exclusive Edition by R. J. Palacio
• The Dark Prophecy (B&N Exclusive Edition) (The Trials of Apollo Series #2) by Rick Riordan
• Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 3: The Ship of the Dead by Rick Riordan
• The Bad Beginning: Book the First (A Series of Unfortunate Events) by Lemony Snicket
• Little Bigfoot, Big City (B&N Exclusive Edition) by Jennifer Weiner
• The Audition by Maddie Ziegler

Signed Editions for Kids

• Gingerbread Christmas by Jan Brett
• River Rose and the Magical Christmas by Kelly Clarkson
• She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton
• The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors by Drew Daywalt
• Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes by Kimberly and James Dean
• Through Your Eyes: My Child’s Gift to Me by Ainsley Earhardt
• Princesses Wear Pants by Savannah Guthrie
• My Journey to the Stars by Scott Kelly
• Be Brave Little One by Marianne Richmond
• Mighty, Mighty Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker
• The Polar Express 30th Anniversary Edition by Chris Van Allsburg
• The Thank You Book (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems

This is genuinely a reason to visit a Barnes & Noble.

Now that Amazon has physical bookstores, I’ve wondered if they’ll start doing book signings…I’ve seen (and been impressed by) the new one in Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek (across the Bay from San Francisco), California:

The new Amazon Books opened in Walnut Creek California today…and I was there!

They had a number of things that people have come to associate with bookstores…coffee and comfy chairs, for two. Book signings could make sense…

What do you think? Are Amazon bookstores too small for book signings? Are signed books exciting for you personally? As gifts? What do you think will come out of Barnes & Noble’s financial report? $0.99 or $2.99 for Because of the Kindle? What do you think has happened (for you and for the world) Because of the Kindle? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

---

You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

** 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.

Amazon Black Friday deals announced

Amazon Black Friday deals announced

Amazon’s

Countdown to Black Friday deals (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

are going on now.

Black Friday itself is a week from this Friday, November 24th.

In the USA, it’s traditionally one of the biggest shopping days of the year, although there are now other contenders (and it isn’t the biggest day of the year in China, for example…that day, “Single’s Day”, just happened).

It was the day that many stores traditionally started making a profit for the year…when they went into “the black”, out of “the red” (red is how some accounting systems indicated negative numbers).

That’s not how it works for Amazon, but it is still a very big day for them.

Well, perhaps I should say a very big ten weeks or so. 😉

November has become a sales month, and those continue into December…and then the first couple of weeks of January are also great sales times, due to spending of gift cards and credit from returns.

In this

press release

Amazon lists some of the upcoming deals…by item and by price, but not exactly when the sale will happen, in most cases. These deals may be short-lived, so you have to stay on top of it. I’ll try to keep you informed, but if you don’t have the Amazon shopping app, it’s a good time to get it. Asking an Alexa-enabled device what the deals are will certainly work for some of them, and some deals will be even better (sometimes with better shipping options) when you do Alexa voice-shopping.

They list the device deals below as happening “…on various dates and times between Nov. 17 and Nov. 24…”

Amazon Devices
Save $20 on Echo Dot, only $29.99 – the lowest price ever for Echo Dot
Save $20 on All-New Echo, only $79.99
Save $30 on Echo Plus, only $119.99
Save $50 on Amazon Tap, only $79.99
Add a smart plug to any Echo purchase for only $5 ($20 off)
Save $20 on Amazon Cloud Cam, only $99.99
Save $30 on Fire 7 Kids Edition, only $69.99 – and save an additional $10 when you buy two Fire 7 Kids Edition tablets, only $129.98
Save $40 on Fire HD 8 Kids Edition, only $89.99 – and save an additional $10 when you buy two Fire HD 8 Kids Edition, only $169.98
Save $50 on Fire HD 10, only $99.99 – the lowest price ever for the Fire HD 10
Save $30 on Fire HD 8, only $49.99
Save $30 on Kindle Paperwhite, only $89.99
Save $30 on Kindle, only $49.99
Save $30 on Kindle for Kids Bundle, only $69.99
Save $15 on Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, only $24.99

 

Those are great deals, including on some of the newest devices!

I’m deep into getting my next book (Because of the Kindle) ready for publication this week…thanks to everyone who has made comments for possible inclusion! That means I may not have written as much about some things as I might have done. That was also affected by our internet outage over this past weekend…I’m behind where I had hoped to be, but I’m in “catch up mode”. 🙂

Two quick notes on some of the new devices:

I’ve had the

Echo Plus (at AmazonSmile*)

for a while, and I do want to say, I was impressed with how easy the set up was! “Setting up” the Echo Plus was almost as easy as plugging in a lamp. The one thing I had to do was tell it which one of our saved networks at Amazon it should use…but I didn’t need to enter the password. Pairing it with smart devices would have added some steps…but it already knew all the ones I’d previously paired, so I could listen to music, turn the lights on and off, get the weather, and so, within…or one minute or so after plugging it in. Nice!

The other one is the

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

a smaller, cheaper version of the

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

The estimated delivery date has gone back and forth on it, and at one point it was after the 25th…but now it’s for 12/22-12/26. I don’t need it by the 25th, but I’m sure a lot of people want it then. 🙂

This could mean that they underestimated the demand for it…it certainly stood out to me among the new models, which I wrote about here:

Wowsers! Amazon just blew the doors off with new devices and features!

Oh, and I thought I’d mention…the power button on my discontinued Kindle Fire HDX appears to be working again (knock virtual wood)…but we’ll still be looking at getting a new Fire tablet for my Significant Other. We may get it at Whole Foods, when it is likely to be on sale next week…we do want to physically hold it first, which we might also do at the AmazonBooks store.

With all of these deals this time of year (and it’s been consistent), the question becomes…outside of an “emergency” or the desire to get a brand new model right away, why buy Amazon devices the rest of the year? 😉

What do you think? Looking for any particular deals? Did you wait? Are any of your pre-orders delayed past December 25th? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

You can also still make comments about what you think has happened “Because of the Kindle”…they may not get in at first publication (if I choose to use them), but I do expect to update the book later..maybe the beginning of next years, so I can add another “Annual Snapshot”.

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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.

 

 

 

Rats! Literally…

Rats! Literally…

I don’t usually want to do two posts on the same topic in a row, but the other one was really half a post…and I couldn’t resist the headline. 😉

Our internet is now back up at home, after having been down for at least 37 hours (I don’t know exactly when it went out, but it was before 5:00 AM Pacific time on Saturday (and after 3:30, because I was using it then).

It took the tech something like four hours to fix it.

I’m pretty techie myself, so I had done the basic things…and I’m glad that it did turn out to be something I couldn’t have fixed myself. 🙂

It was a combination of things, but the main thing was rat-chewed wires.

Let me be clear: I like rats. 🙂 You know that Michael Jackson,

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

?

You know it’s originally a love song to a rat, right? From the sequel to the horror movie Willard?

I’ve also known pet rats who were intelligent and interested in people.

You also know that the rat is the first year in traditional Chinese astrology because the rat cleverly won the race? Okay, some people would say the rat cheated, but it was still smart and within the stated rules. 😉

However…

That doesn’t mean that rats never cause me problems.

In this case, they had chewed our internet cables.

That created a big signal loss…which apparently set off a red flag for our carrier, which meant (and they were apparently supposed to tell us this first), they put on an “ingress filter”…stopping us from getting internet.

That was apparently necessary to prevent us from “infecting” the neighborhood in some way…we were essentially quarantined.

The tech ended up having to re-wire the whole house, and in a different way than it had been…long story, probably not worth going into here.

It is probably worth giving you some sense as to how much we were impacted by being web blind!

• Obviously, I couldn’t get on wi-fi. That really impacted my book, on which I had planned to do a lot of work the last two days. That doesn’t mean I won’t make it…but it’s going to be a lot more intense week than it might have been. I’m putting out Because of the Kindle in honor of the 10th anniversary of the announcement of the Kindle on November 19th, 2007
• We couldn’t make phone calls. We are in a cell dead zone, so our carrier gave us a mini-cell tower for our house, which works great…but runs off our internet router. That was one thing the service representative wasn’t getting very well. I explained that, but more than once, the rep asked me to call when I got home (I went somewhere else to get some work done), which I couldn’t do
• Alexa didn’t work! That’s just creepy. One nice thing with the Echo Show (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) is that it shows an orange (?) band of light at the bottom of the screen when it’s not on the Internet. That was an easy status indicator when I was trying things. Alexa not working also meant that we couldn’t turn lights on and off the way we normally do
• Our Fire TV with 4K Ultra HD and Alexa Voice Remote (New Pendant Form Factor) | Streaming Media Player (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) and Fire TV Stick didn’t work. We do have cable…but we had to change channels one at a time by continually pushing the button the cable box. That’s because we usually use a Harmony remote…I don’t even know where the remote for the cable box is, offhand…actually, that’s not true. I see it now 😉

I could read on my devices, fortunately. Reading a book which already downloaded doesn’t require internet, although some things don’t work (including Wikipedia look up).

So, I definitely have some catching up to do! I quickly did a few things when we were at the dog park on cellular today, and, as I mentioned, I went somewhere else for a couple of hours each day.

Better check my family e-mail first (after this), then I’ve got some writing to do!

Thanks for your patience!

---

You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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.

Our internet has been out for over 24 hours

This is just a heads up, and the timing is not great for us, but our internet has been out since before 5 a.m. on Saturday. This is the weekend where I’m really finishing putting the book together, so the timing is not great, but I wanted to let you know in case I have not responded to something that you may have commented on the blog. They are coming out this afternoon, that hopefully fix it. I am able to do all the basic stuff, and none of it worked.

Update: a bit more on this…I’ve gone to somewhere with internet for a while. 🙂

It’s amazing how impacted we are when our internet is out! Our cellphones don’t even work. You see, our house is in a dead zone…no reception. Our carrier gave us a mini-cell tower for the house, which works well…but it runs off of our internet. With the internet down, we can’t make phone calls. We could walk a block or so and do it, if we had to do it.

The service person is supposed to come between 1:00 PM Pacific and 3:00 PM P. Hopefully, they can fix it. I plan to be home before that, and then I am hoping it is on the early end. My Significant Other is home right now, and if they show up early without calling first, my SO will walk somewhere and then call me to let me know  to come home…my SO is very smart, but I have better expertise to discuss the internet issues.

It is a weird one: my router says it has internet, but my phone says it doesn’t…I’m connected to wi-fi at home, but no internet.

I have lost hours of time working on the book these past two days, but I’m still shooting to have Because of the Kindle in the Kindle store by the 10th anniversary on November 19th (one week away).

---

You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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 #165: Sonny Bono, Amazon-Whole Foods gadget bargains

Round up #165: Sonny Bono, Amazon-Whole Foods gadget bargains

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

These may be particularly short this time. 🙂 I’m really on a deadline to get my next book, Because of the Kindle, done in time to have it in the USA Kindle store for the tenth anniversary of the Kindle (November 19th). I’ll really do the bulk of the remaining work the next three days (I’m off on Monday, since I’m working Saturday the 18th). You can still send me your thoughts about what has happened (to you and the world) Because of the Kindle), and possibly have them included at first  publication (I may add more if I update the book). You’ll retain all rights to what you write (and I’ll be able to publish it in ILMK-related publications for no compensation). I’ll link to details at the bottom of the post.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2017 (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I really appreciated that Amazon sent me an individual alert to their “Best Books of 2017”! I always find lists like these (there s more than one) fascinating, and I’m looking forward to a chance to look it more thoroughly.

Archive.org adds books published from 1923-1941 in major move

Somehow, I had missed this a month ago. 😦 Thanks to Open Culture for posting about it, and then it showed up in my Flipboard read.

In this Archive.org

blog post by Brewster Kahle

they publicized the “Sonny Bono Memorial Collection”. There is a lot more to this story than I can cover right now, but essentially, this non-profit (and a truly significant site on the web) has begun making digitally available books which weren’t before (for free to the public). They are leveraging a particular part of copyright law in what feels like a new way. They plan to automate this scanning process in some way, which may result in thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of books to be available.

Definitely more on this story later.

HDXter damaged

I’ve had my Kindle Fire HDX for more than four years, and I may have gotten more use out of it than out of any of my other devices in the electronic era.

Unfortunately, I dropped it, and it fell out of the original Amazon Origami cover, hitting concrete from a height of more than a meter.

I thought it was okay…but it seems to me like the power button may be broken. I haven’t been able to turn it off since! The Origami cover won’t put it to sleep…and neither will using the button outside of the cover.

That means I may need to replace it during the holiday season…my SO also doesn’t like the recent Fire I bought for my SO’s use, so we’ll have to figure out how we do this.

One possibility? We’ll buy one at Whole Foods. 🙂 There is a lot of information out there about Black Friday sales (again, I’ll post more on this), but at least some Whole Foods are going to carry Amazon devices at a discount (that’s not to say the discount won’t be available online, too). This

The Verge post by Shannon Liao

lists some prices…and they are good!

Have thoughts on these stories? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Also, I’d love to include more people in Because of the Kindle, if you are interested!

---

You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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.

I bought something from someone besides Amazon…

I bought something from someone besides Amazon…

Yeah, it feels a little bit like cheating. 😉

I’ve said that I would like to have everything I buy go through Amazon, and that’s true. If I could pay for my hybrid’s gas through Amazon, I would.

However, there are times when I need to look somewhere else.

We think

McCormick Ground Saigon Cinnamon (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

is really superior. I have that (and just that) on old-fashioned oatmeal every morning (regular readers probably know I eat healthy food…although I will admit to sometimes eating too much of it).  😉 If we travel, we take a jar with us on the trip. My Significant Other keeps one at work.

However, our local grocery store stopped carrying it. I prefer it not roasted and not organic.

Amazon does have it (hence the link above), but at the time of writing, it’s $8.91 per bottle, not available through Amazon Prime…and $4.67 shipping. Love it as I do, that would be hard to justify, especially as we have a changing economic situation.

I found it at Jet (owned by Walmart) for about $4.45 each, with free shipping. I did need to buy ten of them, and I saved a quarter by getting it one day later (which was still just a few days). 🙂

This is actually the second time I’ve done it…the first time it went really well.

This time, the packaging was…amusing, although not really, when you consider the environmental impact.

Here is a picture of the box:

That box is big! It could be

• a crate for a German shepherd
• a parking garage for a Big Wheel
• an amazing entrance for two contortionists in Cirque du Soleil

😉

Each spice bottle (which would easily fit in your hand) was:

• taped closed
• put in a Ziploc bag
• wrapped in tissue paper and a sort of rattan (?) mesh…until it was probably three times its size. Maybe longer than a paper towel roll, as thick as a thermos. Kind of like juggling pins or bowling pins, without the top handle part
• those wrapped packages were then packed with brown paper…tons of it, enough to make a few outfits for Lady Gaga 😉

Yes, it’s thoughtful. Certainly, the bottles were not going to break through any normal handling, and most abnormal handling. It would be a tremendous challenge for robots to do this.

Fortunately, except for the Ziploc (and they aren’t that brand) bags and possibly the tissue paper (although I’ve seen conflicting answers on that) it is probably recyclable.

As I went to write this I saw that Amazon currently has the organic (which is acceptable for us, just not quite as good) through Prime Pantry for $3.21. They have eight of them right now (when I’ve looked before, they’ve been out). I think we successfully did a Prime Pantry order once before…I’ll definitely look at that again when we order next time. We could order enough to fill a pantry box…and it wouldn’t be as big as this Jet box!

Bottom line: I’d rather buy from Amazon…

What do you think? Have you bought from Jet? Would you prefer to buy everything from Amazon if you could? Would you pay a bit more for the privilege? Do you just buy things wherever they are least expensive? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

---

You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

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

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* 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.