New Free Kindle Books + Newly-Discounted Ones Found by Forumners + Amzn specials + Other discussions (8/8/11)

ONGOING FREE PLUS DISCOUNTED KINDLE BOOKS DISCOVERED BY FORUM MEMBERS

After today, the forum alerts for temporarily free books as well as discussions of newly discounted Kindle books will be on a separate page.

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Amazon's own ongoing listing  - of LIMITED-TIME OFFERS Promos
  Amazon sorts these by Bestsellers first.
  I've added a separate sorting by Low-to-High pricing.

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Other forum threads on books that might interest some
  . What have been your favorite public domain books not so well known?
  . Best "Free" books you've read (many are no longer free, however).
  . Highly Recommended Books That I Didn't Like

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ONGOING UPDATES
This blog entry regularly changes the forum-topic-links below, updating them to the most recent forum recommendations, especially since the message threads are often difficult to find.  The dates are in Red to make them easier to see.  These will be kept for about 3 weeks (unless they're reported to be no longer free or discounted) and then scroll off.

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NOTABLE DISCOUNTED BOOKS
Am regularly pointing you, with this changing blog entry, to the latest messages on Kindle-customer recommendations for newly-found discounted Kindle books:
7/18-7/20, 7/20-7/21, 7/21-7/22, 7/23-7/25, 7/25-27, 7/27-29, 7/29-30, 7/31-8/2, 8/2-3, 8/4-6, 8/6-8, 8/8-9

  8/3 - Publisher Harper Perennial: sale of 20 titles for $20, for August
      reported by Emily Bronte.
  8/2 - Macmillan's Kane & Abel series, $2.99 is a popular entry.
  7/25 - Amelia Peabody, now all $4.44
  Many of the ones mentioned in June are still discounted.   While you're reading the message threads with links to the discounted Kindle books in them, Kindle customers will be adding new recommendations there for ones they've found while you're reading the thread.  I can check these daily and give a good starting point for the day.  It's been suggested (and I agree) that I remind people that on the first visit there they should go to Page 1 of the message thread (you can click on the number while there) and read the opening post by  RandomizeME, which includes

' This thread is NOT a book promotion thread for authors, or for people to post about indies. (And it's not for posting freebies either.) This thread is to post discounts and price drops that readers find for books from publishers." '

  Amazon made a separate forum for "Meet Our Authors" where authors can talk with customers about their books.
  Some here will just follow the discounted-books forum thread daily.

  On a couple of posts there, I saw that people had seen a couple of books drop even further right after they bought them, partly due to people noting that the two were lower at B&N's sales, and Amazon has given (with no problem, they say) $credits on those further drops in that short time.

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THE KINDLE COMMUNITY FORUM'S NEW-FREE-BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY OTHER CUSTOMERS
(Mainly contemporary books) - Main Finder: Happy Reader "Joyce"
  These are almost daily, and I'll link you to these also, so you can quickly see the latest that other Kindle owners have found from various sources.  Will keep them here for about 3 weeks.

  Here are: July 19, July 19 - afternoon, July 19 - add'l, July 20, July 21, July 21 - afternoon, July 22, July 24, July 25, July 26, July 26 - afternoon, July 26 - late, July 27, July 27 - afternoon, July 28, July 28 - evening, July 29, July 29 - midmorning, July 29 - afternoon, July 30, July 31, Aug 1, Aug 1 - Evening, Aug 2, Aug 3, Aug 4, Aug 4 - afternoon, Aug 5, Aug 5 - Evening, Aug 5 - Very Late Evening, Aug 6, Aug 6 (later), Aug 7, Aug 7 - Evening, Aug 8, Aug 8 - evening.

Additional info for the dates above:
  Customer "A" at the forum reminds everyone that the "Vook" series includes some "enhanced" books with video and says those are listed for iPads and iPhone apps and not for the Kindle e-reader, and they tend to have file sizes of 100-500 megs (an average regular Kindle book is less than 1 meg).
  Luckily, some Vook books are regular and not "enhanced" books.

  July 19 - 1 book (Innocent Monster), 9 books (afternoon), 4 add'l in horror/fantasy
  July 20 - 3 books
  July 21 - 6 books, 2 books (afternoon)
  July 22 - 3 books
  July 24 - 10 books + 31 Vook Kindle-app books w/Audio/Video content for Apple devices
  July 25 - 6 books
  July 26 - 4 books (2 "Enhanced", for iDevice apps), 1 book (afternoon) Children's, 1 book (late) Christian.
  July 27 - 1 book (1st of Fey series), 14 books + 1 game (late morning)
  July 28 - 1 book (morning), 10 more-diverse books (evening)
  July 29 - 7 books, including Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #7
  July 29 - 7 more books (mid-morning), 14 books (afternoon)
  July 30 - 1 book (short mystery-thriller)
  July 31 - 3 books
  Aug 1 - 20 books (some repeats + some with good reviews), 10 more (evening)
  Aug 2 - 5 books
  Aug 3 - 4 books
  Aug 4 - 23 books (a.m.), 2 books (afternoon)
  Aug 5 - 14 books (a.m.), 1 book (evening), 9 books (very late evening)
  Aug 6 - 3 books (a.m.), 1 book (later)
  Aug 7 - 4 books, 1 book (evening), the 2nd book of 3, for
      The Days and Months We Were First Born-Family By Fate is back after being free only a few hours last week, but it's $2.99 now.  Book 1 is still free
  Aug 8 - 8 books (a.m.), 19 books (evening)


  The main (speedy) free-book finder is Happy Reader "Joyce", and she lists them each day and is the originator of that regular topic thread.
  While you're reading the latest there, other customers and Joyce tend to find more that day.


ONGOING, NEW FREE KINDLE BOOKS - MANY TEMPORARILY FREE (mostly contemporary)
On the usual free Kindle books, the links in the box below will give you most of them with several sorting methods, and the listings are usually limited, to eliminate previews, chapters-only, and single short stories to save people time (although some of the lists linked to in the box will point to the most popular free Kindle books and you'll see some short-stories there), so they are doable when short on time.

  Some of the free contemporary Kindle books are growing by 30 to 70 free books per day and it's not practical to list them all, and I must say, there are free ones which aren't of the highest potential as seen in the writing just for the product descriptions!), but you can see those books in lists via the links-box at the bottom of this and other blog articles here and can decide quickly -- with Amazon summary product info -- which might be worth trying.

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For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW:  June  July  Aug 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

Read More >

PC Magazine relays tablet ideas from 'multiple sources'

PC Magazine's Tim Bajarin relays coming-tablet talk from "multiple sources"

Not tremendously exciting but Tim Bajarin is passing along what he's hearing.  In essence:

  . center of its design would be on reading books
  . sources say Amazon is using pretty low-cost parts and not using any
      of the major manufacturers.
  . key goal: make the tablet "very inexpensive"
      "as much as 20 to 25 percent below cost"
  . use a new business model to 'own' the Android tablet market
      (not targeting Apple)
  . go for usual low-cost razor idea, with Android Appstore, streaming movie
      and music services as the blades
  . apply users' purchases to their tablet through a 2-yr amortized
      program to cover lost physical cost of tablet and more
  . add in Cloud service revenue + advertising...

As he says, this is what he hears is being 'highly considered.'

This matches general speculations for the last two months.
But with the 'very inexpensive' mantra (definitely a 'prayer'), Amazon may be in a spot if they don't intend this.  And yet, Barnes and Noble has done that with the 7" NookColor (essentially a tablet, or at least many of us use it that way), with its gorgeous screen, at the $250~ price point.

  Amazon would need to make a screen at least as good as that one, in my view.  I am hoping its book-reading capabilities for any 7" tablet will have more basic features (Landscape mode and Zoom-in on images) than the NookColor does, but that's just my own hope there.

  Since Amazon does this with slower e-Ink screens and they do not have to conform to Adobe specs for DRM'd books, they should be able to add these features.  I really like my NookColor but am frustrated that for books with art/history illustrations, I can't zoom in nor view anything in Landscape mode on the smaller screens (even a 7" one is small, alongside a 10" tablet, though nicely portable).

 But Amazon offers so many more features in its e-Ink models than competing models (except touch screen, for now), I would think they'd include more features in their tablet reading too.

  Reminder: With tablets speculation, we're talking about LCD models here, and not the e-Ink devices that are so good for reading outdoors.

Photo credit: digimind.nl

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For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW:  June  July  Aug 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

Read More >

A Windows Phone 7 'Mango' update feature for the Fall. The Kindle Chronicles podcast Aug 5: textbook rentals, Kindle with Evernote

KINDLE FOR WINDOWS PHONE 7

First announced in January this year, this Kindle app was the first major eBook app for Windows Phone 7-based devices.  It has one feature I wish the Kindle itself had -- the ability to send an email to someone with a link to one of your Kindle books (rather than having this confined to Facebook or Twitter announcements).

The Windows Phone is in the news this week because those who were at Gdgt's live Seattle event Friday night got a preview of some main features coming to the "Mango" update to be ready this Fall.

' A search for a specific movie, for instance, can bring up not only websites about the movie, but connect directly to the phone's IMDb app that can play the movie's trailer.

  Scanning the title of a book, via the phone's camera, can forge a connection to the phone's Kindle app to download the book to be read on the phone. '

I thought that seemed a nice feature, while hoping it would download a sample rather than buy the book right off :-) but they probably just skipped a step when describing it.


KINDLE CHRONICLES PODCAST INTERVIEW ON AMAZON TEXTBOOK RENTALS PLUS A TECHNICAL TIP
Len Edgerly mentioned in this Friday's night's Kindle Chronicles weekly podcast that until September, the podcast will shift to a bi-weekly schedule until Labor Day.

You can, though, catch his other weekly podcast, The Edge of the Road, Len's newish Podcast on "technology and driving," short episodes of about 11 minutes each, recorded in the car, dealing mainly with Ford's new MyFord Touch system, installed in the 2012 Ford Focus.  This is a sort of grand experiment, and he reports (with Darlene's help) the ups and downs with this new technology.  Len also asks that his podcast listeners give him their experience with the built-in navigation system, made by Xanavi.  You can email him on that at PodChronicles AT gmail.com

This week's TheKindleChronicles has a short segment on the success of author Karen McQuestion, an interview with Amazon's Kindle Vice President, Dave Limp, who talks about Amazon's plans to expand the program and 'constantly improve' its usability.  That interview starts at 17:38 of the mp3 which can be streamed or downloaded to your computer.

  This week's Tech tip from the podcast: "How to to store your Kindle highlights and notes in Evernote, courtesy of a blog post by Michael Hyatt."

  Hyatt talks about the private, password-protected webpage at Amazon given to all Kindle users, to (among other things) hold and present their notes and highlighting for each Amazon book.  I've written about that little-known but highly valuable feature (especially for students) here.

  (To Kindle-edition subscribers on Kindle 3's: you can actually click the link to read it but you'll need, once you're on that page, to press Menu and then "Article Mode" in order to read it easily.)

  Also, in connection with making notes on the Kindle, there's an undocumented step that will make it easier.  Here is one section from my blog article on "Copy-paste to Note" that I'll insert here for convenience.

' ... sometimes I'd like to add a thought about something from a passage I'm reading.  I really don't want to type the passage, so I've wished for a way to copy and paste an excerpt to a Kindle book's "Notes" box and add, to that Note, shorthand thoughts.  The brief note added this way can be expanded on a computer later.
  This is doable.

The following steps are for Kindle 2's, then modified for Kindle 3's, and for Kindle DX's

  1.   Begin to highlight the sentence(s) you want to reference in your note by pressing down the 5-way button where you want to begin the copy.

  2.   5-way down, and at the last line to be excerpted, 5-way right, to the end of the referenced passage.   Do NOT press the 5-way button down to end the highlight.

  3.   Instead, press the space bar.  That'll bring up a search field.

  4.   Your now-highlighted passage is pasted into the Searchbar on Kindle 2's and DX's and into a Note-box on Kindle 3's.

  5.
  For Kindle 2's and DX's
   Now 5-way to the right, through several options, until you reach
   the "note" option.

  For Kindle 3's
   Upon a press of the spacebar, you don't get a Searchbox.
   Instead you get a Note-box as a main focus and
   with seemingly fewer options, but if you go to the bottom
   and keep 5-waying to the right, you'll see other options.
   In this case, we want to stay with making this a Note.

  6.
  For Kindle 2's, DX's
   Press down the 5-way button on "note" and you'll see
   the highlighted portion entered automatically into
   a Note-box.  You can now add some thoughts
   about the highlighted portion just pasted in.

  For Kindle 3's
   You are already in the Note-box and can save the note
   on the Kindle
   or save & share it on Facebook or Twitter. That process
   lets you write a cover note as well.

Tip: Anything you highlight, copy and paste this way, you have options to, instead, Google or search in Wikipedia or your Kindle's dictionary or on the Kindle itself.  But we've chosen "note" here because this makes notes about designated passages quite a bit easier.

'

Michael Hyatt's tutorial, linked above, on using your Amazon book annotations with Evernote looks really useful.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Read More >

My Comcast WiFi is down - UPDATE: Kindle News, Kindle books, magazines

Down for several hours. My neighborhood, apparently. So, my desktop, laptop, and Nookcolor aren't connected.  I'm using my Kindle 3's 3G to do this very brief blog entry. Can't do copy/paste with it, so this will be it. They say it'll be another 3+ hours. At least I can get on to read a bit! More when I get WiFi back!

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UPDATE AFTERWARD
Comcast restored the network connections after 8 am.
  While on my Kindle 3G, I found that some formerly problematic pages seem to load faster now, although image-heavy sites will still take forever to load, so stay away from those.  A Kindle World's main page is outrageous in length (because I found that people will, more often than not, skip reading rather than click on 'more' or 'next' and so I never go to the webpage when using the Kindle -- but I tried it last night to confirm that my brief posting went through and found that it actually loaded quite a bit faster than in the past.

Still, people should stick to mostly-text pages when using the Kindle web browser.  Again, try the free, downloadable Kindle Mobiweb file of links that you can just click on, to get to mobile-device optimized pages, which include umbrella pages made by others that are themselves collections of good pages to access via the Kindle.

While experimenting, I wanted to see if I could click on a link from the Kindle-Edition of the blog (which opens a "new window") and maybe download a book, since in the past that was not doable.  I clicked on the first book in the list of HarperCollins "Perennials" -- their favored backlisted books and new books for including in the collection of 20 ebooks for $20 during August.  I did get to the Amazon page for the ebook and it allowed me to buy the 99c book that way.

With the Kindle 3, the initial webpage is seen in full width, which means the words are so tiny you can't read them!  So I pressed the 'Aa' key and chose the "zoom to '200'" option and read the book page that way.

 Since I had no other way to connect, I thought I'd explore.  It turns out the first book (apparently it's one that was wanted by some members of the discounted-books forum thread that I link to each day) is a memoir, about an advertising agent who spends nights doing gay clubs as a drag queen -- likely not everyone's cup of tea.  But it has 90 customer reviews, and a 4.5 star average rating.

  Title: "I Am Not Myself These Days (P.S.)" - which could be a good title for main characters of the two being-cancelled soaps, AMC and OLTL, both spinning (in) absurdly plotted whirlwind endings which actually are tickling audiences to the point the two 30+ yr soaps have been picked up to be continued as online web series by former Disney people.
  ... But, that was certainly a digression.

  Back to the book.  Per review blurbs, the Chicago Sun Times reports,  "It's one hell of a spellbinding read.  Engrossing..."  and  Library Journal says "...darkly hilarous and entertaining."

Blog subjects - Bits and Pieces
Later, I got back on my desktop to do a new blog entry, only to find that the 7 tabs with article subjects I'd collected was not restorable.  I'm not going through my browser history right now to find them.
  But I see some new minor stories, such as the seattle pi one about four central New York school districts getting a total of 84 Kindles, all with 3G.

  I also see that refurbished Kindles pricing has dropped when they're available (not often, though there are a couple of stores on that).

Kindles for Australia
For those in Australia, Kindles are arriving in Dick Smith and Big W stores, as well as Woolworths.   Strangely,  they'll cost a little more that way than if ordering directly from Amazon U.S., but the pluses are said to include local customer service and local returns if a unit breaks, plus there'll be additional accessories that can be viewd. The Kindles for purchase in Australia's stores won't be there until August 31.  'Countdown' stores are included also.

Paper computer, ultra flexible
This is a very weird one.   The Atlantic has a story and video about a device developed by researchers at the Queen's University Human Media Lab in Ontario -- it's an e-Ink prototype "that responds to bend gestures."  They explain that a flexible circuit with sensors records, in the software, various bends that, when repeated, can trigger an action on the device.

  "If incorporated into an e-reader, a flip-of-the-page motion could signal to the device that you're ready to move on."  [It] "looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper," said creator Roel Vertegaal, who added that you can flip the corner to turn pages or write on it with a pen.

New TV ad company to be used by Amazon
Adweek's Andrew McMains says Amazon has gone to a new agency for their Kindle ads -- and by that, the article seems to mean the TV ads.

  They'd previously worked with production companies like Eyeball, but will now work with Walrus, which has done work for AMC (specifically for Mad men, Breaking Bad and The Prisoner) and The Economist.  I have no idea what it all means but I had  liked the recent TV ads of the guy with his Kindle and the gal who is more brick & morter bookstore inclined.   Personally I love visiting physical bookstores, so I'm hoping that the Borders fiasco was due most of all to bad and negligent management (which seems to be the going sentiment) which ignored the growing draw of e-books rather than including them as B&N has done.

Barnes and Noble - the sale to Liberty Media - is it happening?
A Nook and a Crack in the Deal for Barnes and Noble? - This one is a mobile web-link that Kindle-Edition subsribers can click on and read easily with the Kindle web browser (with Wireless 'on' of course) ...  (Choose Menu/Article Mode, once there, to get the most readable font and layout).

  The story is about the unexpected length of time it has taken for Liberty Media to effect the anticipated $1 billion acquisition of B&N, and the complexities involved, causing problems.  Liberty has been expected to get financing to buy 70% of the company, with BN founder Len Riggio staying on with 30% holdings.  Ron Burkle, as ever, is a possible spoiler.

A new Amazon subscription model being tested?
Amazon is offering the Digest edition of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, which Stephen King deems "the best fiction magazine in America."

  It's now "exclusively available" in the Kindle Store's magazines area.  Unfortunately, the title of Amazon's press release doesn't indicate it's a Digest rather than the full magazine although the first sentence does make that clear and then describes what is available in the digest and what isn't.

' ...access to all of the magazine's editorial content - editor's recommendations, "Curiosities" (odd books of enduring interest), film reviews, book reviews, cartoons and humor, and "Coming Attractions" (highlights of each issue) - along with one short story [from the current full issue], all at no cost...: '

  The full magazine ("Extended Edition", published bimonthly at $12/year for the Kindle edition), contains "several additional short stories and novelettes."

  Right now, the reviews for the free digest-edition are either highly favorable or are 1-star rants about feeling misled, maybe by the resulting word of mouth via forums and email -- but Amazon should change the title of the press release that's in their archives since it'll continue to be referenced (and is not exactly accurate), and we can see that many haven't gone on to read even the first paragraph of the release.

 The title of the the free digest, as advertised in the Kindle Magazine editions area, is "Fantasy & Science Fiction, Free Exclusive Digest" [Kindle edition], by Spilogale, Inc.  It would appear to be a way to interest people in getting the full or 'extended' product, which customer reviews indicate is happening.

Forbes: British pair with Kindle book land a 6-figure 4-book deal with HarperFiction
An eBook by British writers Louise Voss and Mark Edwards zoomed to the top of the Amazon UK Kindle bestseller's list (for all of June)  ("Catch Your Death" (UK, also at Amazon U.S.) and, as a result, they now have a six-figure four-book deal with HarperFiction.

  The London Evening Standard has a story on how they did this, which includes learning how to publish their own material, with a low price ($1.99 U.S.), and promoting the book by social networking.  Of course the book has to really interest a lot of people and generate word of mouth -- most e-books, including low-priced ones, languish under the giant growing mound of self-published Kindle books while authors try to self-promote on the forums and are often treated as spammers.

  It's an interesting article.  The London Evening Standard (or thisislondon.co.uk) article almost treats her as sole-author, though they mention she has a partner in writing the book.


Photo credit: blog.duncanaviation.aero


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Read More >

Specially Discounted group of Harper e-books, 20 for $20 thru' August

This is just an alert that in the ongoing blog article, "New Free Kindle book + Newly-Discounted Ones Found by Forumners,"  there is a  notice about a Harper Perennial sale of 20 titles for $20, for August, reported by Emily Bronte. 

 The eye-popping graphic at the left is by Harper Perennial.

Here, for convenience, is the listing by Bronte:

20 eBooks for $20 promotion
I Am Not Myself These Days (P.S.) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell for $0.99
Bad Marie: A Novel (P.S.) by Marcy Dermansky for $0.99
86'd (P.S.) by Dan Fante for $0.99
Everything Is Going to Be Great by Rachel Shukert for $0.99
Kapitoil: A Novel (P.S.) by Teddy Wayne for $0.99
Celebrity Chekhov (P.S.) by Ben Greenman for $0.99
Town House (P.S.) by Tish Cohen for $0.99
Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude by Neal Pollack for $0.99
The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (P.S.) by Jessica Anya Blau for $0.99
Who by Fire (P.S.) by Diana Spechler for $0.99
Everything Is Wrong with Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong by Jason Mulgrew for $0.99
Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way: A Novel (P.S.) by Bryan Charles for $0.99
Postcards from a Dead Girl: A Novel (P.S.) by Kirk Farber for $0.99
A Common Pornography: A Memoir (P.S.) by Kevin Sampsell for $0.99
It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me by Ariel Leve for $0.99
Diary of a Very Bad Year: Interviews with an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager by Keith Gessen for $0.99
The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen for $0.99
Down and Out on Murder Mile (P.S.) by Tony O'neill for $0.99
The Gospel of Anarchy: A Novel by Justin Taylor for $0.99
Ugly Man (P.S.) by Dennis Cooper for $0.99

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For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW:  June  July  Aug 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

Read More >

Amazon's Public Library Lending program to to begin in September??

OVERDRIVE DROPS A HINT

We'd heard "by the end of the year" from Jay Marine, Amazon's Kindle Director, and then, on a June 3 blog entry here, seen that the Moorestown Patch, in an article titled "Library Keeping Up with Technology," said:

' (Attention all Kindle users -- Amazon will be making their e-books available on Overdrive starting this fall.) '

And I'd hoped they were right.

  Well, could be!  Nancy Picchi wrote on Google+ that paidContent's Laura Hazard Owen reported a strong hint from OverDrive CEO Steve Potash, which she read at EarlyWord, The Publisher|Librarian Connection.

  At OverDrive's Digipalooza, the question most in librarians' minds was "when Kindle users will be able to download from OverDrive."

  EarlyWord reports that Potash kept saying "soon" and "I'm not allowed to announce a date yet" -- but then at the final session, he dropped a broad hint by "summarizing the main points of his 'Crystal Ball Report'":

Streamlining (both downloading and ordering)
Explosion (we have gone from two reading devices to 85 and more are coming)
Premium (the library catalog as the most premium,
    value-added site on the Web)
Traffic (enormous growth coming by year’s end)

paidContent's Owen adds that "OverDrive previously announced its new platform for libraries, OverDrive WIN, which includes support for Kindle, patron-driven e-book acquisition and “always available” e-book collections.  There's a bit more on the WIN platform enhancements at EarlyWord's article.

Earlier:
  . The Kindle Chronicles interviews Amazon's Jay Marine re Library Lending, etc.
  . More on Kindle Lending Library - How it would work. Reactions & Analyses.  April 21, 2011
  . 11, 000 Local Libraries in Kindle Lending Library - Amazon did it quietly.   April 20, 2011

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For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW:  June  July  Aug 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

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Kindle News: With corrections of some inaccuracies. Kindle for PC updated with Collections. Less-known Kindle features.

KINDLE NEWS, AUGUST 2

FoxNews: Features Amazon should emphasize
FoxNews's Clayton Morris writes, "Things Amazon Should Tell Us About the Kindle," a well-intentioned article with some good points but which has a couple of errors that need correcting.

While pointing out that most people don't know about the 'Collections' feature (folder equivalents that are implemented with 'tags' or labels) or the text-to-speech ('TTS') function by which the Kindle voices (male or female) can read aloud to you from books, subscriptions, or personal documents if you're too busy doing something else, he laments that "Amazon doesn't do a very good job marketing the Kindle as a service as well as a consumer device" and he's found that people are more inclined toward the device once they're made aware of what it can do besides presenting e-books for reading.

  It's true that the computerized voice (taken from the recordings of words by humans -- see the Tom voice for more info on the 'Tom' voice -- cannot replace actor renditions.  The TTS is serviceable though, for short sessions, and not as robotic as most computer voices.

  However, he complains that when he creates Collections on his Kindle, these won't be available to a replacement- or new Kindle.  Actually, they are -- as long as you don't delete the contents of the first Kindle before you replicate the Collection.  The User Guides explain how this is done.

  I wrote the following in Comments to Morris' article, as I couldn't find an email address for him. (Bracketed words are added for the blog.]

' Clayton,
1. Update your Kindle for PC, as it now has Collections.
      [This is included in the latest update, though it is somewhat buggy for a few people but fine for most, per what I see on the forums.]

2. Also, when you get a new Kindle, go to Archived Items folder, which will hold titles of Kindle books you've bought AND you'll see "Add other device collections" - and it'll download your Collection choices.  But first get the books [by clicking on the titles] and then add the Collection from another device and the books will automatically go into the Collections. '

As he points out, the text-to-speech feature is, for him, "a wonderful feature I use regularly during car rides or sleepy train jaunts."  I know people who use it while cooking or exercising.  No competing dedicated e-reader has this.  In fact, no new competing e-Ink reader has a correctly-working web browser and the other e-Ink reader vendors are dropping free 3G even for bookstore downloads, not to mention never offering free 3G access to the rest of the net, albeit slow-access.  To keep things simple, web browsers have not been customized for touchscreen e-Ink eReaders from the basic, optionally embedded Android web browser and they don't work correctly, so they are hidden.

  He focuses on the two features he has found very valuable and doesn't mention that the Kindle can play mp3s (whether audio books or music) as background and that is now a unique feature too because other ebook vendors are simplifying, removing speakers and headphone access.  For more on this see the "Features Comparison" here between the new Nook e-Ink and the current Kindle 3.

  Re Collections: See more on this in the Kindleworld Guide to Making Collections.  It's also good to read Collections: Cautions.

  Re Kindle for PC update v1.6 -- as with the Kindle device version, you have to add or import a Collection from another Kindle device to see the Collections you've made.


Daily Mail (UK)
Daily Mail headlines "New rules for Apple's App store mean Amazon must hand over 30% of profits made through its Kindle app."

  As most readers of this blog know, what Apple would have wanted with 30% of the sale of an e-book was *100%* of Amazon's profits, since Amazon (thanks to the Apple Agency model set up with large publishers) gets 30% of a sale from the Big6 publishers).

  That Apple would actually stake a claim to 100% of the profit is seldom reported.  Now, we don't know if Apple quietly offered Amazon and Barnes & Noble a lower percentage.  At any rate, 30% is all that's ever reported and is the figure from their guidelines for app developers, but that is usually based on subscriptions, for which the publishers would get to keep 70% of a sale rather than the situation with bookstore vendors, who must give 70% to the Big6 publishers, leaving the rival bookstore vendors $0.00.

  There are now many news stories about anger from iPad Kindle-book app users, focused mostly on Apple at this point.  I don't understand why Apple would think this is a good thing for them, the company that began its life with a now-famous Super Bowl ad showing the non-robotic among us hurling a hammer into the screen image of an authoritarian figure-head, "smashing it to bits and releasing a strong breeze and a bright light, while the citizens gape in awe.  A voice-over announces, 'On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh.  And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984"'." You can see this at the uriah.com site.


Photo credit: eHow's "How to Edit Kindle Collections with Calibre"


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    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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