Round up #222: Mark Grist, Paperwhite update
The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
Major Paperwhite update
Yesterday, I wrote about a major Kindle Fire update.
Today, Amazon announced a big update to the new Kindle Paperwhite (new Kindle Paperwhite at AmazonSmile: support a non-profit by shopping) in this
press release
There are three main features:
- Goodreads integration
- Kindle FreeTime
- Cloud Collections
Goodreads and Cloud Collections were part of the update to the new generation Kindle Fires yesterday, and they already had Kindle FreeTime.
I do have a Kindle Paperwhite expected to arrive today (I was able to get it for $19 in a recent promotion…it replaces one for me which was recently stolen during a home break-in). I’ll be able to look at these more carefully after I get it. If you want to get it right away and install it yourself, you can go to
Kindle Software Updates page
Here is part of the press release Amazon sent me:
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Goodreads Integration
Goodreads on Kindle Paperwhite brings together the world’s largest e-reading community and the world’s largest community of book lovers. Join more than 20 million other readers on Goodreads to discover great books and have discussions about what you’re reading. Features of the new Goodreads integration, available exclusively from Amazon, include:
– Share favorite passages with your Goodreads friends without leaving the book.
– See what your friends are reading, read their reviews and discover new books to read.
– When you finish a book, immediately rate it without putting down your Kindle.
– Keep track of all your reading activity—update your “Currently Reading”, “Read”, and “Want to Read” shelves directly from your Kindle. Easily add your Amazon book purchases, print and digital, to your Goodreads account.
Kindle FreeTime
Built-in parental controls have been extended to give parents a simple way to encourage kids to spend more time reading. Parents can set daily reading goals for their kids, hand-select books for their kids to read, and track progress against goals. Children earn achievement badges for hitting reading milestones—for example, reaching and exceeding their daily reading goal, and passing big milestones like “Read 1000 pages”. A progress report keeps parents updated on total time spent reading, number of words looked up, badges earned and books finished.
Cloud Collections
Organize your books, newspapers, and magazines in customized collections for easy reference, and Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes the collections across your Kindle devices and reading apps so they’re available on all of your devices.
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“I Like a Girl Who Reads”
There is a great video linked in this
Huffington Post article by Sarah Barness
It’s a poem by Mark Grist, and it has to do with what’s attractive…and that isn’t always the physical.
I will warn you that it is NSFW (Not Safe for Work), although you could probably hear it performed on network TV.
Although I’m not a fan of calling adults by words meant for children, I think that the poet is trying to make the point that someone who uses the common vernacular can also be drawn to the intellectual…and that’s important to express.
“How to Open a New Book”
This
EBOOK FRIENDLY post
reproduces a quaint, illustrated explanation from a bookbinder about how to open a new hardback properly.
I must say, I didn’t do it that way. I generally didn’t open the book all the way, the way it is shown here. I sort of peeked into the middle, tilting the book back and forth for each side, so that I didn’t break the spine. I was going to say “never”, but I did open them fully for some things like coffee table books. Novels, though? Not usually…
Bookstore sales buck general retail trend…by going down
For the third month in a row, according to this
Publishers Weekly article
U.S. bookstore sales were down..a lot. 4.5% year over year…we are also down for the whole year so far.
Overall, retail is up…this is particularly a brick-and-mortar (I’m a former manager) bookstore issue.
I do think this may be the last holiday season that we see Barnes & Noble in its current configuration. Amazon is doing more and more for us, and there are independent bookstores that are growing…I just don’t see investors looking at this holiday for B&N thinking that it’s worth keeping up the support.
That could mean that the chain gets sold to someone…or even that we know it will largely close. If the latter is the case, I think we would see one more holiday season out of them, but knowing that it was going.
I have given some ideas earlier about How to save large bookstores, and it’s possible Barnes & Noble will pull a phoenix on this…but you don’t see a lot of phoenixes around. 😉
The Onion goes all digital
I remember seeing a stack of copies of The Onion in a bookstore, just like any other newspaper.
Now, after 25 years, according to this
USA Today story by Roger Yu
it’s going to stop publishing on paper. It’s only been doing that in three cities recently, but this is another example of a major print publication dropping that format to go for all digital.
I also remember the day this blog passed The Onion in the Kindle store! That was exciting for me, and I wish them the best in the future.
“Apple Seeks to Knock Out E-book Class Action Suit”
Legal issues have been part of publishing for a very long time, and there is not indication they are going away any time soon.
They certainly go back more than a century, when the Supreme Court ruled that a store could discount books without the publisher’s permission (creating the “First Sale Doctrine”) in 1908. There was a battle that lasted more than a decade over whether or not Captain Marvel infringed on Superman, which meant the “Big Red Cheese” was off the stands for a long time.
In this
Publishers Weekly article by Andrew Albanese
we learn that Apple is basically arguing that the “class” in class action suits against it for e-book pricing is…I guess, ill-defined is a good way to put it.
My intuition is that they won’t prevail in getting the case dismissed, and that (if they don’t settle…they didn’t in the Department of Justice case, but did in the European Union) will have a trial in maybe May of 2014.
What do you think? Will Barnes & Noble exist, largely as we know it today, into 2015? How much does whether or not a person read affect how you feel about them…both as a friend and a potential partner? Stating a more simple (and narrow) version of that, is reading sexy? Did you try to keep a book in the same condition it was when you bought it, or did you curl the cover under, dogmark pages, and make marginalia? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting 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. I recently polled my readers about my linking to AmazonSmile, and while more than two-thirds of the respondents said they would like it or didn’t mind (and about 15% didn’t know), there were enough people who wouldn’t like it that I’m not going to just jump into it and do it for everything. I’m going to try doing both links in this post, and see how hard and/or confusing that is for people. You can let me know how you feel about having both links by commenting on this post.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.
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