Amazon adds Audio Books to the Kindle Store!


A few minutes ago, Amazon made a big announcement. If you point your Kindle 3 to Amazon’s Kindle store, you’ll now see a new link at the top of the page — “Audible Audiobooks”. Amazon will now wirelessly deliver audio books — read by a human voice — directly to your Kindle 3 over a Wi-Fi connection! You can now purchase these audiobooks right there on your Kindle, including 3,747 mystery/thriller books, 5,255 children’s books, and 14,449 works of fiction.

“We’re very excited to announce that more than 50,000 Audible Audiobooks are now available for purchase or download on the latest Kindle via Wi-Fi delivery,” Amazon posted in the Kindle’s discussion forum at Amazon.com. And they’ll give you two free audio books — the digital version of a “book on tape” — if you sign up for a 30-day free trial! It’s always been an intriguing way to use your Kindle, and Amazon’s new policy should make it much easier to enjoy a new audio book. Prior to today, “you had to transfer it,” an Audible representative told me this morning. You’d use your web browser to download the audio book to your computer’s hard drive — and then you’d have to connect your USB cable to your Kindle, and manually upload the audio book.

“Now you can do either way,” she explained. Using your Kindle 3’s ability to make a WI-Fi connection to your computer, you can transmit the audio books directly into your Kindle…

Of course, you don’t have to listen to the audio book on a Kindle. You can also listen to the same file on your iPod, iPhone, or Blackberry, or even on an mp3 player. What they’re selling is the convenience of enjoying a book with your ears. “Now you can catch up on books even when you can’t read,” boasts Amazon’s web page, “during your commute, while working out, anytime and anywhere.”

I was surprised by the selection of audio books that are now available. There’s even an audio version of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and several books which are actually read to you by their author, including two by Jon Stewart and Donald Rumsfeld’s “Known and Unknown.” For the next three months, they’ll let new customers explore Audible’s service at a lower monthly subscription price — just $7.49 a month. (After three months, the cost of the subscription increases to $14.95.) These subscribers get one free audio book each month, plus a 30% discount on any subsequent audiobook purchase. And they’re even throwing in a free daily subscription to audio versions of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

But what’s also interesting is the way Amazon announced this change. They didn’t issue a press release. Instead they quietly slipped the news into Amazon’s Kindle discussion forum at Amazon.com. There was also a post on the official Twitter feed of the Amazon Kindle team. (“The latest Kindle now offers wireless delivery of more than 50,000 Audible Audiobooks via Wi-Fi.”) And of course, Amazon also snuck an announcement onto the Kindle’s official page on Facebook (at Facebook.com/Kindle)

The news created a small frenzy of excitement. (Within an hour more than 250 people had clicked the announcement’s “Like” icon.) And it’s been really fun to read the real-time reactions from Kindle owners. “isn’t the term ‘audible audiobook’ redundant?” someone asked — before being reminded that Audible is the name of the web site! But another user posted enthusiastically that “That is awesome I have been waiting for this option.

“I will be downloading audio tonight!”

Strong Reactions to Amazon’s New App Store

Amazon Android Store Angry Birds Rio app

Today Amazon opened a new app store for Android smartphones and tablet devices! And it’s also raising questions about whether Amazon is preparing to release their own iPad-sized Kindle that runs the Android operating system.

Amazon “did not respond to requests for comment” when contacted by the Wall Street Journal. But today the newspaper reported that industry observers “widely expect” Amazon to release a multimedia Kindle “that may run on Android.” And whatever they do next, Amazon has just entered into a high-stakes war with the largest players in the entire technology industry — including Apple, Google, and Microsoft. With or without an Android-based Kindle, at least one stock analyst already predicts that Amazon could be “a leader” here, based on how powerful they’ve already become in online shopping.

Amazon “has a key advantage over Google,” the Wall Street Journal reports — “untold millions of paying customers who have already provided critical credit-card information.” And Amazon attacked Google directly in their press release today when they announced the U.S. launch of their app store, the Journal observed. “In a thinly-veiled swipe at Google, Amazon noted that it will test all Android apps before they’re made available to consumers in its app store.” There’s over 150,000 apps in Google’s own store, the Journal notes, which makes it more difficult to test the apps individually, “a policy that came back to bite Google earlier this month when it was forced to remove dozens of malicious apps from its market.”

Obviously all these fun and useful “app”-style programs won’t run on the current-generation Kindles, but Amazon’s new store can sell its apps for all the current smartphones and tablets that run the Android operating system. And “the Amazon Appstore for Android” is already drawing some very positive reviews. Compared to Google’s “Android Market,” Amazon’s store “is much more pleasurable to navigate,” PC World reported, “immediately presenting you with a long list of popular free and paid apps.” They also point out that Amazon’s store has nearly 4,000 apps available on its very first day, and “What Amazon loses in quantity, it gains in quality…this is obvious when you run a search for popular apps like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Clones, spam apps and irrelevant results abound in the Android Market, but Amazon’s store returns exactly what you’re looking for–and nothing more.”

“Our customers have told us that the sheer number of apps available can make it hard to find apps that are high quality and relevant to them,” Amazon announced today in their press release. And they’ve also added a special new feature called “Test Drive,” which actually lets you preview an app on your PC before downloading it to your phone.

The launch of the Android-phone app store has already provoked Apple into action. Friday Apple even filed a lawsuit against Amazon, trying to force them to stop using the term “app store.” It seems to me Apple is worried that an iPad-sized Kindle — complete with its own app store — could create some unwanted competition. (“We’ve asked Amazon not to copy the App Store name because it will confuse and mislead customers,” an Apple spokeswoman told Bloomberg News.) Friday Apple actually filed an official complaint in a federal courthouse in California, citing both “trademark infringement” and unfair trade practices (and requesting both an injunction on the use of the phrase “app store” and a legal award of damages.) Apple claims the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had already approved an application for a trademark on the phrase “app store”.

But the approval of an application isn’t necessarily an approval of the trademark itself. Apple’s trademark application remains in an “opposition period” where other players in the industry — including Microsoft —
now file legal arguments for or against the granting of an official trademark. It looks like it’s going to be a brutal and intense legal struggle. On March 11, Microsoft even complained that Apple was cheating by using a smaller font to cram more words into their 31-page response. (“Under the rules, Apple’s brief cannot exceed 25 pages in its entirety…and must be printed in at least 11-point font…”)

All the legal and economic arguments are really just a distraction from the giddy fun of the launch of a new app store. You can access it at these shorter URLs

amazon.com/apps
amazon.com/appstore

And there seems to be a lot of excitement. This afternoon when I tried to install the Amazon Appstore on my smartphone, I received a “server busy” message for nearly half an hour! Amazon is giving away “Angry Birds Rio,” the newest version of a popular bird-shooting game for smartphones. (“Birds away!” reads Amazon’s description, promising “you’ll unleash an arsenal of angry bird artillery through 60 levels of cage-busting vengeance.”) They’re advertising it as an Amazon appstore exclusive, and it’s already the best-selling item in Amazon’s app store — but it’s not the only free game in the store. In fact, there’s hundreds of free apps in the store today, including free versions of all the following classic games.

Backgammon
Blackjack
Checkers
Chess
Connect 4
Solitaire
FreeCell
Go
Reversi
Sudoku
Word Search
Texas Hold ‘Em,
Tic Tac Toe

There’s even two more free Angry Birds games, plus Guitar Hero 5. (And there’s even a version of Pac-Man.) Of course, there’s non-game applications, like Oprah Mobile, E! Online, and Zagat to Go. But the most interesting feature is Amazon’s promise of very aggressive pricing if you’ll keep visiting their app store. The store’s current tagline?

“Get a great paid app for free every day.”

Teacher Earns $20,000 in Kindle E-Book Sales

Elisa Lorello author of the e-book Faking It
Image of “Faking It” author Elisa Lorello at work
from The Charlotte Observer


It’s a story that makes you feel good. “Teacher Hits It Big with E-Book,” writes her local newspaper.

“Elisa Lorello of Raleigh had no literary agent, no publisher and nothing to lose when she decided to self-publish her first novel, Faking It, as an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle… Early last year, Faking It hit No. 6 on Kindle’s bestseller list, beating out big-name authors and giant publishing houses.” They report that she’s sold over 52,000 copies of the book and it’s sequel Ordinary World. And last week her amazing success took an even bigger turn, leading Elisa to a unique publishing deal with Amazon.com!

Until today, I’d never even heard of Elisa Lorello. But it turns out the different pieces of her amazing life story are scattered around the web — including a feature on the web site for North Carolina State University.


“Lorello brought along a draft of her first novel, “Faking It,” when she moved from Massachusetts to Raleigh in 2006 to take a job as a full-time lecturer teaching first-year writing in the English department. She spent several years revising the book – a romantic comedy she describes as “When Harry Met Sally crossed with “Sex and the City”… Ultimately, she self-published it in 2008 through Raleigh-based Lulu.com, but sales were slow. “I sold less than 100 copies,” Lorello says. So, in June 2009, she published the book on Kindle through Amazon.com…

There it still sold just 70 copies in its first month, and 10 copies the next. (“Of course, I was ecstatic,” Lorello remembers, since that was more than she’d sold in the self-published print edition.) She lowered the book’s price to just 99 cents, and that’s when the miracle began to happen. Judging from the article, it looks like more than 15% of the author’s sales occurred in a single week. Seven months later, in the last week of January, 2010, Lorello’s e-book suddenly sold 8,000 copies, according to the college’s profile, which reports Faking It finally peaked at the #6 spot on the best-seller list in Amazon’s Kindle store (behind five e-books which were all available for free). By mid-February, total sales had reached 15,000, and in March the book remained one of Amazon’s top 50 best-sellers.

A picture in the newspaper shows Elisa hard at work on her laptop at the “It’s A Grind” coffee shop in Cary, North Carolina. And she seems very committed to the craft of writing good fiction. Even when she was considering a bittersweet sequel, “I was resistant at first because by then I had gotten so close to these characters and didn’t want them to be hurt,” she acknowledged in an interview at Amazon.com. “But when a story or a truth needs to be told, as a writer you have to honor that and get out of its way.”

She’d already published the book’s sequel — Ordinary World — in November of 2009 — and by March of 2010 it had already sold 9,000 copies. The sequel later peaked in the Top 40, according to a profile on the college’s Department of English site, and “Both novels stayed in the Top 100 for about six weeks.” Assuming the sales were split evenly between her two books, Elisa ultimately sold about 26,000 copies of each one. Yet by the end of the year, she’d earned more than $20,000, according to the newspaper profile — a figure that’s much higher than the book advances enjoyed by most print authors. Lorello “counts herself part of a self-publishing revolution that’s upending the book business…” according to the newspaper’s profile. “At stake? The future of the $24 billion publishing industry.”

They note that e-books now represent a much larger percentage of the new e-books — 9 percent in 2010, versus just 3 percent in the previous year — and that Amazon is now selling more e-books than they are paperbacks. “Today, if you can use a computer, you can publish your book,” the article concludes, noting that besides the downside of more bad self-published ficition, it’s also unmistakeably creating “a booming self-publishing industry.” But Elia’s story took an even bigger turn, when Amazon itself took notice of her exceptional success.

“Even great books can be overlooked,” Amazon had announced in a 2009 press release when they founded their own e-book publishing company, AmazonEncore “to help readers discover exceptional books from emerging authors.” Amazon studies customer reviews (and other information) to “identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors that show potential for greater sales,” and then “partners with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers.” Eventually Elisa Lorello turned up on their radar. (In a September press release, Amazon describes Lorello’s books as “exceptional” and “compelling”.) And looking back, it seems ironic that Elisa had added her e-book to Amazon’s Kindle store within a few weeks of when Amazon first started their publishing company.

Last week Lorello shared her gratitude in a personal message on her blog. “Tomorrow’s the big day. Faking It launches as an AmazonEncore title with a brand new cover (which I love, by the way) and editing, will be available in select bookstores, and will be available in print and Kindle editions. Who would’ve thought that, back in June 2009 (when I self-pubbed on Kindle–it had already been a Lulu title for six months), I’d be making such an announcement? Seriously, it’s way cool.

“But I’m able to make this announcement thanks to you, my readers…Thank you to every single person who made the 99-cent investment and were kind enough to say that they’d have gladly paid more. Thank you to everyone who told a friend or family member. Thank you to every male reader who wasn’t ashamed to say that they loved what was essentially marketed as a chick book…

“If there’s anyone I left out, please know that in my heart, I am profoundly grateful.”

15 Kindle Games Now Cost 99 Cents Each!

Cheap Kindle Games on Sale at Amazon for 99 cents

Amazon’s just announced a special deal. “For a limited time, customers’ favorite Kindle games — including Scrabble, Mahjong Solitaire and NY Times Crosswords — are on sale for just $0.99 each.”

Here’s a complete list of the games available at the special 99-cent price.


Scrabble
Chess
Sudoku Unbound
Solitaire
Mahjong Solitaire
Texas Hold ‘Em
New York Times Crossword Puzzles
   (Two sets of easy and two sets of “challenging” puzzles)
Hangman for Kids
Triple Town


View the web page at tinyurl.com/KindleGameSale

The offer ends March 27 — a week from Sunday. The sale is apparently designed to encourage Kindle owners to buy these games over the next 10 days, so the games will start appearing on Amazon’s best-seller lists. And it’s working. Instantly Scrabble shot into the #1 spot on the Kindle best-sellers list, and Solitaire became the #2 best-selling item in the Kindle store.

In fact, six of the 10 best-selling items in the Kindle store are now games. (Mahjong Solitaire is currently #4, Sudoku Unbound is #5, and a New York Times Crosswords collection is #10.) Interestingly, even the new Word Search game (released February 3) is now #8 — though it’s not even one of the games that’s being touted in Amazon’s special promotion. It’s been in the top 100 since the day it was released, and for some reason, it’s also listed on Amazon’s Nonfiction best-sellers list, where it’s #2 — behind Sudoku Unbound.

Every game in this special promotion is now among the top 100 best-sellers — and there’s at least three more 99-cent games that have also crashed into the top 100. (There’s Slingo — which used to retail for $3.99 — as well as Flip It and Maze A Thon!) That means 13 of the top 100 best-sellers in the Kindle store are all games. Besides the six
top-10 titles listed above, here’s a list of the remaining seven.


Slingo (#16)
Hangman for Kids (#19)
Chess (#22)
Triple Town (#44)
Texas Hold ‘Em (#45)
FlipIt (#60)
Maze A Thon (#65)


Amazon sent out an e-mail Tuesday touting these games to Kindle owners who’d requested special promotional announcements. (“Check out these bestsellers that customers describe as fun, addictive, and a great way to take a break from reading.”) And I was surprised to see that there’s still more new games in the Kindle store — or at least, some games that I hadn’t seen before.

For example, there’s The Warlock of Firetop Mountain — a sort of one-player Dungeons and Dragon’s game based on the “Fighting Fantasy” series of game books. It’s a text adventure with some nice black-and-white illustrations, and even the rolling dice get adorned with some very fancy graphics.

Screenshot from the Kindle game Warlock of Firetop Mountain

And I have to admit that I’m intrigued by a new word game called “Word Soup.” There’s over 125 different letters displayed on a grid, and the object is to build words out of the adjacent letter blocks. But when you create a word, all its letters disappear from the grid, while the remaining letters drop down a row. There’s at least 13 different rows, so it gets pretty complicated — but it looks like a lot of fun. Even at $2.99, it’s already one of the top 200 best-selling items in Amazon’s Kindle store.

But for the next 10 days, it’s going to have a lot of competition from all the 99-cent games!

Japan’s Earthquake and the Kindle

matsumoto-castle-japan

I was really touched by a story about a survivor of Japan’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake. Monday morning — just after midnight — a new voice appeared in Amazon’s online discussion forum for the Kindle. “I just wanted to thank Amazon,” wrote a Virginia man named Christopher Roberts, “for including 3G in the Kindle.”

“I was in Japan during the huge 8.9 earthquake. It was an extremely scary situation – all power, land lines, and cell phone voice calls went down completely.

“The only communication with the outside world was my wife’s Kindle that had a 3G signal. I was able to slowly login in to Gmail and send an email to my family that I was okay.

“It was incredible that the only thing that worked was my Kindle. Thank you Amazon – It was definitely a life saver.”



There was a lot of bad news in the world this weekend, so it’s nice to take a moment to feel grateful for those who made it through safely.

The best thing about technology is that it connects us to other people. It can be the voice of the author who wrote an ebook, or it can be an e-mail from a friend we haven’t seen in a while. It can be an unexpected message telling us that someone survived a natural disaster, and even the story of a stranger can feel inspiring and touching.

Amazon understands this, I think, because they’ve collected together some of the most touching stories from Kindle users on their Facebook page for the Kindle. Even though I don’t know these Kindle owners, I still find their stories give me a positive feeling. It almost makes it feel like we’re all part of a movement – and each little story is one more step towards a future where ordinary anonymous individuals face their day-to-day lives with a Kindle.

For example…

“I am now a new mother, and I find myself especially grateful to be able to read my Kindle while I hold my two-month-old daughter. I can hold the Kindle and turn the pages with one hand, which I cannot do with paper books or magazines. When she is fussy and insists upon being held while she sleeps, I am not limited to watching bad daytime TV. Instead, I can hold her and read books on my Kindle!”



It’s these quiet moments that make me feel like the Kindle is slowly but surely becoming a part of our lives. And there were two more comments that seemed almost remarkable just for capturing two more honest moments of enthusiasm.

“Michigan winters suck,” wrote Arvis F, “if you are no longer a skier. There’s no getting around that. Nonetheless, with my Kindle I am making it through these cold days of limited daylight far better than in the past. Thank you for making such a fine piece of equipment.”

But my favorite comment of all came from a woman named Lauren P.

“I used to resent that my husband watched basketball in the evenings – then I got my Kindle! Now I wish basketball had double-headers!”

Are Publishers Illegally Fixing the Prices of Ebooks?

Dr Evil vs the European Union and European Commission

A startling announcement came out of Brussels last week. The European Commission suddenly issued a statement that they’d “initiated unannounced inspections at the premises of companies that are active in the e-book publishing sector in several [European] Member States.” They’re “searching for evidence that they had acted illegally to keep prices high in the nascent electronic-book market,” the Wall Street Journal explains — and it’s not the only such investigation.

In both Texas and Connecticut, state officials have been investigating e-book pricing, and there’s also a new investigation that began in England earlier this year. “The U.K and the Connecticut investigations center on pricing arrangements between publishers and the retailers who sell electronic books,” the Journal reported earlier, adding that Connecticut “has said it is looking at Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.” In Europe, the commission’s officials inspected the publishing premises accompanied by “competition authorities” from the appropriate nation, according to their press release. And they made a point of adding that “The Commission has reason to believe that the companies concerned may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and other restrictive business practices…”

Of course, it’s important to remember that this is just an investigation, and “The fact that the Commission carries out such inspections does not mean that the companies are guilty of anti-competitive behaviour,” they warned in their press release, “nor does it prejudge the outcome of the investigation itself.” But there’s still been a lot of activity and excitement. The investigators “descended like cowboys,” according to one publishing company’s president. Another Journal article quotes his interview with a French technology site, where he also reportedly alleged that “This operation is masterminded by Amazon.” (That seems unlikely, but the investigation is definitely making some big headlines in the European business press.) And when the stakes are this high, maybe there’s enough pressure to go around.

So who’s being investigated? Not Random House (according to the Wall Street Journal.) Their reporter actually contacted the top publishing houses in Europe, and a Random House spokesman indicate that they had not been approached by the commission. Several other publishing houses declined to comment (Flammarion and Albin Michel) or didn’t return the call (Gallimard SA). But interestingly, one company did confirm that they’d been contacted by investigators: Hachette Livre. What’s fascinating is that Hachette Livre is a publishing house that goes all the way back to 1826.

They’ve published everything from Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” to Catcher in the Rye, according to their web site, and even Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight books (which have now sold 85 million copies in 40 countries). They’ve also publish Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and even the famous children’s picture book, Babar the Elephant. “In more than 170 years, the publishing houses that now make up Hachette Livre have produced many a masterpiece…” their site brags.

“They have entered Hachette Livre’s ‘hall of fame’ and serve as a constant reminder of the standards Hachette Livre publishers are expected to live up to, today and in the future.”

Is Amazon Planning a Free Kindle?

Monopoly Man with Hat and Moustache Community Chest Card parody

It sounds too good to be true, but some pundits are at least considering the possibility that in 9 months, Amazon will start giving away Kindles for free.

It started in October of 2009. Author John Walkenbach noted on his blog that the price of the Kindle dropped from $359 to $299 to $259 — and of course, it dropped again to $189 with the release of the Kindle 3. But Walkenbach also noticed that the Kindle’s price “was falling at a consistent rate,” observed another blog, “lowering almost on a schedule. By June 2010, the rate was so unwavering that he could easily forecast the date at which the Kindle would be free: November 2011.”

Free Amazon Kindle November 2011 Price Forecast

“In August, 2010 I had the chance to point it out to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. He merely smiled and said, ‘Oh, you noticed that!’ And then smiled again.”

I’d laugh this off, if it weren’t for the impressive credentials of the blogger reporting on his conversation with Jeff Bezos — Kevin Kelly. He was the co-founder of Wired magazine, and has also written for some of the most-respected publications, including The Economist, Esquire, The New York Times, and Time magazine (as well as GQ). He even was a founding board member for The WELL, one of the first online communities in 1985, well before the dawn of the big commercial internet service providers. According to Wikipedia, even the producers of The Matrix required the movie’s stars to read Kelly’s 1995 book, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World.

Of course, there’s a few caveats. If you go back and read the original post, Walkenbach had actually said “If this price trend continues, it will be free by June, 2011.” (And not November.) Walkenbach had added “I’m actually serious about this. At some point, the Kindle will be free. It will probably be before June, 2011.” But Friday Kelly’s site had updated Walkenbach’s graph to include the most-recent price drop to $189, and then re-calculated the trend to conclude that the Kindle’s price would reach $0 by November.

And the other caveat is more serious. 13 months ago, the TechCrunch blog reported “Amazon wants to give a free Kindle to every Amazon Prime subscriber.” That’s not particularly far-fetched, since
the program (which offers discounts on shipping from Amazon) already costs $79 a year. Amazon would throw in the Kindle for just $60 more — presumably hoping that they’d earn back the cost of the discount when the recipients started ordering more ebooks from Amazon. The previous month Amazon had even tested a unique program where they’d ship Kindles to carefully-selected customers — and the customers didn’t even have to pay Amazon. “If you don’t love it, we’ll refund your money AND you can keep the Kindle,” Amazon’s offer explained.

This all seems to suggest that Amazon has been considering a free Kindle for a while, and has even test-marketed the program (presumably to see if it’s cost-effective). But Kevin Kelly misread the date on the
coverage of that limited program, and assumed it was from February of this year — just two weeks ago — instead of February of 2010. Then he’d concluded that “It brilliantly feeds into Bezo’s long-term strategy of nurturing extreme customer satisfaction… If the past is any indication of future events, expect an as-if-free Kindle this fall in time for the holidays. Brilliant indeed!”

It’s hard to think straight about this possibility — because it’d be so ridiculously exciting if Amazon suddenly started handing out free Kindles to everybody. It does make me think that Amazon probably will continue dropping the prices on a Kindle. After all, they’ve obviously calculated how much more money they’ll earn when each new Kindle owner starts purchasing all their ebooks from Amazon’s Kindle store. I’m not a stock analyst, but it’s worth noting that the people who’ve studied the technology industry are taking this possibility seriously.

“I don’t know if this is Amazon’s plan,” Kelly wrote on his blog, “but it should be!”

What are the Books in Amazon’s Newest Kindle Commercials?

I love Amazon’s Kindle ads. (I’ll be watching TV — muting every single commercial with my remote — when I’ll suddenly shout out “Kindle!”) It’s exciting to see digital readers making the “big time” of network television. But I’ve always been really curious about what kind of message they’re sending…

I always wonder if there’s a clue hidden in the ebooks that Amazon’s displaying on the Kindle’s screen. Or if it’s just Amazon’s way of recommending some good books…


“The Book Lives On”

Screencap of ebook in the Amazon Kindle coffee shop TV ad

In this ad, good-looking young people read their Kindles in the sunlight — in a park, a restaurant — and enjoy lepaing in the sun and walking on fences. But just two seconds in — as one thoughtful youngster strokes his chin — there’s a shot of the Kindle he’s holding over the restaurant’s red tablecloth. And what ebook is it displaying?

“Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand (subtitled “a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption.”) It’s only her second book — her first book was Seabiscuit, written 10 years ago, which became the basis for the 2003 film starring Tobey MacQuire. But Unbroken has already received 713 five-star reviews on Amazon.com for its inspiring story of Louis Zamperini, an American Olympic distance runner who joined the Air Force only to become a prisoner of war. The book opens with a description of the day when, as a young boy, he saw an enormous German Zeppelin flying down the California coast.

…typhoon that whisked it over the Pacific at breathtaking speed, toward America. Passengers gazing from the windows saw only the ship’s shadow, following it along the clouds “like a huge shark swimming alongside.” When the clouds parted, the passengers glimpsed giant creatures, turning in the sea, that looked like monsters.

On August 25, the Zeppelin reached San Francisco. After being cheered down the California coast, it slid through sunset, into darkness and silence, and across midnight. As slow as the drifting wind, it passed over Torrance, where its only audience was a scattering of drowsy souls, among them the boy in his pajamas behind the house on Gramercy Avenue.

Standing under the airship, his feet bare in the grass, he was transfixed. It was, he would say, “fearfully beautiful.” He could feel the rumble of the craft’s engines tilling the air but couldn’t make out the silver skin, the sweeping ribs, the finned tail. He could see only the blackness of the space it inhabited. It was not a great presence but a great absence, a geometric ocean of darkness that…


The darkness “seemed to swallow heaven itself,” the next page continues. And that’s the kind of story that’s waiting for you, Amazon seems to be saying, if you buy yourself a Kindle!


Kindle Zest Ad

eBook Screenshot of the Amazon Kindle Zest ad with the Cheerios

This Kindle is everywhere — on a bus, in a jewelry drawer, in your back pocket, getting licked by a dog. But as Cheerios splash across the screen of a Kindle, they’re covering the page of another ebook — this time,
Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. It’s the sixth book in a series of funny books about life as a shopaholic — this one was just released in September — and in this one she ponders the next generation of shoppers,
starting with her two-year-old daughter Minnie.

The Kindle in the ad has turned to a poignant page where, as her daughter leaves a card for Santa in a wishing well, the narrator remembers leaving her own greedy Christmas letters.


…long and involved, with illustrations and pictures cut out of catalogs, just in case he got confused.

A pair of pink-faced girls of about ten, all giggly and whispery, are posting their wishes, and just the sight of them gives me a rush of nostalgia. It seems wrong not to join in. I might jinx it or something.

Dear Father Christmas, I find myself writing on a card. It’s Becky here again. I pause and think for a bit, and then quickly scribble down a few things.

I mean, only about three. I’m not greedy or anything.

Minnie is drawing earnestly all over her card and has got felt-tip on her hands and her nose.

“I’m sure Father Christmas will understand what you mean,” I say gently, taking it from her….


By the way, you can download the music from this ad for free from Amazon.com as part of a limited-time promotional offer. It’s the song “Lovers’ Cravings” by Bibio.


“What If You Switch?”

Picture of ebook on the iPhone from Amazon Kindle app television ad

Interestingly, a different part of the same book appears in another Kindle ad. It’s the one where a British narrator tells a story about reading ebooks with different phone apps. (“Once upon a time, a woman was reading a Kindle book on her Android phone… One day she decided to switch to an iPhone. Luckily, she’d been buying Kindle books, so she didn’t need to buy her library all over again. She lived happily ever after.”) On her Android phone, she’s reading page 237.

…and I could have told her exactly where she went wrong with that last boyfriend of hers. (Because I totally disagree with that columnist in Heat magazine — the split was not inevitable.) And then we could have gone shopping and been snapped by paparazzi and started a whole new trend with scarves or something…


But ironically, when she switches to her iPhone, she’s actually reading an entirely different book. It’s one of the all-time best-selling ebooks on the Kindle — The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.


…don’t know anything about this particular matter, but I do know beyond and doubt that in other situations Wennerstrom has acted dishonestly. The Wennerstrom case has seriously affected Mikael Bloomkvist’s life, and I have an interest in discerning whether there’s anything in your speculation.”

The conversation had taken an unexpected turn, and Armansky was instantly on the alert. What Frode was asking was for Milton Security to poke around in a case that had…”



Kindle Park Ad

Kindle screen in TV ad by stream reading Ralph Ellison ebook Invisible Man

There’s a close-up of the Kindle’s screen, held in front of the stones and grass by a shimmery green stream. The camera rotates to show it’s being held by a woman (with her blonde hair pulled back) sitting next to a curvy stone bridge, and as the camera rises to the sky, she seems calmly engrossed in her Kindle. But the book that’s she’s reading includes harrowing scenes of racism in American in the 1950s. It’s Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

The page she’s reading in the park is about the eviction of an elderly black couple.


…false hair, a curling iron, a card with silvery letters against a background of dark red velvet, reading “God Bless Our Home”; and scattered across the top of a chiffonier were nuggets of High John the Conqueror, the lucky stone; and as I watched the white men put down a basket in which I saw a whiskey bottle filled with rock candy and camphor a small Ethiopian flag, a faded tintype of Abraham Lincoln, and the smiling image of a Hollywood star torn from a magazine. And on a pillow several badly cracked pieces of delicate china, a commemorative plate celebrating the St. Louis World’s Fair … I stood in a kind of daze looking at an old folded lace fan studded with jet and mother-of-pearl.

The crowd surged as the white men came back, knocking over a drawer that spilled its contents in the snow at my feet. I stooped and started replacing the articles: a bent Masonic emblem, a set of tarnished cuff links, three brass rings, a dime pierced with a nail hole so as to be worn about the ankle on a string for luck, an ornate greeting card with the message “Grandma, I love…



That Kindle at the Beach

This was the first Kindle ad, where the camera gradually pulls back to reveal that the Kindle at the beach is being read by a short-haired woman in a red-and-orange skirt, sitting silently next to a young man who’s also reading his Kindle. (“Man, that couple must hate each other,” someone once joked.)

I actually tracked down the author of the ebook she’s reading — Amy Bloom, who’s both a novelist and a professor at Yale University. She was once nominated for the National Book Award, and the story that appears on the Kindle was actually written in 1993. It was part of a new collection of her stories that was released in 2010, called Where the God of Love Hangs Out. And it’s probably the saddest pages to ever appear in a Kindle ad.

It’s the story of a 19-year-old boy who has a sexual encounter with his stepmother the day after his father’s funeral, told from the perspective of the grief-stricken widow. She struggles to find a way to make things right again – but first she must confront the fact that her son wants to continue the relationship.

“No, honey…”


I reached across the table but he shrugged me off, grabbing my keys and heading out the door. I sat for a long time, sipping, watching the sunlight move around the kitchen. When it was almost five, I took the keys from [her husband] Lionel’s side of the dresser and drove his van to soccer camp. [Her other, younger son] Buster felt like being quiet, so we just held hands and listened to the radio. I offered to take him to Burger King, hoping the automated monkeys and video games would be a good substitute for a fully present and competent mother. He was happy and we killed an hour and a half there. Three hours to bedtime.

We watched some TV, sitting on the couch, his feet in my lap. Every few minutes, I’d look at the clock on the mantel and then promise myself I wouldn’t look until the next commercial. Every time I started to move, I’d get tears in my eyes, so I concentrated on sitting very still, waiting for time to pass. Finally, I got Buster through his…


Bloom has practiced psychotherapy, and she’s also published her psychologically-insightful short stories in The New Yorker. (When I asked her if she thought that couple in the Kindle ad really hated each other, she replied “Well, or it’s comfortable silences. Other people’s marriages are hard to judge…”) But she said that she hadn’t even known about her story appearing in the Kindle ad until shortly before our interview. After she’d watched the ad on YouTube, she just went on with the rest of her day.

“I had a deadline. I was working on something, and I went back to work…”

But I’ll still always remember how excited I was to talk to her, since for me she was the ultimate celebrity by proxy — the author of the page in the ebook on that Kindle in that Kindle ad!

Exciting New Kindle TV Ads!

Screenshot from new Amazon Kindle TV ad - The Book Lives On

This is pretty exciting. Amazon just released a new ad for the Kindle — and this one’s in a radically new style! According to YouTube, the ad’s video has been viewed less than 2,000 times, so this is your chance to be one of the first people to see it. To view the ad, point your PC’s web browser to YouTube.com/Kindle.

The ad’s official title is “The Book Lives On,” and it’s clearly aimed at younger audiences. The ad shows young people enjoying their Kindles — in a coffee shop, on the grass, while lying outdoors in the city, or jogging past a lake. It only shows the new graphite-colored Kindle — not the older white ones — and it features a much edgier song by a band called “The New Pornographers”. (They’re a hip, indie band from Canada, and the song — “Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk” — is from their newest album, which was just released last May.)

I had to laugh. A technology blog had cheered Amazon’s previous television ad by saying that Amazon “is done with the silly flame war. The latest Kindle ads make no mention of the iPad or any competitor really. Instead, they simply show off the Kindle’s two main selling points – portability and content.” That truce is apparently over, since even in this 30-second montage, Amazon includes several scenes showing that the iPad owner isn’t able to read in bright sunlight — while the Kindle owners can. (“No glare,” Amazon flashes on the screen. “Easy to read in bright sunlight…”) The other selling points are that the Kindle holds
800,000 books, is lighter than a paperback, and has a battery life of up to a month. “The book lives on…” the ad concludes.

By saying “the book lives on,” Amazon seems to be trying to give a positive spin to the worry that digital readers will kill the book. The song’s enthusiastic rock pulse, with its steady electric guitars in the background, suggests excitement and optimism. You could read the ad as a manifesto, announcing that the next generation will continue reading — but they’ll do it using Kindles. But take a closer look, and it looks more like Amazon is really trying to advertise a revolution that hasn’t happened yet.

In November a survey found that the Kindle was least popular among young people. Between the ages of 25 to 34, just 5.8% of the people surveyed had said the owned a Kindle — and just 6.5% of the people between the ages of 18 and 34. (For the 35-44 range, Kindle ownership was at 8.5%, and at 8.3% for the next age range of 45-54 years old.) Surprisingly, the highest percentage of Kindle ownership was people over the age of 65 — at 9.6% — as well as people under the age of 18, at 11.1%. Maybe young people have less disposable cash for an ebook-reader — or they’re more interested in color/touch screens. But whatever the reason, Amazon is clearly trying to address that “enthusiasm” gap with this ad.

But it’s always fascinating to study Amazon’s ad campaigns, and watch them trying to capture the mystique of the Kindle. Once I got to YouTube, I even began watching other Kindle ads that I hadn’t seen yet. There’s one where a little boy tells his grandma what book he wants for a Christmas gift. (“Mayan temples. Or race cars. Or spelunking… Or martians. Or any kind of alien, really…”) And there was another ad for Christmas in the same style as Amazon’s first ads — including a new soft piano-and-vocal song by Little & Ashley, this time with sleighbells. (“Snowflake in my pocket, let’s take a sleigh ride on the ice…”) It’s the same young blonde woman in this ad, but this time the stop-motion animation shows her wearing parkas with her boyfriend, fishing by an igloo, and then dressed us as a ballerina (while her boyfriend is the soldier from the Nutcracker ballet).

Of course, it’s possible to read too much into the commercials. I’ve been a fan for 11 years of the band that did the song in Amazon’s current ad, “The New Pornographers.” But I’ve never been sure what their lyrics are about — and this latest song is no exception. The lyrics from the song snippet that Amazon selected also apply nicely to the Kindle. (“Silhouette, tell me a tall tale, go. Shout it out… Sweet talk, sweet talk…”)

But the rest of the song — well, not so much!


A mistake on the part of nature,
You’re so fair and so fey that you’ll sit anywhere.
I’ve pencil sketched the scene.
It’s feeling Byzantine.

Mistakes on the part of nature,
The living proof of what they’re calling love,
On certain sideway streets
Where things that don’t match meet.

A mistake on the part of nature,
You are a tall glass, a blast from the past.
Yeah, things were simpler then.
You ask exactly when.

A mistake on the part of nature.
It’s forgiven. Move on.
Won’t wear my Sunday suit to walk that street.
That would feel Byzantine.

Silhouette, tell me a tall tale, go,
Shout it out.
Silhouette, shout it from the top,
Sweet talk, sweet talk.
Your sweet talk, sweet talk.

Amnesia becomes ambition.
Ambition becomes a new sort of
Charming simplicity,
Like always, Byzantine.

A mistake on the part of nature.
It’s forgiven. Move on.
Won’t wear my Sunday suit to walk that street.
That would feel Byzantine.

Silhouette, tell me a tall tale, go
Shout it out.
Silhouette, shout it from the top.
Sweet talk, sweet talk.
Your sweet talk, sweet talk…

Silhouette, tell me a tall tale, go
Shout it out.
Silhouette, shout it from the top.
Sweet talk, sweet talk
Your sweet talk, sweet talk.

Barrons says Amazon “is Smoking”

Amazon Kindle yearly sales figures by Barrons analyst

What do things look like for Amazon — both now, and in the future? Today two technology analysts delivered their verdict: “Amazon is Smoking with Kindle”. That’s the headline at Barrons.com, in their “Hot Research” column, highlighting a report by Stan Velikov and Sandeep Aggarwal. They’re predicting that the number of Kindles Amazon sells in 2012 will be more than double the number of Kindles that they sold just last year — and that for the next 12 months, Amazon’s Kindle sales will increase by more than 50%.

“In our view,” the two analysts write, “Kindle remains the best ebook reader in the market and competition is unable to dent its market share.” They predict that over the next year Amazon will spend more money on Kindle advertising — and they think it’s a good idea, arguing that Amazon is just “strengthening its competitive moats.” They’ve also upgraded their past estimates for Amazon’s sales of the Kindle. For last year they now believe that Amazon sold a whopping 6.1 million Kindles, earning them $3.31 billion in Kindle-related revenues. Yet for this year, Barrons estimates that Amazon will sell more than 50% more Kindles than last year — earning revenues of $5.53 billion by selling another 9.3 million Kindles by the end of the year!

But what’s even more interesting is that comes out to an average of more than $500 per Kindle! I’m not sure what to make of those numbers — even if you remember that the Kindle 2 cost $260 for the first half of 2010. They’re still predicting an even higher average revenue of $594 per Kindle in 2011, when most Kindles will be much cheaper. (The Kindle 3G costs just $189, and there’s also the cheaper $139 model). It seemed like they’re estimating that the average Kindle owner spends at least $300 a year purchasing ebooks — until I remembered remember that the larger Kindle DX costs $379. But even if half the Kindles purchased were the more expensive Kindle DX, Barrons is still estimating that the average Kindle owner spends a lot of money on ebooks — about $240 apiece. I guess that’s possible — that’s $20 a month, or about two $9.99 books every month. And of course, the price of ebooks is also rising, which seems to be reflected in their estimates for the future.

So what happens in 2012? Barrons predicts that 12.5 million Kindles will be sold! (That’s twice as many as in 2010, now earning Amazon another $7.96 billion in revenue.) And these predictions are especially significant, because Barrons is the official newspaper of Dow Jones & Company (which also publishes the Wall Street Journal). In fact, Clarence W. Barron, the man the newspaper is named after, is considered “the founder of modern financial journalism,” according to Wikipedia. Barrons is publishing research from an investment firm, so it’s not the official opinion of Barrons.com.

But it’s still an authoritative prediction that Amazon’s Kindle sales…are smoking!

Amazon yearly Kindle sales (estimate by Barrons)

Free Shipping on Kindles!

Amazon Kindle Valentine's Day free shipping ad

Amazon is now offering free two-day shipping when you order a new Kindle! If you’re buying a Kindle for a Valentine’s Day gift, the two-day shipping will make sure that your present arrives in time. Presumably the offer lasts at least through this Friday (since Amazon explains that it’s limited to two business days). Their ad also notes that the Kindle is the single most-gifted product on all of Amazon.com — and that it’s also got the most 5-star reviews of any product on Amazon. (10,931 different users gave the Kindle a five-star review.)

The two-day shipping costs will be fully deducted from the cost of your order on the final check-out screen — but it’s not the only way to get free shipping on a Kindle. In fact, you can get free shipping every day of the year on Amazon if you’re a college student, if you’re willing to provide Amazon with the name of your school and your major. Just register for the “Amazon student” program, which provides a full year of free two-day shipping. It’s an extended trial of the “Amazon Prime” service — so during that year, you can upgrade to one-day shipping for just $3.99. And if you’re not a college student, you can still qualify for the same cheap shipping rates — but Amazon will only give you a one-month free trial of the program, instead of one year. After that, the Amazon Prime membership costs $79 a year — but if you’re paying Amazon for a lot of expedited shipping, it could still save you some money!

Amazon also gave a special gift today to everyone who owns a Kindle — page numbers! “Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books,”
Amazon announced, “so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class… We’ve already added real page numbers to tens of thousands of Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle Store that have matching print editions and thousands more of the most popular books!”

Right now it’s available if you download a “preview” of the Kindle’s next software update. (I made an easy-to-remember URL: tinyurl.com/getpagenumbers ) But eventually, “All latest generation Kindle and Kindle 3G customers will receive this software update automatically via Wi-Fi once it becomes available,” Amazon announced. Along with the location numbers at the bottom of your screen, soon your Kindle will also be displaying what the page number would be if you were reading the same text in a printed book — along with the total number of pages in the book!

Those page numbers will only appear when you press the menu button, and “Not all Kindle books include page numbers,” Amazon’s web page explained. But if it book does have page numbers, Amazon will indicate a “page number source” on the book’s web page at Amazon.com (listed under “product details”). Amazon will calculate the page number using the first word on your screen — so technically you could end up also reading part of the next page (as it appears in the printed book) on the same screen. But clicking your “Next Page” button would then refresh your page number on the next screen. And of course, your Kindle will also still calculates the percentage of the book that you’ve finished reading (at the lower left side of the screen).

One study actually estimated that 47% of the people who own a Kindle received it as a gift — so Amazon obviously hopes people will think of the Kindle as a present for Valentine’s Day. I’m feeling a little left out, since my girlfriend and I both have Kindles already.

So I’ve been trying to think about the upcoming page numbers as Amazon’s special gift to us…!

The Last Hours of Borders Bookstores?

Borders bookstore closing

I’ve been wondering if the Kindle will one day lead to the end of the printed book. But maybe first, we should be worrying about the future of the bookstore! The picture above shows a Borders bookstore that closed in September. But now the entire Borders Group chain “may file for protection from creditors”, Bloomberg News reported last Tuesday — citing three different people who were “familiar with the matter.”

The three sources predicted that the filing could come as soon as this week, and one of them added that as many as 30% of the chain’s bookstores could close! (There’s over 500 Borders bookstores across America…) Ironically, last month Borders bookstores appeared in an episode of NBC’s “The Office” — while in real life the chain was stopping (or “delaying”) their payments to the publishers of the books Borders sells! Borders itself seems to acknowledge big changes are coming, announcing two weeks ago they’d received over half a billion dollars in funding to “provide Borders with the financial flexibility and an appropriate level of liquidity to move forward…” But further down in the press release a disclaimer noted it was contingent on “Borders’ finalization of a store closure program” to identify under-performing stores “that will be closed as soon as practicable…”

Ironically, for Barnes and Noble, that’s good news, and their stock price actually jumped up 7.4% last Tuesday. But Friday Borders stock closed at 39 cents a share — and then Monday even dropped two cents lower, down to just 35 cents a share. (Though that two cents represented 5.3% of the stock’s total value.) In fact, Borders stock may be de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange, which has a rule that every stock must be worth at least $1.00 a share. If their stock price doesn’t improve within six months, it can’t be listed on the exchange.

In the middle of the meltdown The Washington Post actually tracked down Mr. Borders himself — Louis Borders, one of the two brothers who co-founded the chain back in 1971 — at his home in Silicon Valley. (“Louis Borders declined to discuss his namesake’s problems or even whatever fondness he may hold for what’s left of his first big idea. ‘I’ve been away from the company for a while, and I just don’t want to talk about it,’ he said, before quickly hanging up.”) But they also uncovered the real story behind the closure. “Whatever progress publishers and Borders make toward a temporary deal, analysts and industry observers say the larger problem is much more daunting: There are just too many big bookstores selling a product fewer and fewer people want, at least in printed form… For many in the industry – and for this group of Borders regulars – the question is not whether the chain will go under, but when.”

Inevitably the article points at least one finger towards the popularity of new digital reading devices like the Kindle. (In the same article, the founder of Barnes and Noble jokes, “Sometimes I want to shoot
myself in the morning.”) And though the bookstore refused to talk to the newspaper’s reporter, he still looks for a reason tries to understand why. The Post notes that now Borders “confronts the limitless, more efficient supply chain of Amazon’s online emporium.” But he also looks for an answer buried deep in the company’s history.

Ironically, the company was started in 1971 because the Borders brothers had developed a new technology for booksellers! Originally the two brothers planned to license a software that they’d developed which helped predict the best-selling titles. But when they couldn’t interest the bookstores, they opened new stores themselves, and along with Barnes and Noble, created the phenomenon of superstore book-selling. “Readers rushed in for the latest Oprah Book Club pick. John Grisham became very wealthy, with one bestseller and movie after another…”

But technology continued marching forward, the Post notes. (“As the two book mega-stores clobbered each other in their battle for market share, the chains, and especially Borders, missed the next big cultural shift, analysts say.”) In fact, Borders eventually had to partner with Amazon for their web presence! By the end of the story, Amazon had developed the Kindle, Barnes and Noble created the Nook, and Borders had…nothing. “These trends were not a secret,” explains a retail expert at the Harvard Business School.

“They should have seen them coming…”

10 New Games for the Kindle!

Brain Bump - New Game for the Kindle

It’s amazing. Last summer there were just two good games you could play on your Kindle — Shuffled Row and Every Word. A couple more trickled in over the winter, including Scrabble and Monopoly. But suddenly there’s a flood of of brand new games appearing in the Kindle. In fact, ten more new games have turned up in just the last eight weeks. And at least two of them are now on sale!

Mahjong Solitaire
It was just last month when this beautiful new game turned up in the Kindle store – and for the next week it’s on sale for half price! It’s now just $1.99 (instead of $3.99), and it features a variety of 10 different game boards, each one below a very attractive grayscale logo. It’s a one-player version of the classic Mahjong tile-removing game, but I think the layout is absolutely gorgeous.

Next
Mahjong Solitaire was produced by Mobigloo, which had released its first game for the Kindle just eight days earlier (on November 22nd). Next is a Tetris-style “matching” game that’s “easy to learn…hard to master,” according to the description on Amazon.com. For $2.99 you get 128 different levels, and you can play them in any order, according to one reviewer at Amazon.com. “You do not have to slowly work your way to the hardest level!”

Blackjack
Amazon also released a new free game for the Kindle in the first week of December: the classic card game Blackjack. It’s currently the 11th best-selling free item in Amazon’s entire Kindle store, and it’s very well-produced. (It’s nice to see a Kindle game with all the functionality of an actual card game in a Vegas casino, like “doubling” your bet for the next card drawn, and even “buying insurance” against the dealer having a 21.) And if you’re not sure whether to hit or stand, there’s even a built-in adviser which reveals your mathematical odds of success in every situation.

Hangman
The day after Amazon released Blackjack, Sonic Boom released a Kindle version of the game Hangman. For just $2.99, you can play the classic letter-guessing game with over 1,000 different words. (And the game lets you swap in three different “victims” that you’re trying to save from the hangman’s noose — a stick figure, a gingerbread man, or even William Shakespeare.) Sometimes the puzzles are “Wheel of Fortune”-style phrases, but the game will always provide you with at least two hints towards the final answer. Right now the game is averaging just three out of five stars among reviewers on Amazon, but the biggest complaint seems to be that if you finally fail to guess the correct word, the game still doesn’t tell you what it was!

Slingo
The reviews were much more positive for Slingo, which is averaging four and a half stars out of 17 different reviews. It’s a variation on Bingo, where you “spin the dial” on the numbers at the bottom of the board, and hope they eventually match all the numbers on your Bingo card. “This Kindle version is a very good adaptation of a classic hand-held and PC game, and I think it is well worth the price,” wrote one reviewer in Arizona. “If Amazon keeps this up, I may have to unload a few books from my Kindle to make room for the games!”


Dusk World - new Amazon Kindle game

Dusk World
This is one of the most interesting new games for the Kindle, created by Amazon Digital Services, and released on December 14. Dusk World is the first game from Amazon which isn’t free — it costs $5.99 — but it’s got some really wonderful graphics. It’s an interactive text adventure with some lavish, noir detective style illustrations, in which you play the character Agent Patriot (described by Amazon as “a super-powered chameleon, reformed mob enforcer, war hero, convict framed for double murder.”) They warn that the game contains content “that may be inappropriate for children,” but it’s exciting that Amazon envisions the game as the first installment in a new “Living Tale” series of digital graphic novels.

Maze A Thon
Just five days before Christmas, another game developer released their very first game for the Kindle: Maze A Thon. You maneuver a cartoon mouse with your four-way controller, trying to navigate all the passages to a very elusive piece of cheese. There’s three maze styles — including wrap-around mazes which scroll off the Kindle’s screen, as well as “cubetastic” mazes (where the paths actually wrap around the six sides of a three-dimensional cube!) The mazes are generated at random, so it’s never the same maze twice, and at 99 cents, it’s already become one of the 50 best-selling items in Amazon’s Kindle Store.

New York Times Crosswords
For $1.99, you can also get a set of 30 easy crossword puzzles from the New York Times. (Or, for $4.99, purchase a larger set of 90 puzzles.) And instead of easy puzzles, you can also purchase a volume of “challenging” puzzles instead, in either a 30- or 90-puzzle set. The first set of games was released on December 21, and some users complained that its interface was a little slow to respond. But there’s also a built-in feature that will offer you hints — something that you’ll never get from a crossword puzzle in the newspaper!

Choice of the Broadsides and Choice of the Dragon
The week before Christmas also saw the launch of two text adventure games — and if you purchase them before midnight on Monday, they’re just 99 cents! (When they were released in December, they cost $4.99 apiece!) “Fire the starboard broadside!” shouts the Caption of the H.M.S. Courageous, as it engages in a fierce cannon battle with an enemy ship. Choice of the Broadsides lets you choose your response at key points in the story — for example, when one of your crew-member’s is wounded and needs medical attention. And in Choice of the Dragon, you’re not the junior commander on a war frigate, but a flying and fire-breathing dragon — so the choices can feel even more personal!

Brain Bump
This is probably the newest of the new games on the Kindle, since it was released just a week ago, on January 21. Brain Bump is a straightforward trivia game, presenting multiple choice questions about books and keeping track of how long you can maintain your “brain streak” of right answers. The questions cover everything from The Lord of the Rings to Shakespeare (though one reviewer on Amazon even complained that too many of the questions were about Lord of the Rings). Like any trivia quiz, you may have trouble if you haven’t read the books in the question. But for what it’s worth, the game costs just 99 cents — and it will always be the first trivia game ever released on the Kindle.

Are eBooks Finally Outselling Printed Books?

Kindle - white vs graphic (vs a stack of books)

Every once in a while, there’s a moment that reminds us of just how rich Amazon is.

Thursday afternoon, they announced that they’d earned $200 million more in 2010 than they had in the previous year. (“Net sales increased 36% to $12.95 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $9.52 billion in fourth quarter 2009.”) In fact, it was the first year that Amazon’s sales were more than $10 billion for a single three-month period. Amazon’s CEO said they’d sold “millions” of Kindles in those 13 weeks, and then he dropped an even more stunning peice of information.

“Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com.”

Amazon had announced last July that they were selling more ebooks than hardcovers. But at the time, I’d complained that was misleading, since hardcovers make up a small percent of total book sales at any store. One analyst had calculated that there’s usually three paperback books sold for every one hardcover book. Combining that information with Amazon’s statistics, it seemed like in July Amazon’s ebook sales were only 54% of their paperback sales.

But not any more. In fact, Amazon explained today that for every 100 paperback books they’ve sold this January, they’re selling 115 ebooks. That’s another way of saying that ebook sales have risen to 115% of Amazon’s paperback sales — that is, nearly double what it was in July. That’s even more impressive than it seems, because paperback sales are actually increasing, according to Amazon’s announcement today. And they’ve sold “three times as many” Kindle ebooks as they have hardcover books, according to today’s announcement. If you graph it all on a pie chart, it looks like this.

Amazon Kindle ebook sales vs print book sales - both hardcover and paperback - pie chart graph

Of course, that still means that Amazon is selling fewer ebooks than they are printed books — if you combine the paperback and hardcover sales. But ebooks now represent more than 45% of all the books that Amazon is selling. If ebooks can just increase their share by 5%, Amazon will finally be able to announce that they’re selling more ebooks than all print books combined. And that day could come sooner than you’d expect. Amazon predicted last summer that ebooks wouldn’t start outselling paperbacks until at least April of this year. They beat their own prediction by at least three months!

Of course, it’s possible that this is a one-time spike. (After all, there were a lot of new Kindles that were activated on Christmas day.) It’d be interesting to see whether ebook sales actually drop below paperback sales again at some time during February or March. But Amazon’s figures are even more impressive when you realize that not every printed book has an ebook edition yet. And to achieve this milestone, Amazon didn’t even count any of the free ebooks that people are downloading, which is presumably an enormous number.

In fact, if just one user downloads a free ebook for every nine paid ebook purchases — then Amazon is already delivering more digital ebooks than they are print editions!

Amazon’s Big News: the Kindle Single

45 rpm vinyl record single

Visit Amazon today, and you’ll see something new: “Kindle Singles.” In its Kindle Store, Amazon is now offering what are basically shorter ebooks — somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 words. In a press release today, Amazon argued that before Kindle Singles, “Writers often had to choose between making their work short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the ‘heft’ required for book marketing and distribution.” Their hope is that each Kindle Single will “allow a single killer idea…to be expressed at its natural length.”

Throughout today a link to “Kindle Singles” appeared on the front page of Amazon.com — and when you’re using your Kindle, it’s at the very top of the Kindle Store’s front page. There’s currently only 22 titles, but Amazon hopes the selection will grow. Among the “Kindle Single” titles are the first ever books from the popular TED conferences (whose motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading.”) And in their “Kindle Daily Post” blog, Amazon also described some of the other interesting new titles.

For example, they write, “Nowhere else will you find a Hollywood memoir which manages to merge sex clubs, murder, and Mary Tyler Moore.” It’s got a great title — “How to Not Succeed in Show Business By Really Trying” — and it’s already Amazon’s #1 best-seling book in their Business Humor subection. And Amazon’s Kindle blog also talks up The Real Lebowski — “an intimate profile of the Hollhywood icon and Coen brothers inspiration by Vanity Fair contributing editor, Rich Cohen.” Even at $2.99, it’s already one of the top-300 items in the entire Kindle store — and in the Kindle Single store, it’s the #5 best-selling item!)

So who is the real Lebowski? “He wrote the first draft of Apocalypse Now,” Amazon teases on the Kindle Store’s front page. “He discovered Arnold Scharzenegger. He wrote Clint Eastwood’s ‘Go ahead, make my day.’ The Vanity Fair writer and author of Sweet and Low trails tough-guy screenwriter/director John Milius as he fights to find his place in a transformed and unwelcoming movie business.” If you’re interested in Hollywood, it sounds very intriguing. But it also gives a hint about what knd of new, personal perspectives we’ll start seeing with Kindle Singles

I’ve always said ebooks would let more people get their thoughts published, but this new format could give writers yet-another tempting choice. Writer Ian Ayres said the new “Single” format “lets me more quickly and directly speak to the reader unhindered by page numbers or ad space.” And of course, writers want an easy way to tap into the growing market of Kindle owners. (“I love the reach of the Kindle platform,” Ayres says in Amazon’s press release. “Nowadays just about anyone can read a Kindle book on their phone or their laptop, or, of course, just on a Kindle.” )

If you’re using your web browser, the URL is amazon.com/kindlesingles. And if you believe Amazon’s Vice President of Content, you just might discover some exciting new perspectives, according to Amazon’s Vice President of Content. “We think customers will be riveted by these stories that can take them to a Swedish bank heist or to the Mexican border town of Juarez, or to consider a new way to think about happiness. ” And of course, the store also offers an equally riveting opportunity for any new aspiring author.

“The thieves had a handpicked crew, a stolen helicopter, a cache of explosives, and a plan to rob a $150-million cash repository.” That’s a line from Lifted — the “Swedish bank heist” story that he’s alluding to. But do you have your own a Single-sized idea to express? If so, Amazon apparently wants to hear what you’ve got to offer!

“The call remains open for serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to submit works for Kindle Singles,” they announced at the end of their press release. “To be considered for Kindle Singles, interested parties should contact digital-publications@amazon.com.”

Who knows? Maybe you can be the 23rd person to publish a “Single” in Amazon’s Kindle store…

The Kindle, the iPad, and the future of ebooks!

Globe of the Earth

Is the Kindle changing our world? That’s a question I ask myself every day. But someone’s actually contacted 6,250 frequent book buyers to find out exactly what’s going on. Their research generated some startling statistics – and led to a disturbing prediction about the future. Yes, it’s a picture of our world as it is today – but it already contains the seeds for the world of books tomorrow.

26% of adult book buyers are already reading digital ebooks, according to the survey, while 34% more said they’d be willing to try them. In fact, only 14% swore they would never, ever read an ebook. The biggest thing keeping people away from the Kindle was probably the price, according to their analysis. After Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle, it saw a surge in four different age brackets. The percentage who reported a Kindle doubled between June and November for people between the ages of 18 and 24 (from 3.2% to 6.5%). By November, 8.5% of the adults between the ages of 35 and 44 now reported they owned a Kindle — and 9.6% of the adults older than 65!

But how is that affecting the world of books and the way people buy them? First, how many iPads are there in the world? 15 million (according to Apple). That’s in only nine months, since it was released in April. But ironically, when people buy an ebook for their iPad, 40% of the ebooks are bought through Amazon’s Kindle store! Apple doesn’t have a deal in place with Random House, according to Publisher’s Weekly, which means Apple’s iBookstore can’t offer popular titles like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, John Grisham’s The Confession, or even former president Bush’s autobiography, Decision Points. In fact, iPad owners bought just 29% of their ebooks from Apple’s iBookstore, according to a November survey by a research firm called the Codex Group.

But those researchers discovered an even more amazing statistic. Before buying the Kindle, shoppers bought 14% of their books from Amazon — but after they bought a Kindle, that number jumped to 37%! “It’s the most amazing retail share growth strategy I’ve ever seen,” says Peter Hildick-Smith, the research firm’s president (who previously had developed retail growth strategies for Wal-Mart.) “The increase in market share came entirely from book buyers’ added purchase of e-books,” Publisher’s Weekly noted, and yet amazingly, Amazon barely lost any of its share of the print book market! “While e-book purchases do not appear to be cannibalizing print sales at Amazon, the Kindle store has to be taking sales away from somewhere, and Hildick-Smith believes it is from bricks-and-mortar stores.”

And then he makes a prediction. Currently the vast majority of people discover their next book through a bookstore. (I even know several people who’ve reported browsing through the books at a bookstore — before downloading a digital version to their Kindle or Nook!) But if the Kindle’s popularity continues, it’s going to hurt some local bookstores — and that’s going to make it harder for publishers to advertise their newest books. “What has Hildick-Smith really worried, however, is whether publishers have concrete plans to protect their bookstore base.

“If not, they need to quickly find an alternative primary source for the discovery of new books, especially for nonfiction, debut, and midlist fiction titles that, at present, sell in much fewer numbers as e-books than fiction does….”

Will Kindle Sales Triple in 2011?

My jaw dropped open. The world’s 10th-largest banking and finance company studied the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle. And then their analyst (Doug Anmuth of Barclays) predicted that the number of new Kindles sold will be nearly triple by the end of 2011!

“Our numbers may be conservative,” he reported, calculating that Amazon has already sold 7.1 million more Kindles in just 2010. Yet for 2011, he predicts they’ll sell another 12.3 million, earning Amazon another $7 billion, and forming a whopping 11% of Amazon’s total earnings for the year! Meanwhile, other researchers are also predicting that demand for digital readers will explode. IDC expects 14.7 million readers will be sold in 2011, up 36% from last year’s sales of just 10.8 million.

And it won’t end there! IDC expects that there’ll be even more Kindles sold in 2012. Though there’ll be at least 25 million digital readers in the world by that point, they’re predicting that another 16.6 million more will be sold in 2012. By that point the prices should be even cheaper, due to competition among the different vendors — and there should be a lot more content that’s available on the Kindle and other devices! (And that’s even before you consider the possibility of new color-screen devices, finally available at a price that makes people want to purchase them…)

I’ve asked myself if the “ebook revolution” is real, but apparently many business professionals are already convinced. An analyst at The Motley Fool wrote Tuesday that “The Kindle could be to books what the Gutenberg press was to printing,” predicting that Amazon will continue to gain market share, as the people who buy books start to gravitate towards the world of ebooks. And that’s got to be good for Amazon’s business model, because “There are no inventory, warehousing, or shipping costs.” Their profit margins should increase because they’re selling a virtual ebook — rather than paying to warehouse and then eventually transport an actual physical book.

But perhaps my favorite analysis came from my friend Richard, who took his new digital reader with him on a trip to Seattle. Yes, he walked into a Borders bookstore, and browsed around until he’d found a book that he wanted. But then he immediately downloaded a digital copy to his reader, and just read it as an ebook during his flight. My conclusion? Bookstores may be in trouble. His conclusion?

“We live in interesting times!”

Who’s Using the Kindle?

A crowd of happy people

About eight million people have apparently received a new Kindle this year. So who are these people?

Fortunately, Amazon’s shared some very interesting stories from Kindle owners on the Kindle’s Facebook page. And one of the most fascinating responses came from Eddie R., who apparently leads a very adventurous life. He’d written to tell Amazon that “I do Third World missionary work, and in the past I had taken anywhere from 25 to 40 pounds of regular books as resource material. That has now been reduced due to my Kindle.”

But Eddie’s adventures with his Kindle were just beginning, since he also told Amazon that “I recently climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. I took my Kindle with me, reading it all the way to the top, which was equal to carrying 100 books up the mountain with a very different weight factor. One of the real benefits is the length of time the battery stays charged 10-12 hours (without wifi) which enabled me to read every night (with a mountain climbing head lamp on), over a seven-day period. I am a very satisfied user!”

Of course, you don’t have to go to Africa to appreciate the Kindle. Barbie G. has a new baby, and she shared with Amazon that “In the first year with my 2nd Generation Kindle, I read 66 books. That was with two kids and a full-time job. It’s great to be able to read while feeding my baby her bottle…!” And a woman named Deborah A. loved how easy it is to turn pages with her Kindle. “The other day I was on the train and was knitting and reading… With a book I usually have to put down the knitting, turn the page, put something on the book to keep it open, then resume my knitting…and all of that I’d have to do for every couple of pages. The Kindle’s page turn bars/buttons on each side are perfect!”

But one of the most fascinating stories came from Vaughn R, who’d actually been part of one of the major news stories of 2010. “As a ‘survivor’ of the Carnival Splendor ‘cruise to nowhere’ I’d like to thank you for making the Kindle, which really helped turn my'”nightmare’ trip into a pleasure.” On its first day the California cruise ship had experienced a fire in its engine room, leaving the 3,299 passengers stranded on board 55 miles from the coastline without any electricity, air conditioning, or hot water, according to one news report. “While other passengers were haplessly ‘dead in the water’ due to the dead batteries on their iPads, my Kindle easily lasted the entire trip even though I used it nearly all day, every day.

“I was able to relax comfortably topside, reading in the bright sun, and enjoy my unexpected extended stay in the middle of the Pacific ocean while reading a large ‘stack’ of books which were loaded on my ultra-thin and light Kindle…”

Vaughn’s story got me wondering if anyone’s reading their Kindle while they’re stuck at an airport — and it turns out the answer is a big yes. “I was on that plane stuck for 12 hours on the tarmac at JFK yesterday,” one Kindle owner posted this afternoon in Amazon’s Kindle forum. “Thank goodness I had my Kindle!” And it turns out it’s a fairly common experience. “Recently, while waiting for my flight at the airport, a voice on a loudspeaker informed the passengers that our plane was delayed because of bad weather,” remembered Sandy B. on the Kindle’s Facebook page, “and it might be two hours before our flight departed.

“Two blissful hours of reading my Kindle sounded like a delicious escape from work, laundry, dishes and bookkeeping.” Instead of being upset about the delay, she wrote Amazon to tell them that she was actually happy about it. “Waiting is WONDERFUL with my Kindle!”

Probably my favorite comment came from a woman named Mary L., who e-mailed Amazon with the ultimate compliment about her Kindle: “It has literally ‘re-kindled’ my love of reading.” But another user thought the name had an even spicier origin. “I was on a ferry ride recently and watched with great amusement as a young man used his Kindle, as ‘chick-bait’. He sat near a group of attractive young women and began reading. It didn’t take more than a few seconds before one of them approached him to ask for a closer look. A man with a Kindle is far more interesting than a man with the latest cologne or the flashiest car… No wonder you called it ‘Kindle'”

This Monday Amazon’s CEO finally shared a story of his own, making the point that the Kindle doesn’t necessarily compete with the iPad. “We’re seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet. Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions.” Amazon isn’t feeling threatened by Apple’s products, and even bragged in their announcement about a customer who ordered an Apple Mac Mini on Christmas Eve — Friday, December 24, at 1:41 p.m. — and actually received in the same day, less than seven hours later in Woodinville, Washington. But Amazon is still beating Apple in the war of the ebooks, according to another detail in the announcement. Amazon’s three most popular ebooks over the last five weeks were John Grisham’s The Confession, Decision Points by George Bush, and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand — all books which are unavailable in Apple’s iBookstore. And Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos still had one more story to tell, with a very happy ending.

“On Christmas Day, more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history!”

Kindle vs Nook: More Surprising Sales Statistics

Barnes and Noble Nook
Amazon made a stunning announcement Tuesday morning. “In just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we’ve already sold millions of our all-new Kindles..”

Kindle owners were the first to get the news, since Amazon quietly posted it online in a forum for Kindle owners. “Thank you, Kindle customers…” the announcement began, adding that “in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009.” Their post was just six sentences long, but it seemed bigger in scope — and big on gratitude. Amazon’s Kindle Team said they were “energized” (and grateful) for “the overwhelming customer response,” and the message ended with the words “Thank you for being a Kindle customer.”

It’s fun watching the reactions from skeptical technology sites. “It’s raining Kindles,” wrote The Motley Fool. They’ve complained in the past Amazon never revealed the actual number of Kindles sold, saying it’s “like having a discussion with a kindergartner or a politician. They all tell you what they think you want to hear…but lack the details you really need to know before drawing your own conclusion.”

Even then, Amazon’s announcement Tuesday didn’t completely satisfy the site. “Amazon.com still isn’t coming clean with how many Kindle e-book readers it’s selling, but at least now we know that it will be in the ‘millions’ this holiday quarter alone.” The Motley Fool called Amazon’s sales figure “impressive,” and attributed it to the better deals available. “[I]t really wasn’t until this year’s price war — driving the price of the Kindle to as low as $139 — that it all began coming together. Book lovers that figured it would take several dozens of e-book purchases to cover the cost of the $399 model can now justify the lower break-even point on a $139 reader.”

Information Week supplied some crucial context for Amazon’s announcement. Just last week, Barnes and Noble revealed it was selling its color Nooks at a rate of 18,000 a day. Publisher’s Weekly had declared the company’s CEO as their person of the year, and in a profile, he’d revealed that every four or five days, Barnes and Noble loaded up another 747 aircraft just to fly in more Nooks from China. That would come out to 1,314,000 Nooks if it lasted for 73 days — two Nooks for every three Kindles sold — but the Nook Color has only been available for less than 7 weeks.

It’s been 47 days since its release on October 28, which works out to just 846,000 color Nooks sold so far (assuming their sales rate remained constant). “All this vague one-upmanship, doesn’t answer the question on most analysts’ minds,” complains Information Week, “which is how well the Kindle is selling compared to the Apple iPad.” But at least now we have a number to work with for the number of Kindle owners in the world. We now know that there are at least two million new Kindles firing up out there in the wild.

The devil is in the details, and C|Net found something even more important that I’d missed. Amazon’s CEO is predicting that ebooks won’t start outselling all printed books for a while — saying ebooks won’t even surpass the sales of paperback books until the summer of 2011. And as far as ebooks outselling all printed books, he’s predicting it will finally happen “by 2012.”

A Spy at the Bookstore?

Spy vs Spy comic - top secret

I felt guilty. At the back of my local bookstore, the owner’s wife holds a monthly book group. But tonight, as she introduced our next book, I was already planning to purchase it as an ebook. And then the woman next to me revealed the same guilty secret. “Can we read this as an ebook?” she asked the bookstore owner’s wife.

I’d learn many interesting thing in the minutes that followed, as a fierce conversation broke out instantly around the table. In fact, everyone in the room had more to say about ebooks than we’d had about that month’s book selection! There was excitement about Kindles and Nooks – even from the people who didn’t own one. So the first thing I learned is that it’s a very hot topic. But the second thing I learned is you’re much less enthusiastic if you own a bookstore..

I tried to be sympathetic, pointing out that bookstores were cut out when people bought their books as ebooks. But unfortunately, I made the mistake of mentioning that bookstores obviously get a piece of the book’s sales price — prompting another comment about how ebooks are much cheaper than printed books. This made the bookstore owner’s wife look very, very uncomfortable. She pointed out that ebook prices get heavily subsidized — that she believed Amazon was even taking a loss on some ebooks.

“Maybe it’s all a conspiracy, to drive the local bookstores out of business,” someone said. “Amazon has invented a device which only lets you read books you buy from Amazon, and never from your local bookstore, so they can drive all of their competition out of business. Then in the future, if you want a book, you’ll have to buy them all from a single store in Seattle!”

“Or two stores,” the Nook owner said proudly. “You could also buy books from the Barnes and Noble chain.”

But then we got some surprising news from the bookstore owner’s wife. She’s already planning to sell ebooks from the new Google Bookstore. Apparently there’s a way to integrate Google’s ebooks into the web sites of local bookstores. There’s some configuration issues, she’d said, which still have to be worked out, but it gives her customers a way to give some money to their local bookseller.
Unless you own a Kindle, someone pointed out quickly. Because the Google bookstore hasn’t been able to work out a deal with Amazon. Yet…

I felt like I was watching an enormous change as it was happening around the world. Those were the main points of the discussion, but it was fascinating to hear each person’s individual perspective. One 80-year-old woman said most of her reading now was just cheap, used paperback books — and that she could buy hundreds of them for the cost of an Amazon Kindle. And another woman said she liked the tactile feel of a book — and the chance to start a conversation if someone recognizes the cover of your book.

But then someone argued that could also be a disadvantage. After all, one of most popular ebook categories is romance novels — because finally, nobody has to know that you’re reading them! I added that maybe some people buy a book because they secretly want people to see them reading it. In fact, Stephen King buys print copies of books that he’s already read as an ebook — just so he can have it as a conversation piece on his shelf!

Of course, he can afford to do that, because he has more income than most folks, I was thinking. But I was already getting a dirty look from the bookstore owner’s wife. The book group was probably started solely as a way to get people to purchase the store’s books. And to be fair, that’s one of the most unappreciated functions of a local bookstore. It becomes a kind of local support group for actually purchasing and then reading new releases.

The fact that we were having this discussion shows what a bookstore can do for a community. So I’m glad to know that some bookstores may be evolving into re-sellers of digital ebooks. Maybe someday our book group will meet, and no one will have a printed copy of the book.

Because every single one of us will be reading the book on a Kindle.

Kindles Helping Children in Africa

Girl in Ghana Africa with WorldReader Amazon Kindle
in 2008, a man took his family on a tour of the world. While visiting an orphanage in South America, he asked what was behind the padlocked doors of a tin building. The answer was disturbing: it was books. In fact, it was the local library. The materials had become outdated, and the library fell into disuse.

And then he had an idea. Throughout the trip his own daughters had been reading ebooks on their digital reader. He got the idea of starting a charity with one simple goal: to use ebook technology to “put a library of books within reach of every family on the planet”. He named it World Reader.org — and today on Facebook, Amazon posted pictures of their successful mission in Africa.

Two boys in Ghana Africa with WorldReader Amazon Kindle

Someday the group hopes to reach out to the entire world, but they’re starting in Africa where they feel they can have the most impact.


If someone asks you to go hand out 440 e-readers, you might think that after, say 100, it could start to feel mundane. On the contrary, every single time we handed a student an e-reader, it was as if we were handing someone raw power…

The 440 Kindles were filled with books of local interest and literary classics, and the workers seem to be filled with new hope. They’d seen how cellphones overcame the need for land lines in the developing world, according to their web page, and now firmly believe that digital readers “will become the easiest, least expensive, and most reliable way to deliver books to under-served areas and under-privileged peoples.” They chose Amazon’s Kindle as the best device for their project (partly because it has global connectivity to a wireless network). And now even children in a remote village in Africa can join in that big global conversation which passes from generation to generation.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, Amazon posted an announcement about it on their Facebook page, and in Georgia, one of the first people to see it posted a response. “Maybe a silly question, but I’m going to ask it anyway — do they have electricity so they can charge them?” But on the internet, the charity workers are already offering up answers on their web page about Africa. “Mobile phones have helped pave the way for electricity even in remote locations, and, happily, e-readers consume relatively little power…”

And where there wasn’t electricity — for example, in a pilot program in Ghana — they’d partner with other organizations to install a solar cell, plus a satellite for internet access. Back on Facebook, another woman in Rhode Island added, “Hope they don’t make it to the black market.” But theft hasn’t been a problem, the web page explains. And the optimism continues.

I love the way that distance starts becoming irrelevant thanks to some simple, everyday technology. The group is thrilled that they can eliminate the cost of shipping these books — and that ebooks are often cheaper than printed books. And back in America, nearly a thousand people clicked Facebook’s “like” icon for the news of their mission, while another 140 left supportive comments.

Amazon Secrets: The War of the Booksellers

Amazon office building in Seattle

Last week I asked what happens when Amazon acquires the same massive negotiating power as the major chain bookstores? But it turns out we may already know the answer.

I just took a closer look at Boston Review‘s 4,500-word article about “Books after Amazon.” It’s got insider interviews, honest statistics, and the real details of a war that’s been going on for decades. It begins with estimates that 75% of America’s online book purchases now happen through Amazon.com — but then reports that for some publishers, Amazon is actually responsible for more than half of all their sales. “Amazon is indisputably the king of books,” the article notes, before citing an independent book publisher asking a very important question: “what kind of king they’re going to be…”

Kindle owners may be the ones most affected by Amazon’s success — and this article apparently reveals two of Amazon’s dirtiest secrets. “Most customers aren’t aware that the personalized book recommendations they receive are a result of paid promotions, not just purchase-derived data.” And behind-the-scenes, while you’re watching Amazon.com — Amazon’s price tags are also watching you! “Individual customers may get different discounts on the same book depending on their purchase history…”

But there’s also a fascinating discussion about how the prices of books are set. As Amazon grew, it pushed up the chain bookstores’ standard discount to 52–55 percent, “with some as high as 60 percent.” This sounds like a good thing, but there may also be a dark side. The article cites a 2004 article in Publisher’s Weekly that accused Amazon of demanding high discounts from book publishers with the threat of, among other things, making their books less likely to appear in customer searches.

Two publishers even reported that their books did, in fact, disappear altogether from Amazon.com, simply because they’d refused to offer extra discounts when Amazon sold the books! One publisher actually remembers that when he’d told Amazon he couldn’t afford to participate, Amazon’s employees told him he “couldn’t afford not to.” The second publisher’s books eventually returned without agreeing to the discounts — after he threatened to contact The New York Times. “Nonetheless, cases of disappearance continue,” Boston Review reports.

In some cases, a book’s “Buy” button apparently disappears from its web pages at Amazon.com! “In 2008 two huge British publishers — Bloomsbury and Hachette — had their buttons pulled,” the article notes. “That same year, Amazon also removed buy buttons from any print-on-demand publisher that didn’t use Amazon’s on demand printer…a move that led to an antitrust lawsuit in which Amazon agreed to pay a settlement to a competitor, though it admitted no wrongdoing.” And the article also cites an incident last year where Amazon’s ranking system stopped including “hundreds of gay- and lesbian-themed books”.

But the article finally works its way around to the million-dollar question: how is Amazon setting the prices of ebooks? Amazon initially demanded that all publishers price their books at $9.99 — without
consulting them first, choosing simply to “absorb the loss, paying publishers for the price of the equivalent printed book in order to make the deal more appealing. ” But to this day, “Amazon remains in control, using its algorithms to set the price of e-books.” The article also notes the tense negotiation over control of the pricing of Macmillan books, with Amazon temporarily de-listing every Macmillan book from its store. “It and a handful of other large publishers have taken over pricing of their own e-books,” Boston Review points out, “But smaller houses have not been so lucky.”

There’s also a prophetic description of a 2009 price war between Amazon, Walmart, and Target, in which hardcover best-sellers — generally sold for between $25 and $35 — were sold for less than $9.00 Eventually the U.S. Department of Justice received an angry letter from the American Bookseller’s Association over “illegal predatory pricing,” and it included a dire warning from author John Grisham’s agent. “If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over.” But the Justice Department never issued a formal reply.

Coincidentally, $10 is now Amazon’s standard price for a new ebook. But one San Francisco book publisher tells Boston Review that Amazon can’t continue to sell these ebooks at a loss, warning “Eventually, they’re going to change their minds on this…” And at that point, it may not be Kindle owners who take a hit — but the publishers who are trying to sell their books at Amazon.com

“They’re going to keep that e-book price where it is. They’re going to turn around and say to the publishers, ‘Tough’.”

Is Target Editing Amazon's Books?

Target store logo

Want to know the dirty secrets of the book publishing industry? Boston Review just published a shocking but very well-researched article that seems to finally lay it all out.

The article starts with some disturbing bookstore history. During the 1970s and the 1980s, new independent bookstores continued appearing, but “this trend came to a halt when chain superstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders began taking over in the late ’80s.” Over the next 20 years, the number of independent bookstores dropped from 6,000 to 2,200, which the author blames on their ability to negotiate bigger discounts from book publishers. In a fight for the future of the bookstore, the American Bookseller’s Association even filed two lawsuits — one in 1994 and a second one in 1997.

“In 2001 this lawsuit, too, was settled, on the condition that a large amount of the evidence the ABA had collected against the chain stores be destroyed,” the article reports. It seems a little ironic that the chain stores beat the local stores by drastically discounting their books — only to face the threat of even cheaper competition today from the ebooks in Amazon’s Kindle store. But this episode reveals another big way that chain bookstores changed the book industry. Now publishers earmark about 4% of their net revenue to pay for special promotions within chain bookstores, including special price discounts and prime placement at the front of the bookstore (which apparently retails for $20,000 for a two-week display).

Smaller publishers are hurt, since they can’t compete with large promotional budgets — and that’s only the beginning, according to the article. Now large retailers “weigh in on everything from book covers to sample chapters of manuscripts,” and “In some cases, retailers even demand changes.” Am I reading that right? Is Target calling the shots in what’s appearing in our books? The article cites information from an editor at “a major publishing house, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity for fear of employer sanctions.” And he reveals that yes, frequently there’s representatives from Target, Borders, and Barnes and Noble when potential books are discussed.

“Without their buy-in, the publisher is unlikely to go forward with a book,” the article reports. “Ideas that excite [independent book stores] might be scrapped if they don’t get a chain’s stamp of approval.” What’s disturbing about this is that’s ultimately also affecting shoppers at Amazon.com. Amazon can only sell printed books after print publishers make them available. But if Target gets a veto on which books are printed, then Amazon will never get a chance to sell them.

At first it seems like we should be cheering for Amazon’s Kindle Store. Anyone can self-publish an ebook — so isn’t that a positive development? Yes, in the sense that unlike a bookstore, Amazon stocks every book that a publisher sells. The only question now is: what happens when Amazon acquires the same massive negotiating power as the major chain bookstores?

Will they ultimately use their newfound power for good, or for evil?

The Best Thanksgiving eBooks

Happy Thanksgiving Curious George book and Kindle ebook cover

Thanksgiving’s almost here!

If you’re traveling for the holiday – or just have some extra time to relax — I’ve picked out a few Thanksgiving-related ebooks. With all the excitement around Amazon’s big Black Friday deal — $89 for the Kindle 2 — I’m already feeling grateful… that I own a Kindle already!

Here’s some of the best ebooks — in different categories — that I found for Thanksgiving in Amazon’s Kindle Store.

The Best Romance
“Thanksgiving” by Janet Evanovich

Best-selling author Janet Evanovich wrote several funny mystery novels — but she actually began her career writing romance novels at the age of 45. One of her first books was “Thanksgiving,” written in 1988, describing how overworked Megan Murphy meets a good-looking doctor at historic Williamsburg, Virginia. (Megan’s enjoying a cup of hot cider and two sugar cookies from the Raleigh Tavern Bake Shop when she discovers the doctor’s giant pet rabbit is eating a hole through her skirt!)

According to the book’s description on Amazon, “she meant to give its careless owner a piece of her mind, but Dr. Patrick Hunter was too attractive to stay mad at for long,” and soon “the two are making Thanksgiving dinner for their families.” And 12 different Amazon’s reviewers gave it five-star reviews, including one who wrote that “If you’ve enjoyed Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, you’re going to get a kick out of her stories for the Loveswept Romance imprint…”

The Best Cookbook
Thanksgiving 101 by Rick Rodgers

Perdue Farms sells over $4.6 billion worth of poultry every year, and for eight years, Rick Rodgers was their media spokesman. He traveled the country giving classes, according to Amazon’s description of the book, and delivers “everything, absolutely everything, you would want to know about buying, thawing, prepping, and roasting a turkey.

“You needn’t look any further. There’s a long question-and-answer-style section that anticipates any questions you might have. Then it’s right on to everything from Perfect Roast Turkey with Best-Ever Gravy to Holiday Meatball Lasagna.” And in addition, there’s lots of recipes for stuffings, side dishes, appetizers, and even leftovers. 29 of the book’s 34 reviewers on Amazon gave it five stars, while the other five
awarded it four. It’s a classic — Amazon’s first review of the book was written in 1998 — but even today, it’s become one of Amazon’s best-selling holiday cooking books.

The Best History Book
Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford

Who better to tell the story of Thanksgiving than the pilgrims who lived through it? (My favorite chapter was the one about the very non-Puritan antics of Thomas Morton…) William Bradford began writing his history of America’s most famous pilgrims back in 1630 (according to my anthology of American literature), and he continued chronicling their life up to 1647. But the invaluable manuscript was never published in his lifetime, and after Bradford’s death, his family passed it down through the generations.

The precious unpublished memoir traveled its own complicated journey, down through Boston’s Old South Church, and eventually even back to England. Finally it was published in 1856 — a full 200 years after it was written. And now today, thanks to the Kindle, we can take peek into the lives of the very pilgrims who first started celebrating Thanksgiving.

The Best Children’s Book
Happy Thanksgiving, Curious George

Just 12 weeks ago, a new Curious George book appeared, and this one has a special surprise. Yes, you may have read other children’s books about the playful and accident-prone monkey… But this one rhymes!


George wakes up in the morning.
Something smells quite nice.
He knows for sure he wants some —
A piece, a smidge, a slice.

He rushes to the kitchen
and there he sees the man —
with yellow hat an apron,
A turkey in the pan.

The turkey’s in the oven.
It takes some time to cook.
But every now and then
George can’t help but take a look….

Uh-oh, I bet there’s going to be trouble.

Hope you have a happy Thanksgiving!

Amazon announces $89 Kindle Black Friday deal!

It’s true! Amazon just announced they’ll sell Kindle 2’s for $89 on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving!)

A few minutes ago, they snuck the announcement onto their Facebook page for the Kindle, and confirmed it on their Twitter feed. I’d thought it was just a rumor, but here’s the complete text from Facebook of what Amazon announced!

Black Friday Deal: This Friday, 11/26, you can get our previous generation Kindle for $89!

Our previous generation Kindle uses the old E Ink technology (the same E Ink as in the current Nook). Our all-new Kindle uses the latest generation E Ink (Pearl) for 50% better contrast, and is available at the everyday low price of …$139.

Black Friday Deal: This Friday, 11/26, you can get our previous generation Kindle for $89! Our previous generation Kindle uses the old E Ink technology (the same E Ink as in the current Nook). Our all-new Kindle uses the latest generation E Ink (Pearl) for 50% better contrast, and is available at the everyday low price of ...$139.

Amazon included a link to Amazon’s Kindle page, though it points to the newest $139 Kindle rather than the earlier edition that they’re selling for $89. But within an hour, over 100 people had clicked the Facebook button to indicate that they “Liked” the news — and 47 of them left enthusiastic comments.

And then Amazon added a comment themselves with a crucial “buying window” for their special offer.

“Hi Everyone. This deal will be featured in the Lightning Deals section of our Black Friday page, beginning at 9am PT on 11/26. Here’s a link to the page: http://amzn.to/heVUFX

There’s no Kindle on that page yet, but presumably it will be updated right at 9 a.m. on Friday. Later in the day they actually deleted that comment, but they did add another one to encourage their prospective buyers.

“Please note that all second generation Kindles offered through the Lightning Deal on Black Friday will be new devices – not refurbished.”

And in case you missed it, I’ve also just discovered today that an Amazon blogger has “leaked” a calendar showing exactly when Amazon’s short-term special deals will appear online! I see movies for just $1.99 on Wednesday, including Lord of the Rings and The Bourne Identity. In a post (titled “We’re leaking”), Amazon’s “Armchair Commentary” blog revealed the link, adding that “In addition to the doorbusters below, you’ll find over 2,700 titles at up to 70% off during our Black Friday Week deals…”