Tag: celebrities

Ellen DeGeneres Visits the Kindle

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Ellen Degeneres

I was surprised when I visited Amazon’s Kindle Blog — and discovered that the person writing it was Ellen DeGeneres! The comedian/talk-show host was a “guest blogger” on Thursday — and she had a message for us all.

“Hi, e-readers! I hope you are e-reading something good. I was just thinking — you know, I’m always thinking. Sometimes I’m thinking about the world we live in, sometimes I’m thinking about work, sometimes I’m just thinking about seedless watermelon. How do they have babies?

“Anyway, I was just thinking that all you e-readers out there should know about the new book I wrote. It’s called Seriously… I’m Kidding and it will have you rolling in the aisles — if you decide to read it somewhere with aisles, like a movie theater or a supermarket or even during a wedding ceremony. ”

The blog post helped push Ellen’s book onto Amazon’s best-seller list, and within five days of its release, it became the #35 best-selling book in the entire Kindle Store. (And #1 in the Entertainment/Humor subcategory). Ellen’s a fun personality to watch, and it turns out that she’s also a very witty writer. (And she provided the voice of Dory, the big blue fish in Pixar’s animated movie, Finding Nemo.)

I didn’t know much about Ellen, so I looked her up on Wikipedia, where I learned she’s won four daytime Emmy awards for “outstanding talk show host” , and another five daytime Emmies for having “an outstanding talk show”. (Plus three more daytime Emmies for the show’s writing.) She’s starred in two different sitcoms, she’s hosted both the Oscars and the Emmy Awards, and last year she was even one of the judges on American Idol. (She once joked that she’d become so attached to the young singers in the competition that in the end, “they’re probably all going to end up living at my place.”)

“Seriously…I’m Kidding” isn’t Ellen’s first book on the Kindle. Other titles include “My Point…And I Do Have One,” a 1996 book which came to the Kindle store in March. (And another 2003 Ellen title is also available as an ebook — “The Funny Thing Is… “) But it looks like in all the books, she’s done a good job of transporting her cheerful personality into an entirely new format. Here’s the way she opens her newest book.


“Dearest Reader,
Hello. How are you? That’s great to hear. Listen, I want to thank you for buying this book. We’re about to begin a beautiful journey together – one that is unique and special. I know a lot of you might watch my talk show, but communicating through a book is different than communicating through television. Like, on my talk show I tell you what’s going on in my life and what I’m thinking about each day. But in this book, I’m going to tell you what’s going on in my life and what I’m thinking about — you know what, I don’t want to waste your time with silly comparisons.”

There’s one funny problem with the book’s sample chapter. Ellen makes some funny claims about her accomplishments, but then backs down from them in self-deprecating footnotes. “[S]ince I wrote my last book a lot has happened in my life. I got married. I got my own talk show. I started a record label. I became a CoverGirl. I was Dory. I won an Academy Award.* I won the Boston Marathon.** I started a compost heap.*** And I was knighted by the Queen of England.****” Unfortunately, the footnotes aren’t included with the ebook’s sample chapter — so there’s no way to confirm when she’s kidding! (I sent an e-mail to Ellen’s show, joking that “Maybe I need to start watching your show more. I didn’t know half that stuff!”)

But the bottom line is her new book is full of jokes, and it seems like a lot of fun. It was just last week that it turned up in the Kindle Store, and it’s spent every day since in the top 100. She’s obviously attracted a large audience of loyal fans from her TV shows (and her funny blog posts) — so I’ll give Ellen the last word.

“What’s really exciting about you e-readers getting my book is that now you won’t just be e-readers, as in electronic readers. You’ll be e-readers, as in Ellen readers! You don’t even have to change your name, and I think that is “e” as in excellent.”

The Worst Kindle eBooks Ever Written

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Amazon's worst Kindle ebooks

I was stunned when I read it. The ebook was only a few pages long — and nearly all of its text had been cut-and-pasted from somewhere else. Specifically, it came from Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with a page about nearly everything — and everyone. Someone had looked up a popular celebrity, then transformed their Wikipedia page into a biography that they were selling as a digital ebook. For $18.95…

In my case, the celebrity was Charlie Sheen — but he’s not the only celebrity to be “honored” with a skimpy ebook biography. Amazon’s Kindle Store is filled with millions of wonderful books, but mixed into the virtual bookshelves are also hundreds of “quickies” which barely match the definition of a book. It’s a real shock when you first realize just how bad an ebook can get — and how far an author will go to earn a fast buck. In July, one blogger even discovered an author named George Andersen who’s produced nearly 900 different “derivative” ebooks in a quickie series that’s called “WikiFocus”.

Apparently this author cranked out 887 tiny tomes that were cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia about random topics that they’d hoped would be popular — including celebrities, TV shows, and even comic book characters. There’s small “WikiFocus” ebooks about Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Green Lantern — but also separate ebooks about lesser superheros like Supergirl, Catwoman, Aquaman, and the Archie comic strip! (Is the series a strange glimpse into the author’s psyche, or just an intense burst of pop culture paparazzi-ism?) Celebrities also got their own quickie ebooks, including Justin Bieber, Hulk Hogan, Eminem, and Hello Kitty. The author even tried writing a quickie ebook about the Flintstones cartoon series — but spelled “Flintstone” wrong in the ebook’s title!

Of the 887 ebooks, all but 10 earned terrible reviews, averaging one star or less — or received no reviews at all.


“This ‘book’ is just a word for word copy of the wikipedia page…”

“Total waste of money. Much shorter than any WIKI article.”

“It ends after 31/32 percent. The rest is just references.”

“worthless…a half cup of coffee would have been more worthwhile…I cannot prove it, but I seriously believe this is a 5th grader’s book report being peddled as ‘a commentary.'”

And there was even something suspicious about the 10 ebooks which earned positive reviews. Seven of the reviews were written by the same person — who had only written seven reviews, all of them about the WikiFocus series. And most of them were just a few sentences long — all of them enthusiastic, and all of them sounding generic.


“Highly recommended for anyone with an interest…”

“this is absolutley [sic] the book for you. Highly recommended…”

Most of these reviews received very negative ratings from other Amazon users. (“2 of 18 people found the following review helpful,” Amazon warns about one, which gushed that “all of the WikiFocus books I have read have been awesome material…”) That review even drew some nasty follow-up comments from other Amazon reviewers. (“You’re obviously just part of the SPAM machine, pimping out these shoddy publications that are just scrapes of free sources and sold to unsuspecting people. What a sad life you must lead…”) But undaunted, the WikiFocus fan continued leaving more positive reviews for other books in the series. (“I am not sure what the other reviewer was looking at, but this is a GREAT eBook…”)

Almost all of the “ebooks” sell for $1.99, and I was sad when I saw one reviewer who’d written “I wish i could get my money back.” You can get your money back! Amazon’s Kindle Store always let you return any ebook within seven days of purchasing it, according to Amazon’s official “Kindle Return Policies” page.


“Content you purchase from the Kindle Store is eligible for return and refund if we receive your request within 7 days of the date of purchase… To request a refund and return, click the Customer Service button in the Contact Us box in the right-hand column of this page to reach us via phone or e-mail.”

To help dissatisfied readers to reach that page, I’ve created a shorter URL — tinyurl.com/ReturnAnEbook — which should be easier to remember. I remember the reviewer who wrote “This book is a total waste of money.” If you really feel that way — go and get your money back!

If everyone did that, these authors wouldn’t have any reason to keep cranking out these quickie ebooks!

The Kindle meets Whoopi Goldberg and The View

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The cast of The View with Whoopi Goldberg

David Letterman isn’t the only celebrity who’s talking about the Kindle. In July there was a long discussion about the Kindle and the future of the book on the daytime television talk show, The View.

It was one of my favorite Kindle moments of 2010. Whoopi Goldberg is a big fan of the Kindle, and it sounded like co-host Barbara Walters was trying to understand it. But the show’s other hosts — both mothers with young children — worried about whether a digital reader might impinge on the time they spend reading to their children. Here’s a complete transcript of the discussion between the four women.

(The other two hosts are sitcom star Sherri Shepherd and reality TV star Bethenny Frankel…)


                        *                        *                        *

WHOOPI: According to Amazon.com, sales of ebooks are outpacing the sales of actual hardcover books. So is the book on the way out?

BARBARA: I guess so.

BETHENNY: I don’t want to read The Runaway Bunny to Brin on a Kindle.

BARBARA: Why not?

BETHENNY: I just, you know, I…

SHERRI: It’s not the same.

BETHENNY: I like the turning of page and the colors and all that.

SHERRI: When Jeffrey and I — we do — it’s a bonding moment. At night, he knows, “turn off the TV, mommy.” He goes to get a book. We sit in the rocking chair. He likes to turn the pages. He likes to point. It’s the pictures. I think you lose that as a child. We’re so viral with the Twitter. We don’t pick up the phone any more. We’re texting. And you kind of lose that personal touch, when you don’t have the musty books and the yellow pages…

WHOOPI: Very few people —

SHERRI: Yeah.

WHOOPI: — read the Kindle to their children. Most people still read —

BETHENNY: But that’s where we’ll go.

WHOOPI: No we won’t.

SHERRI: It just seems like —

WHOOPI: And here’s the thing. Giant books — think about it. Well, maybe this isn’t your experience. I love to read, as you know.

SHERRI: Yeah.

WHOOPI: I used to carry 30 books when I travelled. And so I’d have — and I bought bags — leather bags. 30 books, yeah, ’cause I read. I go on these long trips…

BARBARA: Well, she was on a long trip on a bus.

WHOOPI: I go on these long trips, ’cause I — you know, I don’t generally fly.

BETHENNY: Well, it takes me a month to read a book, so —

WHOOPI: So I — I eat books. I love them.

SHERRI: And you know, I think another reason why it’s outselling — the Kindle — is because a book — if you go on Amazon now, a book is sixteen bucks. And if you get it on Kindle, it’s eight. So you know, I think the price, as well…

WHOOPI: And also, I think you can carry your library with you if you go somewhere. And so I think people want to be able to do that. Books will never go out of — out of —

BARBARA: No, because there is a place for them in your home.

WHOOPI: Absolutely.

BARBARA: Books look beautiful. They feel good. That’s the great thing.

WHOOPI: Unless you decide to do it — unless you decide to buy it for children.

SHERRI: We were talking about young babies and toddlers. What about for kids who are maybe preteens and teenagers — that experience of having a book. You remember going to the library? The Dewey decimal system? That whole —

WHOOPI: Let me explain to you about books. You see these kids, how many books they’re carrying?

SHERRI: Yeah. They got a big —

WHOOPI: Do you see what they’re carrying on their backs?

BETHENNY: It’s going to be expensive to buy the devices.

WHOOPI: Actually it’s not, if the schools can get behind it. Because, what you can do is you can download your textbooks. And you can have all the books that you need. It would be great for young people. And real books — I mean, as long as kids are reading Twilight, they’re not going to want to read it on the Kindle. They want —

BETHENNY: Is the bookmark over? Is that’s what’s going to happen now? The whole bookmark industry?

WHOOPI: No. You have a different bookmark for the Kindle or the iBook or whatever you’re reading. But the greatest thing is people are still reading! That’s the most wonderful…

[APPLAUSE]

SHERRI: I remember our — my dad, the salesman came, and we had an entire shelf of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And that was the thing. We loved it when we got a new Britannica.

BETHENNY: You can look smart, too. You can have all these books at your house, and people think you’re really literary when you’re not.

WHOOPI: That’s why this guy — I wonder if this — that’s why this guy got into trouble. What do you think, Bill? I mean — did you hear about this Amish teenager who, uh — who crashed his horse and buggy during a police chase?

BETHENNY: Is this The Flintstones? What are we talking about?

WHOOPI: No! He’s facing charges of alcohol possession, and second degree reckless endangerment, and overdriving an animal after leading the police on a chase that ended when the teen crashed his horse and buggy! Come on…

SHERRI: He was Amish?

WHOOPI: He was Amish. And we’re worried about where the book is going?! Pooh! “Come on, now. Come on! Come on! He’s gaining on us! Come on, Christa, come on!”

                        *                        *                        *

And of course, Barbara Walters put it all into perspective. Not only is she okay with the Kindle — she’s not even worried about the police pulling over the Amish horse and buggy for drunk driving.

“Unless the horse was drunk, I don’t see what’s the big deal…”