My Favorite Kindle Christmas Story

David letterman vs. the iPad and Kindle

Over the holidays I always like to think about people who’ve been with us over the years — and I remember watching David Letterman all the way back in the 1980s! But 2015 was the year he finally retired from his long-running late-night talk show. So I wanted to take a moment to remember a time when he actually talked to his audience about the Kindle. Just five years ago on his late-night talk show he’d shown off the tablet that he’d he’d just started using!

It’s a good reminder about how fast things have changed — and how sometimes the biggest challenge is simply our own stubborn human nature! Talking to the leader of his band (Paul Shaffer), Letterman at first actually seemed genuinely confused even about whether he’d bought an iPad or a Kindle!


LETTERMAN: For Christmas, I loaded up — I had one of them iPads, and they put a book in it. You know you can do that now?

PAUL SHAFFER: Oh, yeah. Sure…

LETTERMAN: And so I’ve been reading this book in this iPad thing, and I’m reading and I’m reading and I’m reading. And as you know, you don’t turn a page, in — when you’re reading on the — what do they call them, the Kindles or something?

PAUL SHAFFER: Yeah… They’ve got that, too, yeah. (Audience laughs)


Letterman was probably reading with a “Kindle for iPad” app. (Earlier that week, Amazon had pointed out that it’s one of the top 10 best-selling apps among iPad owners.) But as their conversation went on, Paul Shaffer gently tried to correct Letterman’s confusion as he explained how you turn pages.


LETTERMAN:And so you just — you just kind of do this with your finger.

PAUL SHAFFER: You flip that. Yeah.

LETTERMAN: And the thing’ll…

PAUL SHAFFER: On the iPad and the Kindle…


Letterman was playing up his reactions as a technology curmudgeon — but he was building up to a complaint that I’d heard before. The Kindle used to tell you only what percentage of a book you’d finished reading, without telling you how many real-world pages were left in the book. Now, of course, the Kindle can actually report how much time is left before you reach the end of book — or even the end of your current chapter. But back in 2010, this was irritating the late-night talk show host. Although the punch line turned out to be that his bandleader Paul Shaffer had the perfect answer!


LETTERMAN: And I’m reading, and I realize: something’s wrong here. Something’s desperately wrong. There’s no page numbers on my book!

PAUL SHAFFER: Right. No, well, there can’t be. There can’t be, because you can change the font, and if you have a larger font, then you’re going to have fewer pages and therefore you can’t possibly commit to a page number because as you electronically alter the page you number, you are going to have to change as well the number of pages that you have at your disposal…(Audience applauds)

LETTERMAN: Thank you. Thank you, Steve Jobs.


It’s nice to remember that story, as a reminder of how things have changed. (Amazon eventually even found a way to add page numbers to lots of Kindle ebooks, so maybe Letterman is happier now.) But I still always smile when I remember how skeptical he’d been about the iPad — even in earlier shows. When the device was first released, he’d showed one to his audience, then joked “The radiation this thing gives off is incredible. You’re supposed to wear a lead apron when you operate it!”

But it was especially interesting in light of a research study by J.P. Morgan. Back in early 2011, they’d determined that 40% of the people who own an iPad also own a Kindle — and that another 23% of them planned to buy one within the next 12 months!

I’ve always seen that as a hopeful sign that all iPad owners aren’t as confused as David Letterman! But I still would like to drop his comments into a time capsule, to be opened up by later generations. Even if books are all someday replaced by digital readers, it’ll be worth remembering just how uncomfortable some people were with the change.


LETTERMAN: But see, and then you just — you just whisk it away like that, and then — but look. What do you see? Do you see a page number?

PAUL SHAFFER: No….

LETTERMAN: No. You don’t see no page number.

PAUL SHAFFER: No. There isn’t…

LETTERMAN: How do you know when you’re done, is what I want to know? Or if somebody – somebody asks you, are you reading the — the book? And I say yeah. “What page are you on?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what page I’m on.” For example, this — I’m reading now the Alex Trebeck story, and I have no idea — uh…No, I can’t help you. Sorry!”

David letterman vs. the iPad and Kindle

The 110 Most Useful URLs for Kindle Owners

Digital Publishing vs. the Gutenberg press

Every year on New Year’s Day, I assemble a “master list” of shortcuts to over 100 of the most useful pages for Kindle owners, like all of the free ebooks, games, and comic books that Amazon’s now making available. But this year there’s 10 new links that highlight some fun new content that in 2015 became a part of our Kindle universe!

Instead of trying to memorize a bunch of complicated URLs, I’ve created shorter, easier-to-remember addresses that still lead to the same pages.

And all 110 of them start with TinyURL.com …

FREE EBOOKS AND GAMES
tinyurl.com/FreeKindleGames
There’s also free games for your black-and-white Kindle readers — 19 of them — most created by Amazon to show off the Kindle’s versatility.

tinyurl.com/DickEbooks
Six free science fiction stories by Philip K. Dick are available for your Kindle!

And here’s Amazon’s interview with President Barack Obama available as a free Kindle Single.


Also, Transformations is a free 200-page ebook published in 2014 by Amazon about “authors, innovators, and small businesses” around the world who are all enjoying new success using Amazon.

FREE COMIC BOOKS

tinyurl.com/KindleFCBD
There’s 45 free comic books in the Kindle Store from “Free Comic Book Day”, a real-world event which happens every year on the first Saturday in May. (Mark your calendars!) There’s The Avengers, Rocket Raccoon and The Guardians of the Galaxy, and even Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge


Plus, here’s all of Amazon’s best-selling free Kindle comic books. (And you can also click here for a shortcut to all of Amazon’s Digital Kindle Comics.

tinyurl.com/ComicsNewsletter
Amazon’s free newsletter about digital comic books. And when you subscribe, they’ll give you a free Kindle edition of Superman No. 1 from the “New 52” series.


FREE LAUGHS FROM AMAZON

tinyurl.com/FunnyFakeAmazonReviews
Amazon’s own list of their favorite funny fake customer reviews.

tinyurl.com/MoreFunnyAmazonReviews
Amazon’s second list of their favorite funny customer reviews.

tinyurl.com/AmazonTours
In 2014, Amazon finally started offering free tours of their own fulfillment centers in six different states!

Horse Head Mask from Amazon


FREE MUSIC

tinyurl.com/FreeMp3List
I love how Amazon is always ready with terrific mp3s — many of them free. And you can always find a complete list at this URL!

Plus, last year Amazon started making thousands of songs available for free to subscribers of their Amazon Prime service.


FREE VIDEO

tinyurl.com/PrimeInstantVideo
If you’ve signed up for Amazon’s free “Prime” two-day shipping service, they’ll also let you watch a ton of movies and TV shows for free on your Kindle Fire! (Or over the internet…) Browse through the complete selection here – everything from the original episodes of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone to modern favorites like Bones and even new shows created by Amazon!

And then there’s John Goodman’s show “Alpha House” — written by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau!  It’s exclusively available on Amazon Instant Video. Watch the first episode free online!

tinyurl.com/2015Pilots
Amazon’s competing with Netflix by offering their own original programming! (Previous pilot’s included Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and their Emmy award-winning Transparent

tinyurl.com/KindleFlare
The Onion finally unleashed their fake news stories on the Kindle, joking that Amazon had released a Kindle with a very annoying new feature. (And you can also have The Onion delivered directly to your Kindle.)

tinyurl.com/BezosMarketplace
A fascinating interview with the author of the controversial book about Amazon, “The Everything Store,” which includes a discussion (with audio) about the sound of Jeff Bezos’s laughter.

tinyurl.com/JeffBezosRemembers
Just 7 years after the launch of Amazon, Jeff Bezos shared its story with a roomful of young entrepreneurs, reminiscing about his site’s early days — and the library where he’d read books as a teenager.

Amazon Kindle 399 ebook sale

BARGAIN EBOOKS

$3.99 Kindle eBooks
Every month, Amazon picks 100 ebooks to offer at a discount of $3.99 or less. There’s always a new selection on the first day of the month, so if you visited the page on the last day of the month, you’d see 100 discounted books — and then the next day you’d see an entirely new selection!

If you’re in England, Amazon’s created a different page for their bargain ebooks — go to $3.99 Kindle eBooks in England

And if you’re in France, there’s also a different URL for your (English-language) bargain ebooks — it’s at $3.99 Kindle eBooks in France

tinyurl.com/DailyKindleDeal
In addition, Amazon’s also created a special “Daily Deal” page, where they pick a new ebook each day to sell at a big discount for 24 hours. Past deals have included a James Bond novel by Ian Fleming and Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night — and I’m always surprised by the variety.

tinyurl.com/DailyDealsEmail
Amazon will also just e-mail you every “Daily Deal,” so you never have to worry about missing one of them!

tinyurl.com/KindleSelect25
Each week Amazon highlights 25 more books

tinyurl.com/CheapThrillers
Amazon’s special selection of “international thrillers” — all priced at $4.99 or less


KINDLE SINGLES

tinyurl.com/AmazonKindleSingles
All of Amazon’s short, cheap “Kindle Single” ebooks

And Stephen King even published a 25-page personal essay titled “Guns”, which he’s selling as a Kindle Single for 99 cents.


NEW FROM AMAZON

tinyurl.com/AmazonPrints3D
Amazon introduced a new 3-D printing store in 2014 with everything you’ll need to get started making!

tinyurl.com/AmazonBookLists
Amazon’s created their own list of “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime”

Amazon’s new Echo sstand-alone “digital assistant” plays music and answers questions – activated by your voice!

And here’s Amazon’s line of classic and cutting-edge high-definition color Kindle tablets

Don’t miss Amazon’s slick new, high-contrast version of their Kindle Paperwhite


Amazon has also offered this giant 9.7-inch black-and-white Kindle DX.

tinyurl.com/KindleSending
Amazon’s free “Send-to-Kindle” plug-in for web browsers

tinyurl.com/CustomKindleCovers
Convert your own photos into a custom Kindle cover

Game of Thrones graphic novel

FAVORITE AUTHORS


If you love Game of Thrones, you’ll love George R. R. Martin’s two graphic novels

tinyURL.com/XKCDAuthor
XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe became a best-selling author in 2014, thanks to “What If,” his mind-blowing collection of serious answers to “absurd hypothetical questions.” And in 2015, he published yet-another book with mind-blowing illustrations called Thing Explainer

A fun unpublished Dr. Seuss manuscript — with illustrations! — was finally discovered in 2015!

tinyurl.com/EbertEbooks
I’ll never forget Roger Ebert. Here’s the Kindle editions for all his ebooks.

Elmore Leonard has also left us — but here’s Kindle editions of all his books.

Amazon also has an exclusive new serialized collection of seven previously unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut.

tinyurl.com/KurtVonnegutEbooks
Every Kurt Vonnegut ebook in Amazon’s Kindle Store – including a free edition of his science fiction short story, “2 B R 0 2 B”

tinyurl.com/BukowskiEbooks
Every Charles Bukowski ebook in Amazon’s Kindle Store.

tinyurl.com/AgathaChristieEbooks
All the Kindle editions of Agatha Christie’s mysteries.

My favorite Kindle mystery — a 384-page detective novel following a police detective’s homicide investigation in Houston called Back on Murder.

tinyurl.com/JamesBondEbooks
Every James Bond novel by Ian Fleming has been released as a Kindle ebook — officially licensed by Amazon publishing.


One of the founders of the dating site “OK Cupid” released the stunning book “Dataclysm” towards the end of 2014, revealing the surprising insights achievable with massives amounts of data.

There’s also Amazon’s discounted version of the Hunger Games trilogy.

tinyurl.com/BrightBooks
Classic children’s picture books revived by the loving granddaughter of author/illustrator Robert S. Bright.

tinyurl.com/CalvinAndHobbesKindle
Three different “Calvin & Hobbes” collections were finally released as Kindle ebooks in 2014. Here’s Amazon’s complete selection.

tinyurl.com/DilbertEbooks
My favorite newspaper comic strip is Dilbert, about the life of an office cubicle worker. In 2012, creator Scott Adams finally collected all the comic strips together into a series of ebooks that you can buy for your Kindle!

tinyurl.com/DoonesburyEbook
Doonesbury, the long-running newspaper comic strip by Garry Trudeau, is now finally available on the Kindle — in four massive ten-year retrospective collections!

tinyurl.com/PlayboyEbooks
Playboy announced for their 50th anniversary that they’d release 50 of their best interviews as 99-cent Kindle ebooks. They’re now available in the Kindle Store, including fascinating and sometimes even historic interviews with famous figures from the last 50 years, including Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Bill Gates, Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen Hawking, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jon Stewart.

George Takei is the 75-year-old TV actor who’d played Mr. Sulu on Star Trek. But now he’s also a huge internet phenomenon — and he’s finally released his first Kindle ebooks (including Oh myy! (There Goes the Internet)…!)

One of the biggest events in publishing was the release of all J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels as Kindle ebooks.

Two Maurice Sendak URLs
Where the Wild Things Are was written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, a beloved children’s book author who died in 2012 at the age of 83. Though his books were never released in Kindle Format, you can still download the full-length novel adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are that was written by Dave Eggers And you can even buy a DVD at Amazon of the rare 1970s adaptation of Sendak’s stories into television cartoons with narration by Peter Schickele.

MORE FUN EBOOK LINKS

tinyurl.com/100AmazonBooks
In 2014, Amazon created a fun list of “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.”

tinyurl.com/TopAmazonAuthors
Amazon has released a special feature showing their most popular authors at any given moment — updating the list every hour!


Amazon’s Editors pick the best new books of the month

tinyurl.com/BooksWithBuzz
The hottest new and upcoming books are featured here.

tinyurl.com/BestBooksOf2012
A fun list where Amazon’s editors also choose their selections for the “Best Books of 2012”. It’s a special web page with their picks in 30 different categories, including the best print books, the best Kindle ebooks, and the best biographies, mysteries, and even cookbooks!

tinyurl.com/AmazonFallBooks
Amazon’s picks for the best books of autumn


Amazon office building in Seattle

AMAZON’S CUSTOMER SUPPORT

tinyurl.com/kindle-cs
Amazon’s Customer Service has drawn rave reviews. (If your Kindle is broken, Amazon will usually mail you a replacement overnight!) This page collects all of Amazon’s support URLs. And at its far left, there’s a special link labelled “Contact Kindle Support,” which leads to the support phone numbers for 10 different countries, and there’s also an online contact form and the ability to start a live text chat!

Amazon lets you return any ebook within 7 days, no questions asked. So you’ll always be able to get a refund if you’re not satisfied with your purchase. (And you can also use this URL for returning Kindles!)

MY EBOOKS AND GAMES

It’s my list, so of course it includes shortcuts for a couple very special projects…

tinyurl.com/500Quotes
My very first Android app — “500 Inspiring Quotes” — is available free in Amazon’s Android store, and also in the Nook and Google Play Store.

An original word game for Kindle became one of the top 100 most-popular games for the year — and I’m it’s co-author! Check out all the fun at this URL, and discover why dozens and dozens of people gave it a five-star review! And we’ve just released a brand-new sequel too…

“For Thanksgiving, try this game. Find the guilty turkey’s name!”

I wrote a special “mystery poem” that was finally published in November as a funny, illustrated ebook. There’s cartoon-y pictures which show four turkeys in a farmer’s pen on Thanksgiving Day. The farmer’s approaching with an axe — but one of the turkeys has a plan to escape! (“Can the farmer figure out which one? And can you?”) The short “Turkey Mystery Rhyme” is only 99 cents — a real bargain for a fun, holiday smile.

Lucca is a cuddly Cocker Spaniel dog who was rescued from an animal shelter, and he now adores his new family — my girlfriend and me! My girlfriend’s been telling her friends how she received “the best present ever” — this short collection of funny photos of her dog, along with sweetly humorous captions that tell the story of his life. (Like the day he met that white cat that moved in downstairs…) If you want to preview a “sample chapter first, go to tinyurl.com/GoodReadsDog — but the whole “short picture scrapbook” is only 99 cents, and it offers a nice peek at a very wonderful dog…

GAMES

tinyurl.com/FreeAmazonApps.
Amazon’s Android app store offers a free app every day — both for your Kindle Fire tablet and for any Android smartphone.


Amazon has a web page devoted just to all the games you can play on your Kindle. (There’s over 400 of them!) It’s fun to see all the colorful game “covers” collected together into one magical toy store-like page.


Free Kindle Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine cover illustration

FREE AND DISCOUNTED KINDLE MAGAZINES

tinyurl.com/KindleMagazineDeals
These magazines have been heavily discounted when delivered to your Kindle.

A VERY SPECIAL KINDLE BLOG


It’s my blog! (This is the URL for its page on the Kindle Store.) If you want to tell your friends how to find me, this URL makes it easy to remember. Just practice saying “TinyURL . com/MeAndMyKindle” and soon we’ll all be sharing the latest Kindle news together.

KINDLES ON TV

I love Amazon’s Kindle TV ads — and you can watch them all online at YouTube.com/Kindle.

tinyurl.com/KindleFireSong
There was a spectacular new TV ad when Amazon announced their new Kindle Fire tablets. It showed the evolution of print from a quill pen dipped in ink to Amazon’s latest full-color multimedia touchscreen tablet. But I loved the song they played in the background, by a new Louisiana-based band called the Givers. (“The words we say today, we’ll say… we’ll see them again. Yes, we’ll see them again…”) I’d called it an ode to all the self-published authors who are finding new audiences on the Kindle — and at this URL, you can hear the entire song on YouTube!


tinyurl.com/AmyRutberg
Before she became “the woman from that Kindle commercial,” actress Amy Rutberg appeared in a zany stage production called “The Divine Sister.” Playbill (the official magazine for theatre-goers) had her record a backstage peek at the theatre and its cast for a special online feature — and it’s a fun way to catch a peek at another part of her career. That URL leads to the video’s web page on YouTube, and there’s also a second part which is available at http://tinyurl.com/AmyRutberg2

MISCELLANEOUS

tinyurl.com/kindlemap
Ever wonder where all the Kindle owners are? Someone’s created an interactive online map, where Kindle owners can stop by and leave “push pins” showing their location! There’s big clusters on the east and west coast of America (though you could still leave the first push pin for Arizona or Nevada!) It’s an adapted version of one of Google’s maps of the world, so you can also spot “Kindlers” in Iraq, Romania, and Ethiopia. And if you click on the push pins, you’ll find the Kindler’s name and sometimes a comment. (One Kindler in Spain simply posted: “Tengo un Kindle DX!”)

tinyurl.com/GoldBoxPage
Every day Amazon also offers discounts on a new item — sometimes even expensive electronics equipment. And you can always find them all at tinyurl.com/GoldBoxPage

A new ebook by the Amazon manager who was in charge of the Kindle on the day it launched!

And finally, here’s the most useful URL of all.

tinyurl.com/110KindleURLs

It’s a shortcut to this page — so you can find all of these URLs in 2016!

Happy New Year!