Update on my free Flipboard magazines: more than 10,000 ILMK viewers

Update on my free Flipboard magazines: more than 10,000 ILMK viewers

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

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

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

The main idea is that you can use the

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

app, which I read every morning anyway on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

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

They’ve recently really improved the experience of reading it in a web browser:

https://flipboard.com/

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

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

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

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

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

First, though, let me cite a couple of overall statistics for my four magazines…

I’ve flipped 60,806 articles!

I have 929 followers…closing on on 1,000.

Okay, on to each of the magazines:

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

ILMK (I Love My Kindle)

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

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

• 12,088 viewers (this has close to tripled since the last time I did an update on these…which was just in April!)
• 185,200 page flips (that’s approximate: they say 182.5k)
• 16,299  articles (I’d have so say my curation is better here, or at least, more focused)
• 645 followers (since this was a new measurement recently, I looked up what it meant at Flipboard: they explain the new stats here. I had misunderstood page flips before…I thought it was when people flipped an article I picked into their own magazine, but it turns out it is “the number of items viewed in the magazine. Readers visit the mag: page flips are the number of items viewed…I think that means they click on it in the magazine to go to the original article. The number of articles are the ones I put into it, and followers are the actual subscribers. This number has tripled since the last time)
• Engagement: 1,136% (flips/articles: this has gone up since last time)

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

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

It does allow me to do some different things.

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

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

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

Here are some recent articles as examples:

1. Ten Fantasy/Sci-Fi Books/Series to Feed Your Love of Reading – Or: Some girl in library school tries to tell you what to read (The Mary Sue)
2. A New Approach to Jonathan Franzen (Book Riot)
3. Macmillan’s Novel Approach to Combating Childhood Hunger (Publishers Weekly)
4. The Rise of Phone Reading (The Wall Street Journal)
5. Anne Rice, Christian Publisher Defend Nazi Romance as Outcry Intensifies (Flavorwire)
6. Hummingbird Offering E-Book Retailing Option (Publishers Weekly)
7. Barber Offers Free Haircuts to Kids Who Read to Him (Neatorama)
8. 15 Diagrams that Show How a Book Is Made (EBOOK FRIENDLY)
9. Publishing Industry’s ‘Super Thursday’ to See More than 500 Books Friendly (The Guardian)
10. Why Do We Always Proclaim That the Novel Is Dead? (New York Times)

The Measured Circle

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

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

• 2,973 readers (which they now call “viewers”…that actually makes more sense, since you can put links to videos in these)
• 17,318 page flips
• 43,926 articles
• 51 followers
• Engagement (flips/articles): 39.4% (Hm…this has gone down 5% since last time ((again))…have to think about what that means for which articles I flip)

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

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

I’d say its primary purpose is…fun!

Recently, I’ve mostly moved coverage of the

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

to The Measured Circle…it’s a better fit there, I think, than in ILMK (although I still link to the articles in ILMK. It’s too soon for that to have impacted the actual blog or the Flipboard magazine much…but I think it will.

To give you a sense of it, here are ten recent articles and their sources. Earlier, I did the most recent ten in order, but that’s not really representative, since I may read a number from the same source at the same time

1. Elementary John Noble debuts as  Sherlock’s father – Exclusive First Look (John Noble)
2. Catching up with Robert Vaughn, the original man from Uncle (Entertainment Weekly)
3. The Ravenna, The Manticora, and 11 Somewhat Lesser-Known Monsters (Fate)
4. I Spoke To The Woman Who Filmed A Haunted Puppet Moving In Her Basement (The Anomalist)
5. NBC Greenlights Pilot for a Sitcom Set in the DC Universe (Topless Robot)
6. Alexa Skills come to the Echo, plus more home automation (me) 😉
7. Fear the Walking Dead: Alycia Denham-Carey hopes people will be ‘confronted’ by the new take (FearTWD)
8. Another Skunk Ape Spotted in Florida (Mysterious Universe)
9. Apple car clues emerge from letter to test facility
10. Astronomers discover the smallest known supermassive black hole

Doc Savage Fanflip

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

http://flip.it/HJShc

• 451 viewers
• 4,724 page flips
• 101 articles
• 195 followers
• Engagement: 4677%

I look for interesting things on the web about Doc. If Shane Black ever gets out the Doc Savage movie, this may get more popular, but I’m happy to ferret out the oddball bits and pieces. This is the hardest one to which to add things…content jc Sust doesn’t change as often on the web.

1. Who is Doc Savage (A Doc Savage Primer) (sfsignal)
2. Writer’s Commentary – David Avallone On Altered States Doc Savage Part 1 (Dan Wickline)
3. Doc Savage’s oft-misunderstood “Crime College”
4. A Book Review by Mark Squired: Doc Savage: Death’s Dark Domain
5. Characters You Won’t See in the Doc Savage Movie

The Weird Old Days

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

 http://flip.it/ZtmYw

• 223 viewers
• 1,214 page flips
• 310 articles
• 66 followers
• Engagement: 391%

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

It’s a labor of love, for sure!

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

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

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

I do feel like I’ve made some real discoveries: I posted one that is about an apparently hoaxed photograph of a UFO (airship)…in 1897! I’ve found that my pace has slowed considerably, though…it’s tougher to find ones than it was, since I’ve already looked at some of the more obvious search terms.

1. A STRANGE MONSTER: Mountain People Alarmed and Fortifying (Knoxville Weekly Chronicle, February 19 1873) [This one was interesting…”a huge black bear with mane and head like a lion, but had horns like an elk upon it…”]
2. THE WEREWOLF: A Human Monster In Which the Ancients Firmly Believed (Daily Press, Newport News, Virginia, October 7 1905)
3. A PESSIMISTIC PHILOSOPHER: Interesting Talks on the Stories of the Werewolf (Evening Star, Washington D.C., December 27 1893)
4. Skeleton of Indian Giant (The Broad Ax, Salt Lake City Utah, December 23 1916
5. OUIJA BOARD AGAIN BRINGS MARVELOUS MYSTERIOUS MESSAGES (The Ogden Standard, December 11 1915)

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

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

I do want to say that ILMK has made a big move in catching up to and then surpassing The Measured Circle in readers. I’m still impressed with just how quickly these are growing.

Enjoy!

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

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

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.

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Update on my free Flipboard magazines: over 100,000 page flips!

Update on my free Flipboard magazines: over 100,000 page flips!

Holy Moley*!  100,000 of anything is a lot to me, and I’m really shocked to have just one of my Flipboard magazines (the one connected to this blog, ILMK) with over 100,000 page flips! It looked like I was on my way there for a while, but it’s still a little mind blowing. 😉

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

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

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

The main idea is that you can use the

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

app, which I read every morning anyway on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

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

They’ve recently really improved the experience of reading it in a web browser:

https://flipboard.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

ILMK (I Love My Kindle)

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

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

• 4,464 viewers (this has doubled since the last time I did an update on these)
• 100,149 page flips
• 10,918  articles (I’d have so say my curation is better here, or at least, more focused)
• 217 followers (since this was a new measurement last time, I looked up what it meant at Flipboard: they explain the new stats here. I had misunderstood page flips before…I thought it was when people flipped an article I picked into their own magazine, but it turns out it is “the number of items viewed in the magazine. Readers visit the mag: page flips are the number of items viewed…I think that means they click on it in the magazine to go to the original article). The number of articles are the ones I put into it, and followers are the actual subscribers)
• Engagement: 917% (flips/articles: this has gone up since last time)

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

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

It does allow me to do some different things.

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

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

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

Here are some recent articles as examples:

1. Shakespeare: Can you match the quote to the play? Try our quiz! (CS Monitor)
2. Amazon/Harper Talks Take a Turn (Publishers Weekly)
3. Indies Choice nominees (Publishers Marketplace)
4. 11 Sports Books Better than Ken Burns’ Baseball (Feed Your Need to Read)
5. Avenge and Revenge (Kindle Direct Publishing)
6. What’s Your Reading Habit? (Twitter)
7. Jesse Kornbluth says his book’s threesome tale is just that (Page Six)
8. The Girl on the Train racks up express sales of 2m in three months (The Guardian)
9. Amanda Hocking (Hocking Books)
10. George R.R. Martin releases Sansa-fueled excerpt from The Winds of Winter (EW)

The Measured Circle

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

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

• 2,662 readers (which they now call “viewers”…that actually makes more sense, since you can put links to videos in these)
• 12,191 page flips
• 26,848 articles
• 40 followers
• Engagement (flips/articles): 45.4% (Hm…this has gone down 5% since last time…have to think about what that means for which articles I flip)

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

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

I’d say its primary purpose is…fun!

To give you a sense of it, here are ten recent articles and their sources. Earlier, I did the most recent ten in order, but that’s not really representative, since I may read a number from the same source at the same time

1. Orson Welles documentary celebrates centennial of the filmmaker’s birth (The Washington Post)
2. Voices heard (and writhing figures seen) on Planet Mercury (ufocon)
3. Why Jane Goodall Believe in Bigfoot (Blank on Blank via the Anomalist)
4. Play DuckTales: Remastered on iOS, Android, Windows phones today (Entertainment Weekly)
5. Smashing! Large Hadron Collider Gets Set for Weekend Restart (NBC News)
6. Marvel’s Daredevil, on Netflix, Plods Promisingly Toward Comic-Book Glory (The Village Voice)
7. April Fool’s Roundup Open Thread (Topless Robot)
8. Air Shepherd Drones Stop Elephant & Rhino Poaching (IndieGoGo)
9. More Mad Max on the Way: Tom Hrdy is Signed on for THREE More (The Mary Sue)
10. Ankle exoskeleton harnesses bodypower to aid mobility (Wired UK)

Doc Savage Fanflip

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

http://flip.it/HJShc

• 266 viewers
• 1,838 page flips
• 95 articles
• 72 followers
• Engagement: 1135%

I look for interesting things on the web about Doc. If Shane Black ever gets out the Doc Savage movie, this may get more popular, but I’m happy to ferret out the oddball bits and pieces. This is the hardest one to which to add things…content just doesn’t change as often on the web.

1. Matt Hiebert (Columbia Tribune)
2. Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts of Lester Dent (ceideretisommorephicent)
3. Writer’s Commentary: David Avalloone On Altered States Doc Savage Part I (Bleeding Cool)
4. DOC SAVAGE: L’HOMME DE BRONZE (Imaginaire.CA)
5. What Doc Savage Can Teach Us About World War I (The Spectator)

The Weird Old Days

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

 http://flip.it/ZtmYw

• 185 viewers
• 866 page flips
• 306 articles
• 82 followers
• Engagement: 283%

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

It’s a labor of love, for sure!

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

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

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

I do feel like I’ve made some real discoveries: I posted one that is about an apparently hoaxed photograph of a UFO (airship)…in 1897! I’ve found that my pace has slowed considerably, though…it’s tougher to find ones than it was, since I’ve already looked at some of the more obvious search terms.

1. A STRANGE MONSTER: Mountain People Alarmed and Fortifying (Knoxville Weekly Chronicle, February 19 1873) [This one was interesting…”a huge black bear with mane and head like a lion, but had horns like an elk upon it…”]
2. THE WEREWOLF: A Human Monster In Which the Ancients Firmly Believed (Daily Press, Newport News, Virginia, October 7 1905)
3. A PESSIMISTIC PHILOSOPHER: Interesting Talks on the Stories of the Werewolf (Evening Star, Washington D.C., December 27 1893)
4. Skeleton of Indian Giant (The Broad Ax, Salt Lake City Utah, December 23 1916
5. OUIJA BOARD AGAIN BRINGS MARVELOUS MYSTERIOUS MESSAGES (The Ogden Standard, December 11 1915)

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

 

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

I do want to say that ILMK has made a big move in catching up to and then surpassing The Measured Circle in readers. I’m still impressed with just how quickly these are growing.

Enjoy!

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

* The exclamation “Holy Moley” (spelled that way) was popularized by Captain Marvel (the SHAZAM hero…there have been others). It’s actually quite the erudite expression, contrary to what you might think. You see, Billy Batson is transformed into Captain Marvel by saying SHAZAM (it’s an initialism, so it should all be in capitals…it denotes the Big Red Cheese’s powers: wisdom of Solomon, strength of Hercules, stamina of Atlas, power of Zeus, invulnerability of Achilles ((well, I think they originally said “courage”, but you can be pretty courageous when you can’t be hurt)), speed of Mercury). Moly (without the “e”, but it’s a transliteration any way) is the (holy) herb that Odysseus uses to protect against Circe’s magic…which includes transformation. So, “Holy Moley” is a very appropriate response to being transformed…comics and the classics may have more in common than you think. 😉

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

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 #286: new Dr. Seuss, kindlereunion

Round up #286: new Dr. Seuss, kindlereunion

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

Mayday saves the day!

I have said many times that I consider Amazon’s nearly instant onscreen tech help for some Fire devices to be one of the greatest Customer Service innovations in years.

It was proven for me again yesterday.

Two “third party” apps on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

wanted updates, and I did it.

You can install apps from places outside Amazon…contrary to what you might hear, Amazon is quite open to you using “competitors'” products. It’s a simple settings change, to allow installation of apps from “unknown sources”.

Naturally, you assume the risk for doing that…the apps will not have been vetted by Amazon to make sure they work and won’t damage your tablet.

I only do it with very few apps, where I trust the studios.

In this case, it was Zinio, which I use to read Fortean Times (which Amazon does not carry), and Maxthon, which is my browser of choice.

Well, after the updates, neither of them would launch!

They appeared to be on the device, but when I would try to open them, they just wouldn’t.

I tried a few troubleshooting things on my own:

• I tried restarting the device
• I tried opening them both from the Carousel and from the Apps tab
• I tried clearing the cache and force stopping them
• I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Maxthon
• I finally cleared the data on Maxthon…that’s not too bad with that program, since my “favorites” are all stored on their server. The only thing I lost was my “Quick Access” choices…that’s not hard to fix
• I downloaded Maxthon fresh from their website

Since none of that worked, I called Mayday.

At first, it was clearly baffling.

Some things would indicate it was on the device, some wouldn’t. For example, there was an icon on the Carousel (with an exclamation point on it…a trouble indicator). It showed on the Cloud tab, not on the device tab. Now, an item can be on the Carousel and not be downloaded, but things were just weird.

Finally, the Mayday rep suggesting syncing with Amazon. I hadn’t thought of that…since Zinio isn’t stored in Amazon’s Cloud. I did get Maxthon from there at some point, when it was available.

That did it!

Don’t ask me why, but after a simple sync, they were both fine.

I’m going to go with what’s called the Engineer’s Law or the Law of Pragmatism: “If it works, it’s true.” 😉

I think Mayday is great for people who are not techies, but even for someone who is quite knowledgeable like me, it can be terrific.

KindleReunion.com

Sometimes, I get comments on very old posts…so most people will never see them.

In most cases, they are fake comments…what I call Eddiecoms.

I got one recently on one of my most popular posts

What to do if your Kindle is lost or stolen

It recommended the use of a site called KindleReunion.com.

I thought it was worth sharing my response with a wider audience:

“I appreciate the suggestion, and I checked out the site.

That seems unsafe to me.

One of the main reasons someone steals something like a Kindle is to get personal information and in other ways take advantage of the person who lost it.

kindlereunion arranges a connection between a Kindle loser and an apparent finder…and it seems to me they share your e-mail address.

You put in your serial number and an e-mail address as a loser. Another person, who is a finder, puts in a serial number and their e-mail address. The site says

“Once the system finds a match, both parties will receive an e-mail so they can arrange the exchange of the Kindle.”

So, here’s the scenario:

You are at the airport, and someone steals your Kindle while you are going through Security.

Naturally, you have it password protected and you deregister it and have it blacklisted (as indicated in the post on which you commented).

They enter the serial number as a finder.

kindlereunion (and my intuition is that their heart is in the right place) e-mails you both (after you enter as a finder), and connects you two.

The thief then has a number of ways to go.

“I’m on the other side of the country. Why don’t I just mail it to you? What’s your address?”

“Let’s meet and I can give it to you.”

“I’d send it to you, but I don’t have the cash to mail it. See, I put in an airport locker, but I lost the key. They want $40 to replace the key before they’ll give it to me.”

You can probably imagine a lot of other scenarios…

That’s why a recovery service like ReturnMe maybe worth it…it protects your personal information. TrackItBack, unfortunately, is out of business at this point (it’s been about five years since I wrote that post).”

A new Dr. Seuss

Following on the heels of the announcement of a never before published Harper Lee novel (written before To Kill A Mockingbird…I would consider it an early draft which was massively revised, based on what I’ve heard):

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

comes the news that we are going to get a new Dr. Seuss picturebook!

It’s coming in August, and while a Kindle edition is not yet available for pre-order, my guess is that one will show up soon. I’ll link to the page for one you can pre-order, and eventually, a Kindle edition is likely to be linked on that page:

What Pet Should I Get? (at AmazonSmile*)

I’m not hearing a lot of controversy about this one, like there has been about Go Set a Watchman (some people worry that Harper Lee doesn’t fully understand or approve of what is happening…my guess at this point is that is unlikely), but the provenance on this one is very different as laid out in this

USA Today story by Maria Puente

ILMK Flipboard Magazine passes The Measured Circle

Just since my most recent

Update on my free Flipboard magazines: 1000s of ILMK readers!

the free ILMK Flipboard magazine has caught up to and passed the The Measured Circle Flipboard magazine!

ILMK has 2800 viewers and The Measured Circle has 2621.

I would guess that by the next time I give an update, there will also have been 100,000 “flips” in ILMK.

I don’t know that the recent update to the Flipboard PC browser version mattered to that…but I suspect it will help with getting readers.

Recently, one of my relatives wanted to start getting ILMK on a tablet, but didn’t want to get other news stories (as you do with Flipboard). I installed the free

gReader app (at AmazonSmile*)

I also tested it out myself…seems to work fine for the simple purpose of reading blogs.

Adding subscriptions was a snap, and you download for offline reading, share, and use a white on black viewing mode, if you want.

Now, I’m always very grateful to people who subscribe to this blog through the Kindle store. That ninety-nine cents a month (well, my cut is about thirty cents) is honestly one of the things which makes the blog possible…thanks, subscribers!

However, Amazon still doesn’t make the blogs available to tablet users. I’m sure some of my readers are still paying the ninety-nine cents a month just to support me, and reading the blog on a Fire.

If they do that, I want to give them a good experience.

I do love Flipboard, but if all you want to do is read blogs, well, gReader seems like a good way to go.

What do you think? Are you excited for a new Dr. Seuss? Have you had a great Mayday story? Did you lose a Kindle…and then have the finder return 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.

Round up #285: reading declines, Kindle Unlimited expands to Canada and Mexico

Round up #285: reading declines, Kindle Unlimited expands to Canada and Mexico

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

Kindle Unlimited launches in Mexico and Canada

As a publisher (I only publish my own works…which I would guess is true of most Kindle Direct Publishing authors) who has books in

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

Amazon just informed me that KU is expanding to Canada and Mexico!

That’s exciting…I like having it very much. It’s an “all you can read” plan, $9.99 a month in the USA. Here’s the link for the information page

Kindle Unlimited in Mexico

where it is 129 pesos a month, and for

Kindle Unlimited Canada

where it is $9.99 (Canadian) a month.

Chri

Echo videos from Phink, one of my readers

One of my regular readers and commenters, Phink, recently got an Amazon Echo, Amazon’s ambient computing device. It’s an always on voice input device which plays music, answers all kinds of questions, and more.

Phink has posted what I think are a couple of the best videos I’ve seen so far about the Echo. They aren’t really reviews, they are demonstrations of what the device can do. If you are interested in the Echo, I think they are definitely worth watching to see what your experience might be like.

• Phink’s Echo YouTube video demonstrating microphone pickup at a distance
• Phink’s Echo YouTube video demonstrating natural speech understanding

I appreciate Phink sharing these! I’ll be happy to write about the Echo, but my delivery date still says between May 27th and July 2nd.

Publishers Weekly: No Panic Over 15 Percent Drop in Christian Fiction Sales

Christian fiction has been a strong category of seller, but from 2013 to 2014, according to this

Publishers Weekly article by Ann Byle

sales dropped 15%. The article goes on to say why the publishers aren’t worried about that…I guess they have faith. 😉

Video news

I thought I’d group a couple of things together here…a mini-round up. 😉

First, this is just odd to me, but Amazon Studios is working with Sid and Marty Krofft to do a reimagined pilot of one of their series. The Kroffts were really gonzo “kids’ show” producers in the 1970s, although they did a lot more than that.

So, what gets the reboot? The most popular H.R. Pufnstuf? The wacky Lidsville? Electra Woman and Dyna Girl? Nope…Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. This may take a lot of reimagining…Sigmund’s parents were parodies of Archie Bunker and Phyllis Diller, and I just don’t think that’s going to fly with today’s audiences. Hoping they stick with the Johnny Whitaker theme song, though. 🙂

press release

Second, Fire TV, which is both the

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

and the

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

have added a bunch of apps, including the much talked about Sling TV (which may enable some people to drop cable…by paying for a much more focused package), TED (great, though-provoking lectures…this one is free), and Fox Sports GO.

press release

Only 40% of 17 year olds read at least one a week for fun

I do think that e-books have enabled and encourage a lot of people to read more, but stats like the ones in this

EBOOK FRIENDLY post by Ola Kowalczyk

are troubling.

It’s nothing particularly new…as kids get older, fewer of them report reading for fun.

Part of that may be that they have to read so much more for school…a high schooler presumably has a lot more assigned reading than a nine-year old. If they are enjoying that reading, it would probably still not be reported as “reading for pleasure”.

What’s troubling is the decline across age groups since 1984.

It’s possible that there was a big decline (let’s see…video games, maybe?) for a while, and that e-books are, in fact, increasing reading.

Still, the Common Sense Media data reported on here (and shown in an infographic) is not especially encouraging. On the good side, more than a quarter of homes have an EBR (E-Book Reader…they mention Kindles and NOOKs. That would not include tables, like the Kindle Fire).

Big update for Kindle for iOS (4.7)

In this

Kindle Forum thread (at AmazonSmile*)

an update for the iOS (Apple mobile…iPhones, iPads) app is announced.

It includes eTextbooks and the “Book Browser” feature that brings you information about the book (new for iPhones).

Flipboard redesigns Flipboard for the web

This is a big improvement!

I’ve written about my free Flipboard magazines here before.

I read it in the

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

app, which I read every morning on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

For my readers who didn’t have Fires, though, I know the experience trying to read them in a browser on a PC wasn’t great.

Well, if you’ve tried it before, check it out again at

https://flipboard.com/

I like what they’ve done it with it: it looks much better, and seems to be less resource intensive.

Hope you enjoyed my birthday! 😉

We had a great time…we went to Point Isabel in Richmond (rated as one of the top ten dog parks in the world)…our dogs love it there! We also get about an hour walk, two or three miles. I went to doctor yesterday for an annual check-up, and to the DMV to renew my license. When I did the DMV thing, I realized that my weight is down about 55 pounds since I last did a driver’s license! I’m down about 40 pound in the last two years, thanks to the free app I reviewed here:

Review: MyFitnessPal

Well, that, and a lot of work. 🙂 I figure another year and I’ll be in good shape.

Then we tried a new restaurant, and the food was good.

After that, we saw The Theory of Everything. That’s one of the Best Picture nominees we hadn’t seen. I thought it was good, and was glad I had done my personal

2015 BOPMadness (Bufo’s Oscar Prediction Madness)

predictions before I saw it. When you think a movie is good, it can skew your predictions…you tend to think the Academy will like it better than you might if you had not seen it.

I also got a book…always a good thing! I’ll wait until I’ve read a bit before I say anything about it, and I’ll likely do a Goodreads review.

Hope it was a great day for you, too!

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

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

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

 

Update on my free Flipboard magazines: 1000s of ILMK readers!

Update on my free Flipboard magazines: 1000s of ILMK readers!

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

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

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

The main idea is that you can use the

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

app, which I read every morning anyway on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Measured Circle

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

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

• 2,606 readers (which they now call “viewers”…that actually makes more sense, since you can put links to videos in these)
• 9,512 page flips
• 18,863 articles
• 33 followers (since this is a new measurement, I looked up what it meant at Flipboard: they explain the new stats here. I had misunderstood page flips before…I thought it was when people flipped an article I picked into their own magazine, but it turns out it is “the number of items viewed in the magazine. Readers visit the mag: page flips are the number of items viewed…I think that means they click on it in the magazine to go to the original article). The number of articles are the ones I put into it…hm…that seems to suggest that they click on somewhat more than half of the ones I put in…that’s fine, since some can be pretty well understood by what you can see without clicking on them for more info), and followers are the actual subscribers)
• Engagement (flips/articles): 50.4% (I’ve added that this time)

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

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

I’d say its primary purpose is…fun!

To give you a sense of it, here are ten recent articles and their sources. Earlier, I did the most recent ten in order, but that’s not really representative, since I may read a number from the same source at the same time

1. Catcalling Men Caught Harassing Their Own Moms in Disguise (Video) (People)
2. Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon reportedly set for new ‘Ghostbusters’ (tablet.washingtonpost.com)
3. The Cowboy Bebop Theme Played On Floppy Drives Proves Robots May Let Jazz Musicians Live (The Mary Sue)
4. Analyzing 87 years of Oscar, by the numbers (popwatch.ew.com)
5. Space Trivia (Playbuzz)
6. Doctor Who Merchandise – Technically K9 Print (hello I’m Nik)
7. 10 Baffling World War I Mysteries We May Never Solve (Listverse)
8. Get your first look at ‘Superman: Earth One’ Volume 3 — exclusive (Shelf-Life.ew.com)
9. Friday Harbor man reports UFO sighting (San Juan Journal via The Anomalist)
10. Wild dolphins exchange names when they meet at sea (Discover)

ILMK (I Love My Kindle)

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

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

• 2,059 readers (for the first time, I can say “thousands”) 😉
• 73,248 page flips
• 8,553  articles (I’d have so say my curation is better here, or at least, more focused)
• 188 followers
• Engagement: 846%

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

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

It does allow me to do some different things.

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

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

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

1. IMLS 2012 Public Libraries Survey Report Issued (IMLS.gov)
2. 5 Mystery Books about Book about Books (and that’s not a typo) (The Lineup)
3. How I Landed My First Book Deal (Entrepeneur)
4. Author Spotlight: Sean T. Smith (Steven Konkoly)
5. The Book Hunter (Book Geek Heaven)
6. A Quick Guide to Beta Reader Etiquette (Helping Writers Become Authors)
7. Is Being a Writer a Job or a Calling? (New York Times)
8. Discover Your Destiny (Open Road Media)
9. Chasing Rainbows (Amazon)
10. Free Book: The Man in the High Castle (Book on the Knob)

The Weird Old Days

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

 http://flip.it/ZtmYw

• 165 viewers
• 679 page flips
• 292 articles
• 16 followers
• Engagement: 232%

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

It’s a labor of love, for sure!

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

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

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

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

1. “Nikola Tesla Promises Communication with Mars” (Richmond Virginia Times, January 13, 1901)
2. “Tesla Wireless Plan Would Race Machines Even Without Pilots” (New York Evening World, May 13, 1922)
3. “Scientist invents ‘Television’ which sends photo by wire” (Spokane Press, January 16, 1910)
4. “VICTOR FLAMBEAU MAKES A MODERN VISIT TO ATLANTIS THE FABLED ISLAND CONTINENT SUNK BENEATH THE OCEAN” (Washington Times, March 12, 1922)
5. “Assorted Spirits (Dry) on Tap Here” (The Evening Missourian, March 30, 1920: spiritualism…it’s a joke headline)
6. “Ouija Now Bosses Motion Picture Studios” (Great Falls Montana Daily Tribune, May 30, 1920)
7. “Ouija Border Gives a Demonstration” (The New York Sun, November 23, 1912: I was trying to do some Ouija stories because of the recent movie)
8. “OUIJA BOARD AGAIN BRINGS MARVELOUS MYSTERIOUS MESSAGES” (Ogden Utah Standard,December 11, 1915)
9. “Psychic Stuff” (Washington D.C. Evening Star, November 5, 1922)
10. “Bibles Disappear in Michigan University as Fair Co-Eds Answer Lure of Ouija Board”  (The Washington Times, January 19, 1920)

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

Doc Savage Fanflip

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

http://flip.it/HJShc

• 193 viewers
• 1,124 page flips
• 94 articles
• 28 followers
• Engagement: 1194%

I look for interesting things on the web about Doc. If Shane Black ever gets out the Doc Savage movie, this may get more popular, but I’m happy to ferret out the oddball bits and pieces. This is the hardest one to which to add things…content just doesn’t change as often on the web.

1. Dynamite Takes Red Sonja, Vampirella, The Shadow And Doc Savage To Altered States (Bleeding Cool)
2. From ‘Doc Savage’ to Mack Bolan, Hollywood seems poised for pulp to replace superheroes (Hitfix)
3. What Doc Savage can teach us about World War I (Spectator)
4. Doc Savage (Wikia)
5. I Fell in Love with Pat Savage When I was About 10 Yes Old” – David Walker Talks Doc (Bleeding Cool) (Pat is yet another element where Superman followed Doc Savage…a blond female cousin)
6. Why You Should Care: Doc Savage Edition (Crave Online)
7. Doc Savage Casting Call (IGN)
8. Doc Savage’s oft-misunderstood ‘Crime College’ (Julian Perez Conquers the Universe)
9. Arizona Doc Con (Facebook)
10. Michael Uslan Talks The Avenger, The Shadow And Doc Savage – Justice, Inc. (Bleeding Cool)

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

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

I do want to say that ILMK has made a big move in catching up to The Measured Circle in readers. I’m still impressed with just how quickly these are growing.

Enjoy!

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

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

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

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

Update on my free Flipboard magazines: 50,000 page flips!

Update on my free Flipboard magazines: 50,000 page flips!

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

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

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

The main idea is that you can use the

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

app, which I read every morning anyway on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Measured Circle

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

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

• 2,378 readers (which they now call “viewers”…that actually makes more sense, since you can put links to videos in these)
• 6,565 page flips
• 10,508 articles
• 17 followers (since this is a new measurement, I looked up what it meant at Flipboard: they explain the new stats here. I had misunderstood page flips before…I thought it was when people flipped an article I picked into their own magazine, but it turns out it is “the number of items viewed in the magazine. Readers visit the mag: page flips are the number of items viewed…I think that means they click on it in the magazine to go to the original article). The number of articles are the ones I put into it…hm…that seems to suggest that they click on somewhat more than half of the ones I put in…that’s fine, since some can be pretty well understood by what you can see without clicking on them for more info), and followers are the actual subscribers)

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

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

I’d say its primary purpose is…fun!

To give you a sense of it, here are ten recent articles and their sources. Last time, I did the most recent ten in order, but that’s not really representative, since I may read a number from the same source at the same time

1. 10 big Broadway disasters, according to Seth Rudetsky (Entertainment Weekly)
2. Republicans vs. Democrats favorite TV shows revealed (Inside TV at Entertainment Weekly)
3. Six Things We Learned About Interstellar and Science Fiction From the Mobile Game (and Trailers) (Topless Robot)
4. The Active Side of Infinity – Shamanism and Intuition with Carlos Castaneda (Waking Times)
5. Can Batman fix India’s pothole problem? (The Guardian)
6. Nick Frost plays Santa Claus in this year’s ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special (The Verge)
7. The American who Turned Ugly Betty into a Russian (BBC)
8. How Virgin Galactic doesn’t just benefit the rich (Wired)
9. Combining the DNA of Three People Raises Ethical Questions (NPR)
10. Denmark Funds research on underground trolls (The Local)

ILMK (I Love My Kindle)

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

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

• 822 readers
• 50,288 page flips (fifty thousand!)
• 5,536  articles (I’d have so say my curation is better here, or at least, more focused…close to ten times as many page flips as articles)
• 94 followers

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

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

It does allow me to do some different things.

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

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

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

1. Ebook geek problems #14 (EBOOK FRIENDLY)
2. You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker (Open Road Media)
3. The 20 Funniest Books Ever Written (Esquire)
4. Community Centered: 23 Reasons Why Your Library Is the Most Important Place in Town (Public Libraries Online)
5. William Gibson: I never imagined Facebook (Salon)
6. Prominent Editor’s Exit is Setback for Amazon Publishing Unit (New York Times)
7. In Loving Color: Romance 2014 (Publishers Weekly)
8. Incredible chart maps out every house in the Game of Thrones (EBOOK FRIENDLY)
9. 10 Amazing Female Novelists unde r50 (BuzzFeed)
10. Fight Evil. Read Books (society 6)

The Weird Old Days

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

 http://flip.it/ZtmYw

• 237 readers
• 478 page flips
• 27 articles
• 10 followers

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

It’s a labor of love, for sure!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doc Savage Fanflip

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

http://flip.it/HJShc

• 138 viewers
• 558 page flips
• 91 articles
• 5 followers

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

1. Doc Savage Paperback Book Covers by James Bama (The Golden Age Site)
2. Doc Savage (Flickr)
3. I Fell in Love with Pat Savage When I was About 10 Yes Old” – David Walker Talks Doc (Bleeding Cool) (Pat is yet another element where Superman followed Doc Savage…a blond female cousin)
4. Why You Should Care: Doc Savage Edition (Crave Online)
5. Doc Savage Casting Call (IGN)
6. Doc Savage’s oft-misunderstood ‘Crime College’ (Julian Perez Conquers the Universe)
7. Arizona Doc Con (Facebook)
8. Michael Uslan Talks The Avenger, The Shadow And Doc Savage – Justice, Inc. (Bleeding Cool)
9. Superhero Doc Savage (WGNS Radio)
10. 80 Years of Doc Savage: 1933 – 2013 (YouTube)

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

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

Enjoy!

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

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

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

 

Round up #269: how Amazon spent the summer, AmazonShack?

Round up #269: how Amazon spent the summer, AmazonShack?

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

Should Amazon buy Radio Shack?

Several articles are talking about Rob Peck of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey’s suggestion that Amazon could buy Radio Shack if the latter declares bankruptcy. Here’s one that I thought had a good discussion of the idea:

MarketWatch article by Jennnifer Booton

I don’t really see it. They certainly don’t want the name or the operating strategy. Generally, when Amazon takes over a business (IMDb, GoodReads, Zappos) it keeps the name and the business runners…and the basic system.

Would owning the physical stores do them any good? Well, first, that would depend on the leases, but let’s skip that.

Many Radio Shacks now are tiny, and they don’t seem to me to have a good layout. I don’t think people would go to an old location out of habit, and then shop at an Amazon store.

They are in expensive malls in many cases.

I suppose they could become lockers, where you can pick up your Amazon orders in your town, but it doesn’t seem like the most efficient place to do it.

Would a strictly Amazon hardware place work? Kindles, Kindle Fires, Fire TVs, Fire Phones? Nope, I don’t see it…maybe as a pop up store at the holidays, but not year round.

It’s not to Amazon’s advantage to encourage you to go to physical stores. They live online…it would be like a shark trying to stalk a New York alley. 😉

Who had a bad summer?

I think you’d be hard pressed to find another three month period that was so negative for Amazon, in terms of public relations. Yes, people didn’t like it when Amazon removed a George Orwell book from their Kindles, and they are still having some repercussions from that, but generally, they got past it.

Recently (in the September 5th issue), Entertainment Weekly did a Summer Winners & Losers piece. In the books category, they classified Amazon as a loser, saying in part that they had made enemies of “…book publishers, the German Government, George Orwell’s estate, and Stephen Colbert — to name a few.”

The

Amazon Fire Phone (at AmazonSmile)

is being pegged (prematurely, in my opinion) as a loser. I have one myself, and there are some real attractions to it. I’ve recently used Firefly a few times to identify TV shows: worked great! Within about ten seconds, it could tell me the name of the episode, who the actors are, and so on. I suspect Amazon will give it three years…if developers start really building for Firefly and dy-per (dynamic perspective), I think it could be a solid 15% player in the SmartPhone market…and a much bigger moneymaker than that for Amazon.

However, Amazon’s success (in terms of sales and market share, not profit) has depended to a large extent, in my opinion, on good will with customers. It doesn’t help that many of the customers’ favorite authors are part of Authors United, which is about to send a new letter to the Amazon boardmembers. You can read the letter here:

http://www.authorsunited.net/

It’s worth reading. They make some important points, including that many of them are not Hachette authors, and are therefore not directly impacted by what I call the Hachazon war.

I think this short excerpt from the letter sums up the argument:

“Since its founding, Amazon has been a highly regarded and progressive brand. But if this is how Amazon continues to treat the literary community, how long will the company’s fine reputation last?”

Going to the Board (and publishing their contact information) is an interesting tactic. The Board could pressure the company to change a position.

That’s not to say that I agree with everything in the letter. Amusingly, they suggest that Amazon can’t be forced into doing anything. I say that’s amusing, because Amazon has in the past always lost when they’ve gone up against the big publishers…text-to-speech and the Agency Model are two good examples. In the latter case, it took the Department of Justice to make a change.

That history might be part of what may have convinced Amazon to do an “end around”…to try to keep customers without being so reliant on the tradpubs (traditional publishers). We now see that many of Amazon’s bestsellers are not published by the tradpubs. Would it take a long time to get people to make that switch? Sure, but Amazon is famous for taking the long view.

That can’t possibly do it if the customers aren’t on their side, though…

Checking in on my free Flipboard magazines

I continue to be amazed at the growth of my free Flipboard magazines.

The main idea is that you can use the

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

app, which I read every morning anyway on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

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

To me, it’s a different medium, in the way that Twitter is.

I doubt I’ve had anything else which has reached more people…although I don’t make any money directly from it, and it certainly doesn’t satisfy my creative nature like this blog does.

Don’t worry…I still love you best. 😉

The Measured Circle

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

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

• 2,278 readers
• 5,630 page flips (by other people of my article choices)
• 6,124 articles

ILMK (I Love My Kindle)

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

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

• 654 readers
• 35,590 (!) page flips
• 3,607 articles

The Weird Old Days

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

 http://flip.it/ZtmYw

• 112 readers
• 381 page flips
• 269 articles

Doc Savage Fanflip

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

http://flip.it/HJShc

• 100 readers
• 272 page flips
• 89 articles

As you can see, The Measured Circle has the most readers…but ILMK has by far the most article flips by other people.

For more information on them, see Update on my free Flipboard magazines.

What do you think? What would Amazon’s best strategy be to get public opinion back…or do you think they haven’t lost it? Do you think Amazon is working to make the tradpubs irrelevant to their success strategy? Should Amazon buy Radio Shack? Would that be like Futurama coming back after it was canceled? 😉 Should Amazon even have brick and mortar stores? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barnes & Noble “consciously uncouples” from NOOK

According to Barnes & Nobles’

press release

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

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

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

This short excerpt tells the tale:

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

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

The stock rose, according to CNN Money

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

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

Not everybody thinks this is the death knell of the NOOK

Motley Fool article by Dan Newman

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

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

Barnes & Noble Beach Reads sale

Here are a few of the ninety titles:

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

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

This

Publishers Weekly article by Jim Milliot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

and my

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

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

Amazon Fire Phone (at AmazonSmile)

when I get it at the end of July.

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

Children’s books given away at Food Banks

I love this story!

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

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

It felt really good to be able to help.

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

The Telegraph story by Martin Chilton

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

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

Bravo to the charity Booktrust for arranging this!

Lemony Snicket endorses Spencer Collins

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

ILMK Reader Hero #3

Spencer Collins, according to this

Huffington Post article by Ed Mazza

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

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

Mary Rodgers reported dead

Mary Rodgers (at AmazonSmile)

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

Freaky Monday (at AmazonSmile)

has reportedly died.

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

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

The book will live on.

The Measured Circle free Flipboard magazine continues to grow

On Monday, I gave you an

Update on my free Flipboard magazines

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

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

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

Interesting… 🙂

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

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

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

Update on my free Flipboard magazines

Update on my free Flipboard magazines

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

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

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

The main idea is that you can use the

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

app, which I read every morning anyway on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does that mean that Flipboard is more influential than Twitter?

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

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

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

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

The Measured Circle

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

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

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

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

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

I’d say its primary purpose is…fun!

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

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

ILMK (I Love My Kindle)

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

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

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

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

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

It does allow me to do some different things.

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

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

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

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

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

The Weird Old Days

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

 http://flip.it/ZtmYw

• 50 readers
• 257 page flips
• 177 articles

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

It’s a labor of love, for sure!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doc Savage Fanflip

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

http://flip.it/HJShc

• 27 readers
• 172 page flips
• 49 articles

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

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

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

 

Round up #253: Jeff Bezos in class, best reviewed “mother” books

Round up #253: Jeff Bezos in class, best reviewed “mother” books

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

My Flipboard magazines take off!

Thanks to those of you who are reading my new Flipboard magazines:

ILMK magazine at Flipboard

and

The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard

I already have over 100 readers, which seems like a lot to me at this stage.

I wrote about this before:

Flip your way into being a magazine editor…I did

but I have to say, it is fun to see these results!

What happens is that I do my normal morning

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

read on my

Kindle Fire HDX (at AmazonSmile*)

and as I read the articles, I “flip” them into one of the two magazines…which you can then read.

This is just my curation: I don’t even get to add comments, which I think is fine.

Oh, and how do I get compensated for this?

Just by knowing people are reading it. 🙂

Unlike the subscribers to this blog (thanks, subscribers!) I don’t get royalties. If you are seeing any ads, they are put there by Flipboard, not me.

I’ve actually flipped more articles into The Measured Circle (174 at time of writing, versus 160 into ILMK), but ILMK is a lot more active (there have been 1,382 page flips there, as opposed to 233 at The Measured Circle).

There are lots of magazines being created by others…have you created one?

If you are reading either of mine, do you have any feedback to share?

Jeff Bezos speaks…to an eighth grade class

I’m always interested in what Jeff Bezos has to say. While I certainly find the company interesting, I’m also interested in Jeff as a human being. Often what the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) communicates is philosophy…and it’s important to keep that first in a business setting.

In this

New York Times article by Nick Wingfield

we get to see a parent’s tweets when Jeff spoke to a class of kids.

This is pretty different from that Princeton commencement speech back in 2010 (which you can watch here), but the ideas are not that different.

One thing which was? Jeff brought a drone!

Bezos is quoted as saying, “Who succeeds at amazon? “Explorers and pioneers”. Who fails? Those who focus on killing our competitors.”

I think that’s key to success…that, and not over-estimating your customers’ loyalty. I’ve said before, I think that’s how market leaders tend to lose that position…

HarperCollins credits e-books when profits jump 83%

Now that they aren’t spending all that money fighting over the Agency Model, publishers can start making money again. 😉

According to this

Publishers Weekly article by Jim Milliot

HarperCollins said, “…sales of more profitable e-books, ongoing operational efficiencies and higher revenue, EBITDA rose 83% at HarperCollins for the third quarter of fiscal 2014 which ended March 31. EBITDA hit $53 million, up from $29 million in last year’s third quarter. Revenue increased 14%, to $354 million. Both sales and profits were driven by the Divergent series which sold more than 8 million units in the quarter. Total e-book revenue increased 46% and accounted for 26% of HC sales, up from 21% a year ago.”

It might surprise you that only 26% of HC sales are e-books…but units for e-books are going to be much higher than that.

They mention the

the Divergent series (at AmazonSmile)

as being a major contributor.

While certainly adults have read those books, it’s nice to me that young people are, in a lot of ways, driving book profits. That bodes well for the future. 🙂

The “mother” of all best reviewed books 😉

Just for fun, here’s a search of the

Best reviewed books with “mother” in the title (at AmazonSmile)

One that stands out to me right away?

Are You My Mother? (at AmazonSmile)

by P.D. Eastman. I remember this one! It’s a great kid’s book…and even though it is illustrated, it is accessible with text-to-speech.

Have a great day on Sunday!

Enjoy!

What do you think? I’ve tended to like HarperCollins as a publisher…did it surprise you that the percentage of e-book sales are still that low? Does this result change your feeling about the future of traditional publishers? I mentioned kids’ books driving profits…but 50 Shades of Grey did, too. Neither of those are really the mainstream…what is the future of literary fiction? Do you have a Flipboard magazine? Should Jeff Bezos have brought a book, rather than a drone? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

New! 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.