Interview Starts at 16:37

He [Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos] wanted to give me a half an hour–he gave me 45 minutes. And it was really an amazing interview. He was very bright, very warm, very gracious, and you got the sense that he really wanted to do good. That’s the sense you got–of course, still being a brilliant businessman, and those are not mutually exclusive.

Show Notes and Links:

Intro

Belmont Hill School

News

“Amazon is Going to Buy Liquavista” by Nate Hoffelder – January 21, 2013

“Confirmed: Amazon Bought Liquavista — Color Kindle to Follow?” by Nate Hoffelder – May 13, 2013

The Electrowetting Display - January 2, 2013 video of Liquivista display

Liquavista screen demonstrated outdoors - May 18, 2010 video of Liquivista display

“Did Samsung Just Give Amazon a Way to Fight Apple?” by Haydn Shaughnessy at Forbes – May 15, 2013

“U.S. judge sets 2013 trial date for Apple e-book lawsuit” by Basil Katz at Reuters – June 22, 2012

“U.S. Now Paints Apple as ‘Ringmaster’ in Its Lawsuit on E-Book Price-Fixing” by Edward Wyatt and Nick Wingfield in The New York Times - May 14, 2013

Filings at Department of Justice web site related to U.S. v. Apple et al case

Plaintiffs’ Response to Apple’s Pretrial Memorandum of Law (PDF) – filed May 14, 2003 at Department of Justice website

Exhibit F - redacted emails in Apple case (PDF) filed May 15, 20013

“Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Employee Says Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS) NOOK Deal ‘Not Happening’”by David Woodburn at Insider Monkey – May 13, 2013

“Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase For $1 Billion” by Erick Eldon and Ingrid Eldon at TechCrunch – May 8, 2013

Tech Tips

AT&T Data plan

Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ with 4G LTE - 32GB with special offers – $399

Interview with Vivienne Roumani

Out of Print web site

The Last Jews of Libya web site

Content 

Suggestions for Spending your 500 Amazon Coins on your Kindle Fire:

Mindmaps by Endare – $3.99 at Apps for Android store

Insight Timer by Spotlight Six Sofware – $1.99 at Apps for Android

Where’s My Water? game by Disney – 99 cents at Apps for Android

Osmos HD by Hemisphere Games – $2.99 at Apps for Android

“Breaking news! Amazon launches Kindle Love Stories podcast” by Joyce Lamb in USA Today – May 12, 2013

Kindle Love Stories podcast web site

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

The Indy bag by Waterfield -Thanks, Eolake!

Next Week’s Guest

Kevin Franco of Entrhill

Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

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“You can use the coins to buy apps and games, as well as items inside apps and games,” Amazon’s CEO writes. “And if you want to purchase additional coins for yourself or your family, you get to do so at a discount.”

So the coins apparently won’t help you buy your next Kindle book to read on your Fire, but there are indeed lots of fun games to try at the Appstore for Android. Two of my favorites are a game named Cut the Rope, which will use up only 99 of your Amazon Coins, and Mindmaps by Endare, which is the tool I use for planning out each episode of The Kindle Chronicles. Mindmaps will set you back 399 Amazon Coins.

I see there is a new way to pay for apps that appears at the right of an app or game. You can click the radio button for “Spend Amazon Coins” in addition to the usual “Use 1-Click Settings,” which is how you can still pay using “real” money.

Click here for the February 5, 2013, press release announcing the program.

And don’t spend all your Amazon Coins in one place!

Send to Kindle

It was a lightning round of ideas, manic theorizing and hilarious parries. At one point Colbert illustrated the interruptibility of our present-shocked lives by taking out his iPhone and tweeting a photo of Rushkoff making a point. “I want to send this out to my friend Lou-Dog,” Colbert said.

Colbert’s iPhone made another appearance when the host described it as a friend he can even take to the toilet, an image that cracked Rushkoff up and left him speechless. And so it went for nearly five minutes, with a dramatic ending that left Colbert not knowing what to say.

“Look at investors today,” Rushkoff began. “They don’t invest in a stock in order for it to make money in the future.  They try to invest in some kind of derivative that is the stock in the future. You buy a stock 30 days from now. Derivatives have gotten so big they’ve actually bought the stock exchange. The New York Stock Exchange was bought by its own abstraction. It was bought by its own futures.”

Brow furrowed, Colbert was following along pretty well at this point. “So it’s like a snake buying the tail that’s in its own mouth,” he offered.

“Yeah, by an abstraction of the tail that’s in its own mouth,” Rushkoff corrected.

Colbert: “So not even the real tail.”

Rushkoff: “Not even the real tail.”

Three seconds of silence pass.

Colbert raises his right forefinger, grins, and declares the round over with this:

“You just blew my mind.”

Send to Kindle

Founder of Alltop, 

author of APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book

Interview Starts at 13:55

People say, “Well, Guy, if you’re successful and more people become self-publishers there’s going to be more crap out there.” That’s true…. You could make the case that the cave-in started when Gutenberg had a printing press. Up till then you only had scribes working for the Pharaohs and the Pope and rich people. Let’s just face it: that horse is out of the barn, and that horse is procreating already, so you ain’t going to put it back in the barn. So now more people will write, and at least now rather than six editorial committees in New York deciding what’s worth reading, now the crowd decides what’s worth reading.

Show Notes and Links:

Intro

Susan Carlson’s quilts

The Harpswell Inn, founded in 1761

News

Kindle for iOS update - more on accessibility improvements from Peter Tighe in Austin, Texas

“Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase for $1 Billion” by Eric Eldon and Ingred Lunden at Techcrunch – May 8, 2013

“Robbie Bach’s four startup lessons from Xbox and Zune” by Todd Bishop at Geekwire – May 11, 2012

“Amazon Making Smartphone with 3D Screen, Dedicated Audio Streaming Device, WSJ Reports” by Darrell Etherington at TechCrunch – May 9, 2013

Tech Tips

Goodreads blog

The Kindle Chronicles group’s tech support thread at Goodreads

Interview with Guy Kawaski

APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki – $9.99 on Kindle

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki – $9.99 on Kindle

What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us by Guy Kawasaki – .99 on Kindle

Web site for APE

Entrhill book-sale cards

CreateSpace print on demand by Amazon

If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence, and Spirit by Brenda Ueland – $3.99 on Kindle

Content

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon – $7.55 on Kindle

Saints Preserve Us! Everything You Need to Know About Every Saint You’ll Ever Need by Sean kelly and Roesmary Rogers – $12.99 on Kindle

Living Dangerously: American Women Who Risked Their Lives for Adventure by Doreen Rappaport – $6.99 on Kindle

Give Her This Day: A Daybook of Women’s Words edited and compiled by Lois Stiles Edgerly – $14.38 at the Google Play store

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Vivienne Roumani, producer-director of the new documentary Out of Print

Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Send to Kindle

This is a video excerpt from my May 1, 2013, Skype interview with Sam Tanenhaus, newly named as a writer-at-large at The New York Times after nine years as editor of The New York Times Book Review and host of the long-running Book Review podcast. The full audio interview is in Episode 248 of The Kindle Chronicles.

Send to Kindle

I just spotted this Mothers Day special at Amazon.com, good in the U.S. through Mothers Day on May 12, 2013: $20 off any of the Kindle Fire HD 7″ models, as follows, showing the new, discounted prices:

• 7″ 16GB with special offers – $179
• 7″ 16GB without special offers - $204
• 7″ 32GB with special offers – $209
• 7″ 32GB without special offers – $224

To receive the discount, enter the discount code FIRE4MOM at checkout.

The discount is good while supplies last, and there is a limit of one per customer. The code doesn’t work for a one-click purchase, so make sure you buy the Kindle Fire 7″ using regular checkout.

As usual, I have used my Amazon Associates code in creating the links above to the products, so if you purchase a Kindle Fire for your mother from these links you will also be helping The Kindle Chronicles with commission revenue–without affecting the price you pay for the Fire. Thank you, and please give Mom our best!

Send to Kindle

New York Times writer at large, former editor of The Times’ Sunday Book Review, and longtime host of The Book Review podcast

Interview Starts at 16:29

When I say, “Well, Mr. Amis, it seems to me this is what your novel does,” and he says, “Well no. That’s exactly what it doesn’t do”–part of me cringes, but I know as a listener I’m thinking, “Now Martin Amis is going to set me straight.” The listener I think empathizes with the host a little bit. One is the surrogate for the listener, not the debating rival of the guest. And so to keep the questions short and simple…let the listener open up whatever direction they want to get. If they say something that makes me sound silly, I probably am silly, and if the listener is deriving something from it, all the better.

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Show Notes and Links:

Intro

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor – $12.99 on Kindle

Emily Bazelon’s review of My Beloved World in the New York Times Sunday Book Review

News

Jeff Bezos: Boy Billionaire 2000 History Channel documentary (41 minutes)

“Long Live the Book: An Interview with Vivienne Roumani, Director of the Indie Film, ‘Out of Print’” by Loren Kleinman at IndieReader – April 24, 2013

Out of Print trailer and background

Kindle Kids TV Commercial

Tech Tips

Tom Semple’s help with the updated Kindle for iOS app for text to speech

George from Tulsa’s tip on using an iPad charger for Kindle devices

Interview with Sam Tanenhaus

Book Review Podcast

“Pamela Paul Named New York Times Book Review Editor” by David Freedlander in The Daily Beast – April 9, 2013

Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1997) by Sam Tanenhaus – $15.99 on Kindle

The Death of Conservatism: The Movement and its Consequences (2009) by Sam Tanenhaus – $9.99 on Kindle

Content

The Banks of Certain Rivers: A Novel by Jon Harrison – $2.99 on Kindle (Also available in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library if you have an Amazon Prime Membership)

Option to Kill: A Nathan McBride Novel by Andrew Peterson (Kindle Serial & Kindle Owners’ Lending Library) – $3.99

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Guy Kawasaki, co-author of APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book

Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Send to Kindle

I love this: O’Reilly Media today (May 3, 2013) is celebrating what they call “Day Against DRM” by offering ALL their eBooks and videos at 50 percent off or 60 percent off orders over $100. Click here to browse their titles. Use discount code DRM2013.

O’Reilly has long championed DRM-free books, and it’s a movement which is picking up momentum, with good reason. I just interviewed Guy Kawasaki here in Denver for next week’s podcast, and you should hear the weary disgust in his voice when he talks about the futility of trying to lock books up with DRM.

This sale ends tonight at 11:59 PM Pacific time.

O’Reilly’s offerings are mainly in the technology area–no romance novels or mysteries on the list. But their books are top-quality resources for just about any topic you might need to learn. I picked up one on paper a few years ago, Podcasting Hacks: Tips & Tools for Blogging Out Loud by Jack D. Herrington that I still find useful, even though it was published in 2005. I see that one is only available in print, so you can’t get it for half price. But I see there’s another one that might be of interest, Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac by Andy Williams Affleck selling for $10 in digital format, including .mobi for the Kindle, so if you are a Mac wizard you can grab that one for $5 today and start your own show!

Send to Kindle

Sadly, the free promotion is not available for reading on an E Ink Kindle, and you can only read it on a Kindle Fire if you have a free Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) account and have downloaded an Android app named Bluefire. And in order to download Bluefire, you have to first download a third-party app named GetJar. If you’re with me so far, here are the steps that will get you to reading this fine book for free on your Kindle Fire, if you do it by May 5, 2013:

1. From the dropdown settings menu of your Kindle Fire, tap on More, then Device. Make sure “Allow Installation of Applications from unknown sources” is On.

2. Point your Fire’s browser to http://m.getjar.com .

3. Enter “GetJar” in the search field. Tap on the yellow “Free” button next to “GetJar Apps.” Then tap on “Download” and follow the steps for installing and opening the GetJar application on your Kindle Fire.

4. Open the GetJar app and search for “Bluefire.” Tap on the yellow “Free” button next to “Bluefire Reader.” Then tap on “Download” and follow the steps to install and open the app.

5. Authorize your Bluefire reader with Adobe Digital Editions, as indicated within the Bluefire app. If you do not have an ADE account, you will be prompted to set one up, I believe, but it’s been a long time since I created my own ADE account, so I’m not exactly sure how that process works.

5. With your Fire’s browser, navigate to http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html

6. Enter your email address, then click on the “Get E-Book” button.

7. On your Fire, open the email that you will receive from The University of Chicago Press. In the email, lick on the link to download your eBook.

8. On the page where you will land, scroll down to “Note for Kindle Fire users” and click on the link.

9. Since you already have Bluefire Reader on your Kindle Fire, simply tap on the link labeled “download this file.”

10. Complete action using “Download to Bluefire Reader.”

Start reading! Here is a sample from the first essay, titled “Manus manum lavat:”

There is a tendency to denigrate the present, whatever it is, because we know so much about it, while romanticizing the past, whatever it was, because its less pleasant details grow fuzzier with each passing year, accentuating the cherished highlights even more. This impulse can be particularly acute for newcomers, who missed the great era of the day before yesterday, arriving, as they must, in the confusing, compromised swirl of today, and so can be left with a permanent sense that the party is always ending just as they show up. The party is never now.

It’s good to see a university press making a popular book available in a free promotion like this, even if the process is far from optimal for the eReader platform with by far the biggest share of the market. If you have any questions about this procedure, please feel free to leave them here in comments, or you can send me an email at PodChronicles AT Gmail dot Com.

If you are interested in the book enough to purchase it for your Kindle, without going through all these steps, it’s available at the Kindle Store for $8.10.

5/2/13 UPDATE: Via Twitter follower @chexrex, I was reminded this morning that you can read this book on an iOS device using the free Bluefire app on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.  I just tried it, and apparently I had enough extra seats in Adobe Digital Editions to authorize my iPad mini for Bluefire and download the book. Sweet.

Send to Kindle

If you have the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPad, you will see an update for it this morning, to version 3.7. I made the update on my iPhone and iPad mini. The changes are not readily apparent to a reader who is not using the VoiceOver feature in the device settings. You turn VoiceOver on by going to Settings->General->Accessibility and tapping on VoiceOver. It’s easy to get lost in the voice commands if you are not used to them, so I will be looking for reviews of the new capability from those who depend on VoiceOver and understand its details.

The press release states that the new accessibility features “will be added to other Kindle apps in the future.”

Here is the complete text of the release, which hit my inbox today at 7:14 am Mountain Time:

Amazon Bringing New Accessibility Features to Free Kindle Reading Apps

Kindle for iPhone and iPad is the first Kindle app to receive the new accessibility features

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May. 1, 2013– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today announced new accessibility features for the Kindle reading app, making it easier than ever for blind and visually impaired customers to navigate their Kindle libraries, read and interact with their books, and more. These new features are available starting today on Kindle for iOS, and accessibility enhancements will be available on additional platforms in the future.

“We’re excited to introduce these new features to our Kindle for iOS app, making it easier than ever for our blind and visually impaired customers to access the vast selection of over 1.8 million books in the Kindle Store on their iPhone or iPad,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “With this update, we’re also making customer-favorite features—such as X-Ray, End Actions, sharing, highlighting and bookmarking—more accessible. We look forward to continuing to develop and extend our accessibility features on Kindle Fire and our other Kindle apps.”

New accessibility features of the Kindle app enable blind and visually impaired customers to:

• Read aloud over 1.8 million titles available in the Kindle Store using Apple’s VoiceOver technology. Over 300,000 of these books are exclusive to the Kindle Store. Over 900,000 books are less than $4.99; over 1.5 million are less than $9.99.
• Seamlessly navigate within their library or within a book, with consistent title, menu and button names; navigate to a specific page within a book and sort books in the library by author or title.
• Read character-by-character, word-by-word, line-by-line, or continuously, as well as move forward or backward in the text.
• Search for a book within their library or search within their book and navigate to specific text.
• Add and delete notes, bookmarks, and highlights.
• Use customer-favorite features like X-Ray, End Actions and sharing on Facebook and Twitter.
• Look up words in the dictionary and Wikipedia.
• Customize the reading experience including changing the font, text size, background color, margin, and brightness.
• Use iOS accessibility features like Zoom, Assistive Touch, and Stereo to Mono, as well as peripheral braille displays.

Here’s some early feedback on the updated Kindle app:

• “I very much appreciate the effort put forth to make Kindle more accessible for the blind. The new iOS App is easy and fun to use. I found the functionalities to my liking and above my initial expectations, with the ease of use being my favorite. Frankly, due to continued vision loss and vision changes, I hadn’t read very much at all. Now, I’ve read more books in the past few weeks than in the last five years – ‘Thank you.’” – Kevin D. Daniel, The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.
• “The ability to highlight, jump to pages and look up words or research phrases from a book is fabulous. Enhancements like these serve as great equalizers for a community of individuals whose access to the printed word has been severely limited. As an avid reader in her sixties, I am honored and excited to see and test these changes.” – Marlaina Lieberg, Retired Assistive Technology Teacher
• “I’m thrilled to see the effort and attention to detail that Amazon is putting into the accessibility of the Kindle app for the iPhone. This greatly increases its usability by people who are blind and benefits students, professionals and anyone else wishing to read electronically and stay current with the mainstream.” – Peggy Martinez, The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.

These new accessibility features are available first on the Kindle app for iOS and accessibility features will be added to other Kindle apps in the future. Customers can download the new Kindle for iOS app for free from the App Store on iPad, iPhone or iPod touch or athttp://www.itunes.com/appstore. Blind and visually impaired customers can also choose Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin, a free application for Windows PCs.

Send to Kindle

Member of Amazon’s original Kindle development team

author of Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading

Interview Starts at 19:16

I love Amazon in the sense that it really understands building things in what I’ll call an agile way. You start small, and you build and build and build and build. The Kindle doesn’t have to be perfect in 2005 or 2006, but you keep making it more and more perfect over time. And when there’s enough goodness accreted around it, then you say, “Wow, it’s ready for prime time” and you launch.

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Show Notes and Links:

Intro

Opening of RTD W Line from Denver to Golden – Denver Post story April 26, 2013

Tremont Street Subway at Wikipedia

News

“Amazon trims Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi prices in Canada…” by Emil Protalinski in The Next Web – April 25, 2013

Kindle and Paperwhite at www.amazon.ca

“Kobo Aura HD review: a high-end e-reader with ‘niche’ written all over it” by Brian Heater at engadget – April 23, 2013

Kobo Aura HD web site

Items of Interest Not Mentioned in Podcast

“Senate delays action on Internet sales tax bill” by AP’s Stephen Ohlemacher in The Seattle Times – April 25, 2013

“Internet Sales Taxes Are Inevitable” by Matthew Yglesias in Slate – April 23, 2013

2012 Amazon press release supporting Internet Sales Tax legislation

Amazon’s first-quarter earnings release - April 26, 2013

Tech Tips

How to find authors like other authors at Goodreads – Paul Bowles, for example

Three books I’m currently reading

Kindle for Android gets an update.

Interview with Jason Merkoski

Burning the Page: The eBook Revolution and the Future of Reading by Jason Merkoski – $7.69 on Kindle

Content

The Spider’s House: A Novel by Paul Bowles – $9.78 on Kindle

Bedfellows: A Novel by Bob Garfield – $3.99 on Kindle with Whispersync for Voice ($1.99). Also available as free borrow at Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

Bob Garfield interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC Radio – December 12, 2012

Where’s the Water? - 99-cent game for Kindle Fire mentioned in Digital Disruption by James McQuivey

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Please Join the new Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Send to Kindle

Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Harvard Librarian,

and key visionary for Digital Public Library of America

Interview Starts at 16:16

Now the strategy is not to have a five-year plan with an enormous budget of that sort but rather one that would involve beginning from a core of already digitized collections that we will make available on Thursday [April 18, 2013], and then growing and growing incrementally and then looking for funding as we need it.

Show Notes and Links:

News

“Amazon Wants You to Talk to Your Next Kindle Fire” by Evan Niu at Motley Fool – April 18, 2013

The Motley Fool Money podcast at iTunes

Engadget review of the new Kobo Aura HD dedicated eReader

“Penguin to Drop Apple E-Book Deal to Settle EU Antitrust Probe” by John Paczkowski at All Things D – April 19, 2013

Tech Tips

ReaderRocket site for comparing eReaders

Targus stylus for $9.89

Luzme tracker of eBook price drops

Atavist launches its content creator tool, Creativist, in beta

Interview with Robert Darnton

“Now, With No Further Ado, We Present…the Digital Public Library of America!” by Rebecca J. Rosen at TheAtlantic.com – April 16, 2013

“The National Digital Public Library Is Launched!” by Robert Darnton at The New York Review of Books

Digital Public Library of America

Content

Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through the Hours of the Day by Brother David Steindl-Rast and Sharon Lebell; Introduction by Kathleen Norris – $8.69 on Kindle

“Evan Williams’ Medium acquires long-form journalism site Matter” by Laura Hazard Owen at paidContent – April 17, 2013

Digital Public Library of America

Brian Mockenhaupt wins The Atlantic’s $25,000 Michael Kelly award for his Byliner Original, The Living and the Dead, which he talked about on TKC 224 in November, 2012

To get you Free Offer for TKC listeners good through Wednesday April 24th for One Year Lived by Adam Shepard, go to Adam’s website and log in as  slimshep12@gmail.com . Enter the password 123456 .

Not mentioned on podcast but still of note: “Ray Bradbury, Finally Coming to an E-Reader Near You” by Lauren Indvik at Mashable – April 12, 2013; Ray Bradbury’s books available on Kindle

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Upcoming Guests

Jason Merkoski, author of Burning the Page

 Sam Tanenhaus, writer-at-large and former Book Review editor at The New York Times

Please Join the new Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Send to Kindle

If you love reading digitally as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to explore this vast new trove of culture that became available online approximately 15 minutes ago at the Digital Public Library of America. Well done!

You will hear Robert Darnton, Harvard’s director of libraries, tell the story of how the DPLA came into being on tomorrow’s episode of The Kindle Chronicles podcast.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go looking for some books!

Send to Kindle

This is how the Digital Public Library of America website looked at 10:10 a.m. MDT, ten minutes after the scheduled launch.

I keep refreshing, waiting for the moment it goes live.  Maybe they are simply building up the sense of anticipation! Maybe it’s like a rocket launch and they are on a hold, waiting for a flock of geese to fly by. Hope it goes well!

Send to Kindle

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) launches today at noon Eastern Time.

If you point your browser to dp.la at that moment, you will have a front-row seat at an historic event, one that might have led Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and other Enlightenment-inspired Founding Fathers to nod their heads and say, “Just so.”

The vision of the DPLA is “to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives and museums available to all Americans–and eventually to everyone in the world–online and free of charge.” That is how Robert Darnton, director of Harvard’s libraries, put it in a recent article in The New York Review of Books.

“Jefferson and Franklin–the champion of the Library of Congress and the printer turned philosopher-statesman,” Darnton wrote, “shared a profound belief that the health of the Republic depended on the free flow of ideas.”

He continued:

Thanks to the Internet and a pervasive if imperfect system of education, we now can realize the dream of Jefferson and Franklin. We have the technological and economic resources to make all of the collections of our libraries accessible to all our fellow citizens–and to everyone everywhere with access to the World Wide Web. That is the mission of the DPLA.

A huge obstacle to this mission is the stranglehold that U.S. copyright law has on culture and creativity. You have to go all the way back to 1923 to find books in the public domain, as a result of Congress’s successive expansions of copyright protection. Lawrence Lessig has written forcefully on how this lockdown of culture threatens creativity, in books that include Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. (Click here for a free synopsis of the book at Wikipedia.) To its credit, the team working with Darnton decided not to wait until the copyright mess is resolved before pressing ahead with creation of the DPLA.

Today when the DPLA’s virtual doors open, we will be able to wander through the some collections of the largest university library in the world (Harvard’s), as well as collections being made available by the New York Public Library and the Smithsonian. Although it won’t go live today, a trove of copies of original manuscripts by the poet Emily Dickinson will soon be released by Harvard’s Houghton Library for access through the Digital Public Library of America as well at as Harvard’s own website.

On tomorrow’s episode of The Kindle Chronicles podcast, you will have a chance to hear Robert Darnton describe the work that has gone into making today’s historic launch possible. I interviewed him on Monday, April 15, via Skype to his office in Harvard Yard.

Meanwhile, raise your Kindle to the vision of Jefferson and Franklin and take a moment today to drop to check out the brand new Digital Public Library of America.

Send to Kindle

Doug Kapustin Photo – The Washington Post

My college friend Ben Beach ran the Boston Marathon today, so I was naturally concerned about him when news broke of the bombing at the finish line. He has finished 45 consecutive Boston Marathons, so today was his 46th. I received this text message from him here in Denver late this afternoon: “Police stopped me at 21 miles.” That’s all I know, but it’s enough to know he’s okay.

What horror. I have seen this race through Ben’s eyes over the decades, savoring its history and Bostonian exuberance. It takes place on Patriots’ Day, a Massachusetts state holiday commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. We don’t know who carried out the attack yet. But we will.

Tonight we’re getting a spring snowstorm in downtown Denver. I’m glad Ben and his family are safe. My prayers go out to the victims and those caring for them.

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I wasn’t able to record video of my entire conversation with Otis Chandler on April 11, 2013, because the Skype connection was dropping out, and I wanted to preserve as much audio quality as possible for use on the podcast. This video captures the first few minutes of the interview. For the complete interview with the founder and CEO of Goodreads, please check out TKC 245 beginning at the 9:43 mark.

Note: If you are reading this on an E Ink Kindle as part of your Kindle Chronicles subscription, you won’t be able to see the video on your Kindle. You can use your browser on a computer, tablet, or smartphone to see it at thekindlechronicles.com . (And thanks for subscribing!)

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Founder and CEO of Goodreads.com

Interview Starts at 9:43

Goodreads is a place today for readers of all platforms, no matter how they read the book–whether it be a Kindle or Nook or a physical book, etc., to share what they thought of the book and find new books. And that’s not going to change. I think a lot of people have been having the misconception that that would change. That’s something that’s just fundamental to Goodreads, and if we changed it, it would just be so negative that we’re not even considering that.

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Show Notes and Links:

News

Goodreads

Tech Tip

ReDigi update

AmazonBasics stylus for $9.89

Interview with Otis Chandler

Tools of Change interview with Chandler (video) – February 13, 2013

BiblioStar.TV interview with Chandler (video) – November 13, 2012

Wikipedia entry for Otis Chandler’s grandfather

Content

Book Review podcast with Sam Tanenhaus and Leslie Kaufman – April 7, 2013

“Thin Reads Wants to Be Like ‘Publishers Weekly’ for E-Book Singles” by Seth Fiegerman at Mashable – April 8, 2013

Thin Reads

Kindle Singles

Byliner

The Atavist

Matter

Comments

Amazon forum thread: Price Dropped Kindle eBooks II

Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories by Charles Bukowski – $2.99 on Kindle

Jon Stewart: Beyond the Moments of Zen by Bruce Watson – $2.99 on Kindle

Price discount on Kindle Fire at amazon.co.uk

Weston Super Mare Pier Fire video

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Robert Darnton, key visionary for the National Digital Public Library, which is scheduled to go live on April 18th.

Please Join the new Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

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Chris Brogan, left, and Julien Smith

I have been reading  The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise? by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith for more than five months. This is not because I am a slow reader, although I am a slow reader.

I got the idea for an experiment in immersive reading from my interview with Brogan on October 30, 2012 for TKC 222. I decided to read his book continuously for a year, starting over again each time I finished it. So far, I have completed three readings. My entry for the book at kindle.amazon.com shows 242 highlighted passages and 101 notes. My practice for this experiment is to read a few pages in The Impact Equation every day, and I’ve only missed a few days. I turn to the book on one of my Kindle devices or apps and enjoy seeing if I remember a particular passage well enough to recite by heart yet, or if it seems new.

It’s a good book for immersion, because the authors draw on a wide variety of sources to help us shape our ideas for maximum impact and use social media to achieve that impact. I made a list of all the books they mention, and it totals 28 titles–everything from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins to The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. Since I am a stickler for typos, I am grateful that this 285-page book only has seven that I’ve spotted so far. Brogan and Smith are careful, lively writers offering a useful approach to making your ideas matter.

That said, I have to confess that as I picked up my Kindle Fire this morning for the day’s reading, I wondered if six months might be enough for this experiment. The words seemed to be getting a little dry and familiar. For some reason, I ended up checking back to the book’s listing at amazon.com and realized for the first time that Whispersync for Voice was available for it, via an Audible version. Since I have so much time already invested in this book, the additional cost of $4.49 seemed reasonable, so I purchased and downloaded the file to my Fire HD 7″.

I expected that I would be hearing one of Audible’s excellent professional narrators, but instead I was pleasantly surprised to hear a voice that I recognized immediately as Brogan’s. He has a bedroom voice, full of empathy and earnestness, so this is a good vehicle for him. When I moved the audio player locator back to the start of the book, I was surprised again, to hear a different voice reading Chapter 1. I’ve never heard Julien Smith speak, so it was fun to hear him for the first time. Smith’s voice is more authoritative and professorial than Brogan’s. So they complement each other well, and each achieves a level of professional narration equal to any I’ve heard on other Audible books.

I’m not sure if Brogan and Smith wrote alternating chapters, but if so, this is a nice way to present the two authors’ voices and writing styles. Here is what one wrote, and now the other takes his turn. In reality, I think they review and edit each other’s writing, but probably the first draft came from whoever they chose to read that chapter for Audible.

What stuns me is how hearing the author’s voice so dramatically deepens the experience of reading the book. I am in a particularly good place to testify to this effect, having read the visible words on screens three times already. But now, as I watch the highlight move across the line as Brogan or Smith recite the words, I feel as if I am reading the book for the very first time. This is amazing, and a real tribute to Amazon’s brilliant pairing of Kindle books with Audible readings for a rapidly increasing number of titles.

In fact, Audible is now listing more than 23,000 titles that have Whispersync for Voice capability. If you have a book that you love and plan to read again, I urge you to consider taking advantage of this new way of deepening your experience of that book. Buy the Audible file and listen along as you read. You could do this without a Kindle Fire, on an E Ink Kindle or other device, even a paper book. But with the Fire you can see the words highlighted, like the bouncing ball that used to help follow the lyrics of a song. My mind takes heightened satisfaction and pleasure at the arrival of the same words instantaneously via two separate senses, eyes and ears.

When I decided to begin an immersive reading experiment for The Impact Equation, I had no idea that it would lead to this newfound satisfaction in pairing of the written and spoken word.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the depth of the delight has something to do with the first time I experienced it.  I remember as a boy how proud and happy I was when I realized that I could follow the words on the page, the very words that my father was reciting to me as he sat on the side of the bed, turning the pages of The Little Engine That Could.

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This is most of the interview I recorded for TKC 244 with Douglas Rushkoff on April 1, 2013 by Skype. I had to trim it slightly to meet YouTube’s limit of 15 minutes.

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Author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

Interview Starts at 17:33

Remember we were going to write in our underwear from our homes and do what we wanted and and slack? And then it slowly but surely turned into this kind of poster child for the NASDAQ stock exchange, this way of monitoring people’s employees, making sure–instead of us working in our own time–we’re always on, all the time in real-time availability. Which is the opposite, right? So instead of being smarter online because we’ve gone offline to write stuff and post it, we’re stupid online, because we’re trying to keep up with things in the moment. ”Oh, there’s this post at 8:20; I’ve got to post by 8:31 or the Twitter feed’s going to be gone without me.” And that’s just not taking advantage of what this digital age could be about.

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Show Notes and Links:

News

“The deal Goodreads should’ve struck (hint: it wasn’t with Amazon)” by Craig Mod at PaidContent – March 30, 2013

“BusinessWeek’s billion-dollar boo-boo” by Ryan Chittum at Columbia Journalism Review – March 29, 2013

“Why Didn’t Someone Else Buy Goodreads Before Amazon?” by James McQuivey of Forrester Research – March 29, 2013

Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation by James McQuivey – $5.35 on Kindle

“Amazon purchase of Goodreads stuns book industry” by Alison Flood at The Guardian – April 2, 2013

“The National Digital Public Library Is Launched!” by Robert Darnton at The New York Review of Books

Digital Public Library of America

Tech Tip

Beware of ReDigi!

Kindle Direct Publishing

Interview with Douglas Rushkoff recorded on April 1, 2013

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff – $12.99 on Kindle

Brian Lehrer’s interview with Rushkoff – March 20, 2013

Proceedings (PDF download) of the Unified Field Summit on Art, Science and Spirituality (2002) moderated by Douglas Rushkoff and hosted by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) at the Aspen Institute

Content

Clutter Rehab: 101 Tips and Tricks to Become an Organization Junkie and Love It! By Laura Wittman – $9.39 on Kindle

Home Organization For Stress Free Living: How To Organize Your Home One Day At A Time And Keep It That Way By Karen Pettine – $2.99 on Kindle

The Busy Mom’s Guide To Stress Free Organization: How To Organize, Clean, And Keep Your Home Stress Free By Brian Night – $2.99 on Kindle

Free “Spring Cleaning apps” for Kindle Fire: Evernote, BillMinder, Grocery IQ, and Remember The Milk

Wait for You by J. Lynn – $2.99 on Kindle

Lesterland:The corruption of Congress and How to End It by Lawrence Lessig – $2.99 on Kindle

Lessig’s TED talk on Lesterland

Rootstrikers.org

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Otis Chandler, founder and CEO of Goodreads

Please Join the new Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

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The first discussion topic relates to Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. I finished it last night in time for my interview with Rushkoff this morning for TKC 244 on Friday. It’s a great read, full of insights into why everything seems so jammed up in the present now for anyone plugged into digital information flows. But I found it a hopeful book that left me empowered to take more control over the information I deal with each day. It will all be there in the morning, and it’s good to unplug once in a while.

I hope you will check out the Goodreads group and leave a comment of some kind. Rushkoff has left Facebook, and I confess I don’t find myself spending much time there myself. Goodreads looks as if it might be a more bookish and congenial place for us to meet digitally. We’ll see!

Please click here to head on over and check out the new digs.

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Business Manager at New York University Press 

Interview Starts at 23:21

In terms of what we’re projecting for the end of ’13, we think we’re going to come in at about 14 percent all-electronic, and the vast majority of that is currently Kindle. Fifty percent of eBook sales are going through Kindle…Nook is actually way down our ladder. Nook is our fifth-best performing ePlatform. This is a lot to do with the nature of the books where we have a lot of library market, and they want PDF or they want straight ePub. I guess Nook just can’t compete with that.

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Show Notes and Links:

News

News release announcing Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads – March 28, 2013

Otis Chandler’s post about the acquisition

“‘First do no harm’: My interview with Amazon and Goodreads on the future of Goodreads” by Laura Hazard Owen – March 28, 2013

My exchange of Goodreads messages with Otis Chandler in August, 2010

“Amazon Buys Goodreads. Take That, Bookish!” by Jeff Bercovici in Forbes – March 28, 2013

“Rampant Speculation: How Much Did Amazon Pay for Goodreads?” by Kyle Stock at Bloomberg Businessweek” – March 29, 2013

Note: After I recorded the episode, numerous reports appeared sharply challenging Stock’s estimate of a sales price for Goodreads of “somewhere close to, but not quite, $1 billion.” To wit: Business Insider and Kara Swisher, whose sources put the purchase price at between $150 million and $200 million. 

Patrick Brown of Vroman’s Bookstore interviews Otis Chandler in 2009 (?) - audio file.

LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding’s post titled “How to succeed in an Amazon/Goodreads world” - March 28, 2013

Free Goodreads app at Amazon’s Appstore for Android

Tech Tips

Kindle Touch software update to version 5.3.2.1

Kindle Fire (2nd generation) software update to version 10.3.0

Kindle Fire HD 7″ software update to version 7.3.0

Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ software update to version 8.3.0

Worldwide Kindle Support portal

Interview with Tom Helleberg

“Record-Breaking Kickstarter Turns Hamlet Into a Choose-Your-Adventure Epic” by Laura Hudson in Wired – December 20, 2012

“To Be or Not To Be: That is the Adventure” Kickstarter page

Ryan North

Signet Classic Shakespeare Hamlet by William Shakespeare – $4.99 on Kindle

Decision Points by George W. Bush – $13.99 on Kindle

Association of Research Libraries (Tom’s reference to “ARLs” in the interview was to members of this association)

University Press Content Consortium

EBSCO eBooks (formerly netLibrary)

ebrary

Nook

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins – $9.99 on Kindle

Boulder (CO) Public Library eBrary case study

OverDrive

Content

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff – $12.99 on Kindle

Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green – $12.10 on Kindle

Longform Podcast with Joel Lovell, deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine, discussing his profile of the short story writer George Saunders. (If paywall blocks you, try Googling “George Saunders New York Times Magazine.”)

Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders – $12.99 on Kindle

Amazon expands X-Ray to TV shows

Justified on Amazon Instant Video (free for Prime Members)

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock

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I’m glad Chandler wrote such a personal post today, because it helps me to understand the potential of this partnership.

“Our team gets out of bed every day motivated by the belief that the right book in the right hands can change the world,” he writes. “Now Goodreads can help make that happen in an even bigger and more meaningful way thanks to joining the Amazon family.”

He notes that “if you want to be part of this, please check out our Jobs page for open positions. We’ve got a lot of hires to make!” I bet that’s true!

I also liked this: “For all you Kindle readers, there’s obviously an extra bonus in this announcement. You’ve asked us for a long time to be able to integrate your Kindle and Goodreads experiences. Making that option a reality is one of our top priorities.”

I would have loved to have had a chance to sit in on some of the conversations that no doubt led to this acquisition. You can hear resonances of the way Jeff Bezos talks about books in reading how Chandler describes his sense of mission about his own creation.

“Goodreads is more than a company to me,” Chandler wrote. Ditto for Amazon and Jeff Bezos. And you can hear a similar tone of optimism that I always enjoy when Bezos is on stage or sitting at Charlie Rose’s table.

“I feel a little like a college graduate,” Chandler writes, “happy to come to this milestone, nostalgic for the past amazing seven years, and incredibly, incredibly, excited for the future.”

I love those two incrediblies.

They add up to promising innovations ahead in the way we discover books and read them, and not just on Kindles. Though for those of us who do read mainly on Kindles, this is going to be incredibly, incredibly worth watching.

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Why is this young man smiling? Read on…

News just hit my inbox that Amazon has reached an agreement to acquire Goodreads, the 16-million-member book lovers’ site founded by Los Angeles Times scion Otis Chandler. This is a very big story, because it portends dramatic improvements in our ability to share book recommendations and discover great things to read on our Kindles.

I will admit that Goodreads and similar sites have baffled me when I’ve checked them out. Reading is a solitary activity for me, except for sharing a few book ideas with very close friends. But Goodreads has grown like crazy, so there is clearly something to it. Today’s press release notes that “Over just the past 90 days, Goodreads members have added more than four books per second to the ‘want to read’ shelves on Goodreads.”

I’ve known that the Amazon team has had its eye on social reading for a long time, experimenting quietly with tools for sharing notes and annotations at kindle.amazon.com . And recently they beefed up Shelfari, which will probably get folded into Goodreads.

I hope Chandler will be a featured star at Amazon’s booth at the upcoming BookExpo America in New York City May 30th through June 1st. I will be there, eager to hear what’s ahead as a result of this bold acquisition. The press release said the deal is expected to close in the second quarter of this year, and terms were not disclosed.

Chandler is a grandson of the last family owner of The Los Angeles Times. He founded Goodreads in 2006 with the woman he later married, Elizabeth Khuri Chandler. They met after graduating from Stanford, according to this profile last month in The New York Times.

Hugh Howey, the author of WOOL, has this good quote in the release: “I just found out my two favorite people are getting married. The best place to discuss books is joining up with the best place to buy books – To Be Read piles everywhere must be groaning in anticipation.”

Amazon’s vice president for Kindle Content, Russ Grandinetti, is quoted as saying, “Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading.” And he made this prediction that, knowing how steadily the Kindle platform has been improved in the past six-plus years, is surely more than idle press-release verbiage: “Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike.”

So what do you think? If you are an active Goodreads user, how have you benefited from participating in the site? What advice would you have for Grandinetti and Chandler on how to make the most out of this acquisition? Please leave your comments below. And stay tuned!

UPDATE: Click here for Otis Chandler’s lengthy and enthusiastic statement about the acquisition.

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Photo by Scott Matthews

Author of Asperger Love: Searching for Romance When You’re Not Wired to Connect

Interview Starts at 22:42

I was so impressed by Jack and Kirsten’s perseverance in trying to explain themselves to each other. Here they have this condition that makes it hard to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. It makes it hard just to understand in a kind of intuitive way what someone else is thinking. It made me think about my own relationships and how hard it is for all of us to do that. Even those of us who have neurological tools to do that, it’s kind of the quintessential challenge of all relationships, to explain yourself to somebody else and to understand someone else.

 Show Notes and Links:

News

“Ebook Growth Slows for Adult Trade to 21% in Nov.” by Jeremy Greenfield at Digital Book World – March 20, 2013

“Amazon Kindle Shipments expected to drop in March and April” by Sammi Huang at DigiTimes – March 21, 2013

Kindle App available for Blackberry Z10

“Amazon Rumored To Be Working on a $99 7-Inch Kindle Fire HD” by Sarah Perez at TechCrunch – March 20, 2013

Amazon announces “Send to Kindle Button” now in use at The Washington Post, Time, BoingBoing, A Kindle World, and The Kindle Chronicles

Tech Tip

How to use the Send to Kindle Button

Send to Kindle button general information for bloggers

WordPress plug-in for Send to Kindle button

Interview with Amy Harmon

“Asperger Love” by Amy Harmon at Byliner and Amazon

Amy Harmon’s New York Times page

“The DNA Age” 2008 series for which Amy Harmon won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008

Autism Speaks home page

“Navigating Love and Autism” by Amy Harmon in The New York Times (with video clips) - December 26, 2011

New York Times e-singles published with Byliner

Content

“What is the Business of Literature?” by Richard Nash in The Virginia Quarterly Review – Spring, 2013

Douglas Rushkoff interview in The Verge – March 21, 2013

Other Rushkoff interviews during his book tour

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff – $12.99 on Kindle

The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control by Ted Striphas – $11.39 on Kindle

Marginalia survey

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Guest

Tom Helleberg, finance manager at NYU Press.

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(Cross Post from LenEdgerly.com)

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This is not the Iditarod. It’s a dog-sled sprint that starts and ends in downtown Fairbanks, Alaska.  I was there last week for a wedding and had a chance to catch the 68th running of the Open North American Championship (ONAC). It was part of why I fell in love with Fairbanks.

I missed the start of the race, when locals told me the dogs are crazy and jazzed up, rarin’ to go. It was -10 degrees, and downtown Fairbanks was full of people who seemed to think that’s normal weather for standing around outside drinking coffee. I walked further down the street and found a cozy deli and cafe named the Red Couch at 309 2nd Avenue.

The woman who served me said the racers would be back in about 20 minutes. The route ran right in front of the cafe. She seemed to know exactly where the unseen dogs were on the course. I finished my potato chips and bowl of chili quickly and walked outside to wait for the teams. After about 10 minutes of stomping my boots on the snow with my scarf tied around my face, I saw the first sled approach.

And then it was gone. That was fast!

The dogs were smaller than I had expected. After about 20 miles of hauling a guy behind them, the dogs were loping along mainly in silence. Their long tongues were hanging out as they ran.

I learned that the mushers aren’t just along for the ride. They turbo-charged their sleds with huge, sweeping kicks that left the kicking feet high in the air behind them. It might take years of yoga to build that much flexibility into your joints. It was impressive.

I walked back down 2nd Avenue to the finish line and admired the cool trucks with little hutches built into them for the dogs. Metal bowls were laid out beside each truck, filled with watery gruel to reward the racers. There was lots of tail wagging and celebratory barking in the streets of Fairbanks.

My iPhone weather app says it’s zero degrees this morning in Fairbanks, a day after the Equinox, when everyone on earth, from Fairbanks to Buenos Aires, experienced a 12-hour day of sunlight. Here in Denver, it’s a balmy 43 degrees.

My friends Kes Woodward and Dorli McWayne, who were joined in an artful and musical wedding ceremony in his studio five days ago, will probably be out today running on a trail through the birches surrounding their Fairbanks home. Zero degrees? That’s gotta feel like a heat wave!

I admire anyone who not only lives but thrives in a climate like that. It’s bracing. Each morning when I walked out of the Princess Riverside Lodge, the frigid air felt like an assault, or at least a warning. The blue electrical cable connecting my rented all-wheel-drive Nissan Juke to a post in the parking lot was stiff and brittle when I unplugged the heater. The air was brilliant and still.

As a reward for living in such a place, the sky sometimes puts on an awesome show. On my last night in Fairbanks, I drove with a fellow wedding guest, David Policansky from Washington, D.C., to a high ridge with a good view to the north. And yes, we did see the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.  I was surprised at how quickly the eerie greenish shapes shifted in the sky, forming curtains of color, then twisting ropes directly overhead, then blobs of glowing presence that looked as if they were about to fall on top of us.

I nearly froze out there on the ridge and kept ducking back into the Juke for warmth while David snapped away with his camera. He focused on the thumbnail moon then turned to the aurora over and over again. My neck hurt from looking up for nearly an hour, and then we drove back to the hotel, stunned into speaking softly about what we’d seen.

Kes assured the wedding guests arriving from all over that March is a wonderful time of year to visit Alaska. He wasn’t lying. My visit there last week stirred me deeply. Fairbanks left me ready to stray from my rut, to try new things, to bundle up and race down the street on a sled with my leg kicking high up behind me.

NOTE: Long-time listeners of The Kindle Chronicles podcast may remember that Kes Woodward was a guest on the show in July of 2009, for TKC 50. 

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I took the photo yesterday on my flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Our Alaska Airlines pilot announced over the intercom that he was asking for the okay to fly so as to provide a great view of Denali on the right side of the plane, where I had a window seat just ahead of the wing. He pulled it off, and when the highest mountain in North America drifted by seemingly close enough to touch, applause broke out in the cabin.

I’m here for the wedding of my friend Kes Woodward and Dorli McWayne tomorrow in his painting studio. At the moment I am enjoying the vibe at the Alaska Coffee Roasting Company, where laptops and conversation remind me of coffee shops in Denver or Boston. But it’s -4 degrees outside, and the young woman next to me still has her fur hat with flaps on as she chats with her friend at a round wooden table.

I see no one Kindle Fire HD in the room but no E Ink readers. Kes yesterday on the way from the airport confessed that he has not picked up his E Ink Kindle for months, ever since he bought an iPad mini, which he now uses to read his Kindle books via the Kindle for iPad app.

I’ve started Asperger Love by Amy Harmon, whom I will interview on Tuesday for the podcast. It’s a terrific piece of journalism, about two teenagers finding love despite the challenges of their respective spots on the autism spectrum.

And now I’m off to see the ice sculpture competition!

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Interview Starts at 16:01

Mark: We hear that grandfather clock chime from time to time when you are in Denver. Can you tell me a little bit more about that clock?

Len: It’s actually my great-grandfather’s clock. It’s my father’s mother’s father, Col. William B. Skelton, who lived in Lewiston, Maine. It’s a seven-day chiming clock I have to wind up each Sunday. So it bongs the hour, and sometimes it makes its way onto the podcast. It keeps pretty good time. It only loses five or 10 minutes a week.

Show Notes and Links:

News

Jeff Bezos interview with Charlie Rose (video) on November 16, 2012

“Amazon much-fanfared smartphone may be delayed, say sources” by Sammi Huang and Steve Shen in DigiTimes – March 11, 2013

“What Happens to Publishers and Authors If a Used Ebook Market Becomes Legal?” by Jeremy Greenfield in Forbes – March 11, 2013

“Judge Refuses to Shut Down Online Market for Used MP3s” by David Kravets in Wired – February 7, 2013

ReDigi web site

Barnes & Noble comment on generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) names application by Amazon

Author’s Guild (Scott Turow) comment on closed generic TLDs

Amazon’s comments on closed generic TLDs

Tech Tips

How to navigate home page on Kindle Touch and Kindle Paperwhite

My “How to Touch a Kindle Paperwhite” tutorial – October 28, 2012

Len Edgerly Interview by Mark Roberts

Westside church of Christ in Irving, Texas

Pressing On: The Magazine for Growing Christians, available for Kindle subscription for $10 a year

Wayland, Mass.

Belmont Hill School

The Harvard Crimson

The Woonsocket Call

The Providence Journal

The Casper Star-Tribune

Content

“Self-Published Title Hits No. 1 on EBook Best-Seller List for First Time” by Jeremy Greenfield at Digital Book World – March 12, 2013

Wait for You by Jennifer L. Armentrout writing as J. Lynn – $2.99 for Kindle

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach – $7.99 for Kindle

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins – $5.00 for Kindle

Asperger Love: Searching for Romance When You’re Not Wired to Connect by Amy Harmon – $2.99 for Kindle

Comments

Books by Frederick Forsyth at the Kindle Store

Jawbone JAMBOX Wireless Bluetooth Speaker - $159.24 at Amazon.com

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Thanks to enzo_the_baker and cyberbiker2 for your recent reviews of my podcast at the iTunes Store. You can help spread the word about The Kindle Chronicles by leaving a review at iTunes. Click here and then click the blue “View in iTunes” button. From there, click on “Ratings and Reviews.” Thanks!

Dedication:

I would like to dedicate this episode to Kes Woodward and Dorli McWayne as they prepare to exchange vows on Saturday, March 16th, in the studio in Fairbanks, Alaska, where Kes creates his stunning paintings of birches, landscapes and people.

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In addition, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ is now available in the UK, German, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

Here is the text of the press release:

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President of Nelson Literary Agency, LLC

Literary agent for Hugh Howey, author of Wool

Interview Starts at 11:35

The reader is having a lot of power, which technically they always have had, because anybody that they love and follow and make big–be it Nora Roberts or John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks or Debbie Macomber–obviously that’s sending a signal to publishers that they want to see more material along those lines. But what’s happening now is it’s consolidating into more real time and that a lot of indie authors are having success self-publishing, because for whatever reason–maybe their project didn’t seem mainstream enough or wasn’t filling X, Y, and Z slot or what have you–but then the readers decided, “I really like this; I want more of it.”

Show Notes and Links:

News

“After a Roller-Coaster Ride, Ebook Prices Have Stabilized Somewhat in 2013″ by Jeremy Greenfield at Digital Book World – March 5, 2013

“Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Pre-Orders Now Being Accepted in Japan” by Ken Mildenhall at Gadget Insiders – March 5, 2013

March 3, 2013 Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors blog report of Jamie McGuire’s problem with her Beautiful Disaster novel. And the resolution.

Tech Tips

An enhancement to the Send to Kindle extension for Google Chrome (thanks, Tom Semple)

Amazon’s page on the Chrome extension

“Kindle Fire HD Problems: What Users Complain About Most” by Simon Hill in Digital Trends – March 6, 2013

Simon Hill’s suggestions for alternate third-party email apps for Fire:  K-9 Mail (free), Kaiten Mail (free) or  Enhanced Email ($9.99).

Amazon Appstore for Android

Kristin Nelson Interview

Wall Street Journal story and video on Hugh Howie’s deal with Simon & Schuster – March 7, 2013

Kristin Nelson’s literary agency web site and her blog,  Pub Rants

Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5) by Hugh Howey – $5.99 on Kindle

Amazon author page for Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey’s guest column in IndieReader about Ridley Scott’s decision to make Wool into a movie

Fifty Shades Trilogy by E L James – $28.99 on Kindle

Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel by Sylvia Day – $9.99 on Kindle

Hugh Howey’s scheduled reading at The Tattered Cover Book Store March 15 at 7:30 p.m.

Content

Wool – Part One by Hugh Howey – free on Kindle

Wool Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey – $5.99 on Kindle

Works of L.M. Montgomery – Complete Anne of Green Gables (Illustrated)- $2.99 at U.S. Kindle Store

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life by Gretchen Rubin – $12.99 on Kindle

Gretchn Rubin’s The Happiness Project

“Bookish’s Dirty Little Secret” by Peter Winkler at Huffington Post – February 20, 2013

Bookish website

Comments

“Closing the Book” CBC Ideas podcast on January 31, 2011

“Opening the Book” CBC Ideas podcast on February 25, 2011

dealnews site

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach – $7.99 on Kindle

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Interview Guest: 

I will be on the other end of the microphone next week, having agreed to a suggestion by long-time listener Mark Roberts of Bedford, Texas, that I use an interview to answer questions about my own experience and perspectives on the Kindle and eBooks instead of the normal interview setup. So Mark, who is the preacher at Westside church of Christ in Irving, Texas, will be asking the questions for TKC 241, and I will do my best to answer them. Mark’s ministry includes an innovative all-digital monthly publication titled Pressing On: The Magazine for Growing Christians, available for Kindle subscription for $10 a year.

You can help spread the word about The Kindle Chronicles by leaving a review at iTunes! Click here and then click the blue “View in iTunes” button. From there, click on “Ratings and Reviews.” Thanks!

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This is the video version of my review of the Accessorise Bluetooth wireless portable speaker and how to use it with a Kindle Fire HD 7″ and 8.9″. If you are reading this on your E Ink Kindle as a subscription to my blog (thank you!), you won’t be able to play the video on your Kindle, but you will find most of the information in text form by reading the previous post, titled “Why I Love This Ball-Shaped External Speaker for My Kindle Fire.” To play the video, go to your computer, tablet, or smartphone and use your browser to navigate to thekindlechronicles.com .

If you are using the Accessorise or another external speaker with your Kindle Fire, I’d love to hear about your experience. Please leave a comment here or email me at PodChronicles AT gmail DOT com.

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Send to Kindle

For the past two months, I have been using an Accessorise (TM) Portable Bluetooth Wireless Mini Speaker System for my Kindle Fire HD 7″. I bought it for $29.99, and it came with free shipping because I have the Amazon Prime membership. It’s a gorgeous little gizmo with a blue decorative band around it. The speaker weighs only 2.5 ounces and is shaped like a ball. The volume and quality of the sound it produces are surprisingly good–noticeably louder and deeper than the built-in speakers in the Kindle Fire, which aren’t too shabby to begin with.

I use the speaker ball in several situations and love the wireless connection for convenience of use. If I’m listening to an Audible book while washing the dishes, I can position the Kindle Fire on the cutting board and place the speaker over by the sink, or wherever the best listening will be enabled. If I’m watching Downton Abbey on the living room sofa with Darlene and Claire, I have the speaker on my lap just in front of the screen. For movie and TV viewing I go all out, using what passes for a big screen in our TV-deprived home, which means I fire up my Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ instead of the 7-inch model. I also use the mini speaker at night when I’m shaving and brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush, because I can hold the ball close to my ear and still hear the audiobook above the buzzing racket of the toothbrush.

The speaker ball’s charge lasts 10 hours, the specs say, after a three-hour charge with an included micro USB charging cable. That’s the same type of cable you use to charge any of your Kindle models or other devices. I’ve never used the speaker ball for 10 hours without a charge, so I can’t testify to how long the charge lasts. I generally give it some juice once or twice a week. The speaker also comes with a nice little pouch, which gives it some protection when you toss it in your suitcase for travel.

The Bluetooth pairing process is easy. You press a button on the speaker and hold it until you hear two musical bleeps. Then you go to settings on your Kindle Fire, tap on Wireless, then Bluetooth. You will see the device appear on the list of paired devices, and when you tap on it the speaker will make another bleep which means it’s ready to take over the audio duties for the Fire.

I am uploading a YouTube video that I finished tonight demonstrating how to set up the speaker and showing my three favorite use cases. It should be up later tonight or tomorrow morning here and at my YouTube Channel.

If you are using this or another external Bluetooth speaker for your Kindle Fire, please let me know in the comments what your experience has been and leave any tips you might have on how to get the best use out of your speaker. A search in Amazon’s Electronics department for “Bluetooth Ball Speaker” will lead you to a good number of speakers similar to the one I’m using. I would also love to hear what your favorite use case is for an external Bluetooth speaker for your Fire.

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Cory Doctorow at the Harvard Book Store – Photo by Katsoulis Photography

Author of Homeland

Interview Starts at 18:13

You could imagine a million conceptual ways that you could design that feature (eBook updates) so that it doesn’t put people at risk. Such as, having the device poll a server to find out if there are any updates for its files and then notifying the owner of the device when there are updates and allowing the owner to choose and also, for example, saving the old version so the owner could revert if the update turned out to be faulty in some way. If you wanted to maximize the utility of the Kindle to owners instead of maximize the ability to do creepy, Orwellian junk with it that’s how you’d do it.

Show Notes and Links:

News

“Barnes & Noble Rethinks Its Strategy for the Nook” - New York Times article by Leslie Kaufman on February 28, 2013

“Kindle App Updates Demonstrate iOS App Store Flaw” by Jeff Carlson at TidBITS – February 27, 2013

Kindle Paperwhite ad ”Perfect at the Beach”

Amazon Customer Discussion comments about the ad

Tech Tips

How to donate a Kindle to E-Books for Troops

Eolake Stobblehouse’s blog post on adding fonts to your Kindle Paperwhite

More info on fonts procedure at eBook Reader

E-Books for Troops

“On a roll: why E Ink is still the leader in e-paper”by Dr. Guillaume Chansin at Printed Electronics World – Feb 20, 2013

Cory Doctorow Interview

Cory Doctorow’s home page

Cory Doctorow’s listing at Wikipedia

Aaron Swartz’s obituary in The New York Times – January 12, 2013

Boing Boing blog

Homeland by Cory Doctorow – $9.99 on Kindle

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow – $9.99 on Kindle

Lawful interception listing at Wikipedia

Zero-Day exploits - Wikipedia

Barnaby Jack report of vulnerability of implanted heart defibrillators – via The Register.

New York Times account of Amazon’s deletion of Orwell books in 2009

Doctorow video by Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories Magazine at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH on 2/24/13

Doctorow interviews at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in NYC

Content

Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation by James McQuivey – $7.99 on Kindle

Video blurb for Digital Disruption

“Justified” and “The Shield” available at Prime Instant Video – Amazon press release on February 26, 2013

“Justified” Season 1 Pilot episode at Amazon Prime Instant Video

Salon article on January 7, 2013 by Kristopher Jansma on interconnections between Elmore Leonard’s fiction and the “Justified” TV series

New York Times added to Flipboard Kindle Fire app

Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5) by Hugh Howey – $5.99 on Kindle

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD.

Next Week’s Interview Guest: 

Denver literary agent Kristin Nelson, whose clients include Hugh Howey.

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Send to Kindle

Those of you who, like me, have come to expect Amazon to provide amazing customer service, may find yourselves from time to asking, “This is a crazy request, but I wonder if they might go along with it.” After my experience this week, I want to urge you to give them a call and find out. What do you have to lose? Here is my story:

For the past couple of months I have been listening to The Blank Slate:The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker on my Kindle Fire HD 7″. I purchased it with a credit from my Audible membership plan on November 28. I don’t have a daily commute, so my Audible listening takes place in small windows of time, mainly when I’m shaving and getting ready for bed. In two months of listening, I had heard about two hours of the book and had 20 hours to go.

The topic was interesting to me–an investigation of human nature–and the writing was clear and original. The problem was that I hated the voice of the narrator, Victor Bevine. To me, he sounded sarcastic most of the time, torquing the writing of the book to cast aspersions on certain beliefs and thoughts being discussed. He probably thought he was reflecting the author’s content, and sometimes it did seem to fit. But night after night, the sound of Mr. Bevine’s voice grated on me. I grew to dislike him at an irrational, intuitive level. I thought I would get over it, and I very seldom abandon a book, in text or audio. I kept thinking, “I’ve got to give this guy a chance.”

Finally, on Monday night after one last listening session, I gave up trying to like the sound of Mr. Bevine’s voice. I called Audible’s call-anytime support number, 1-888-283-5051.

It was about 9 p.m. in Denver. A real person answered within less than a minute, and I sheepishly described my problem as follows: “I’m not sure you can help me, but I have been listening to this book for two months and I can’t stand the sound of the narrator’s voice. He sounds sarcastic to me. I have listened to two hours of it. Is there any chance you can remove it from my library and give me the credit back?”

The customer service rep didn’t act as if this was a strange request at all, but it did sound as if she was smiling as she took my account information and arranged for the return of a credit for the book. It took a couple of minutes, and she stayed on the line until I saw my five credits increase to six credits upon refreshing the Audible web page.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if the answer had been, “Sorry, Charlie. You’ve had the book for more than 30 days.”

But you know what? It turns out Audible’s policy is that you can return a book any time you decide you don’t like it for a full year after you buy it.

Amazing.

With my new credit, I bought a book whose narrator has a terrific voice, to my ear, and a great story to tell. It’s Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Vol. I by Robert Caro. It’s so good that Darlene and I spent a half hour listening to it after supper last night and she asked me not to listen to it without her being able to join me.

This is how a company like Amazon builds customer connections that just keep getting stronger. They continually surprise you. If you’ve got something bugging you about an Amazon or Audible product, call them and tell them about it. You may be amazed, too.

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Editorial Director, Digital Book World

Interview Starts at 18:15

QED stands for Quality, Excellence, Design and essentially it’s the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for eBooks and digital book production … Not all eBooks are created the same. Obviously the words are different, and the stories are different, but the formatting is also different. Some of them are formatted beautifully, and they create a great experience for the reader, almost a transparent experience. You don’t think about the formatting, because you’re just reading the book. And then let’s just say some are less than great.

Show Notes and Links:

News

“DRM Lawsuit Filed by Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, ‘Big Six’ Publishers” - Huffington Post 2/20/13

Cory Doctorow’s comment on DRM lawsuit

Average eBook Bestseller prices hit new low - Digital Book World 2/19/13

“Your next Kindle could be embedded in your car”- Gigaom 2/20/13

Tech Tips

Newsweek app at Amazon’s Appstore for Android – $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year

Newsweek Kindle subscription - $2.99 a month

Newsweek digital subscription at Newsweek’s website - $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year

New York Review of Books Kindle/Fire/iPad subscription – $3.49 a month

Jeremy Greenfield Interview

Articles by Jeremy Greenfield at Digital Book World

QED page at Digital Book World

eBook Architects/Firebrand Technologies

Digital Book World home page

Bookish

Finding the Future of Digital Book Publishing: “Interviews With 19 Innovative Ebook Business Leaders Edited by Jeremy Greenfield – $4.61 on Kindle

Content

Sesame Street: Divorce app for Kindle Fire – free

Accessorize Portable Bluetooth Wireless Mini Speaker - $28.99 at Amazon.com

“It’s Beyoncé’s World and We’re Just Living in it” by ZZ Packer in Newsweek – 2/15/13

Decoded by Jay-Z – $14.99 at Kindle Store  (Available for free borrowing at Denver Public Library)

HBO GO app at Appstore for Android

Homeland by Cory Doctorow – $9.99 at the Kindle Store

“Unfriending Big Brother,” by Tom Shippey, a glowing Wall Street Journal review of Homeland – 2/19/13

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow – $9.99 at the Kindle Store

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My Wife, Darlene, and the Yorkie Claire at Ocean Park, Maine

It depends on how you read. I think the basic Kindle is perfect if you don’t need that light. I’m not sure that I would make the change if it wasn’t for the light.

Show Notes and Links:

News

Amazon takes top spot in corporate reputation survey by Harris International - Mashable story.

PDF of highlights from Harris survey

Amazon’s stock price jumps on an analyst’s upward estimate of eBook sales - Reuters story.

Barnes and Noble death spiral? BGR story.

Kindle Coins announcement by Amazon.

Kindle Coins Frequently Asked Questions

Slate comment on Kindle Coins

Kindle for iPad version 3.6 features four different colors for highlights

Nate Hoffelder’s comments on Kindle for iPad update

Tech Tips

groovypost steps to install Adobe Flash on your Kindle Fire HD

Note: Use this link to get the Adobe Flash Player apk file onto your Fire instead of the link included in the groovyPost steps: Flash apk file

Click here to download Dolphin browser to your Fire HD

Click here for free ES File Explorer app at Amazon’s Apps for Android Store

An even better overview of how to install Flash on your Fire HD, from Andrys Basten

To test your Flash Player, try this Flash video titled “Dude Got Swagger.” (Be sure to open it with the Dolphin browser, not Silk.)

Library Extension for Chrome Browser

LibraryExtension.com web site

Imperial Bedrooms (Less Than Zero) by Bret Easton Ellis – $11.99 on Kindle

Darlene Interview

Kindle Paperwhite

Basic $69 Kindle

Donovan Creed novels by John Locke on Kindle

Content

Here’s the Deal, a new Kindle Single by David Leonhardt – $1.99.

Complete Works of L.M. Montgomery with the Complete Anne of Green Gables Books (Illustrated) - available in the U.K. only

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD, courtesy of IODA Promonet.

Next Week’s Guest

Jeremy Greenfield, editorial director of Digital Book World, on DBW’s QED certification project for quality eBook formatting.

Missing Interview

I’m sorry that you won’t hear from Mike and Julie Brown of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, during this episode. The interview that I recorded with them on St. John was lost when I left my Olympus LS-10 recorder in our hotel room on the last night, on St. Thomas. So far it hasn’t turned up. You can hear what they had to say about their experience as a Nook-and-Kindle couple in my chat with them a year ago on St. John. And below is a photo of them at Little Maho Bay still reading on their rival devices. The good news is they are still married!

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1. Check Amazon’s Whispernet Coverage Map to see if you will be able to download books wirelessly using 3G at your destination. At Maho, there is no WiFi, but the 3G coverage on all of St. John was excellent. This meant Darlene and I were able to bring books from our archives onto our Kindles, and to make purchases from our cabin-tent in the trees.

2. Leave your Kindle Fire or other tablet at home. If you’ve come to love the calm and focused reading experience on your E Ink Kindle, you will know why I recommend taking a break from the multi-tasking, bright-lights excitement of an LCD tablet. I was glad to find my Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ waiting for me here in Cambridge, and tonight we used it to watch the most recent two episodes of Downton Abbey downstairs in the living room. But for our sojourn on St. John, less was more.

3. Bring at least one thing to read on paper, for takeoff and landing, when the FAA still idiotically requires that we turn off our Kindles. For me this trip, I turned to the latest issue of AGNI, the fine literary magazine published at Boston University.

4. If you have a basic Kindle, bring along a plastic bag to protect it from rain, sea, and sand. You will be able to use the controls through the plastic, because the controls are physical buttons. If your Kindle is a Kindle Touch or Paperwhite, you won’t be able to operate it through plastic, so you’ll just have to be mindful in using it at the beach.

5. For thoughtful use of your Paperwhite while reading in bed with your partner, be sure to turn the front-lit screen down as far as you can while still reading comfortably. A Paperwhite set to its maximum illumination can be distracting if your bedmate finishes reading before you do and is trying to fall asleep.

6. If you are at a tropical beach beneath trees frequented by iguana, keep the cover on your Kindle closed when you are not reading. These guys sometimes tumble out of the trees with a disconcerting thump and could do some real damage to an E Ink screen! An iguana drop is not specifically covered by your Kindle Warranty, but if you fessed up to Kindle Support about what happened, I’m sure they would give you every consideration and would probably ship a replacement Kindle to you before you could say “you’re not going to believe this…”

7. If you’ve just finished War and Peace on your Kindle, as I did at Maho Bay, don’t feel shy about asking a guy who is reading it on paper if you can heft his copy, so you can admire just how big a book you read. The fellow I asked this of was glad to oblige, and we had a pleasant conversation about Tolstoy after breakfast in the dining pavilion one morning.

8. Don’t share any notes or highlights from your Kindle. Just read your books the old-fashioned way for a few days. If you must talk about what you’ve just read, do it in person.

9. Try going without reading, watching, or listening to the news for a few days. When you return, you will enjoy the sensation of the world having moved on just fine without your monitoring it every 15 minutes.

10. If you simply can’t live without your Kindle newspaper or magazine subscriptions, sign up for continued international delivery of them over Whispernet 3G wireless for a weekly fee of $4.99. You will receive details on this service in a letter that will appear on your Kindle once you arrive at your destination. This fee is not necessary if you are receiving subscriptions via Wi-Fi.

There really is no better way to enjoy reading on vacation than with an E Ink Kindle, in my humble opinion. If you have other suggestions to pass along, please leave them here in the comments. Bon voyage and happy Kindling!

Unit B-13, our home last week at Maho Bay Camps

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Photo by Dan Rebert

Author of

The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Survival, Success, Surfing…and Love

Interview Starts at 4:55

Fear is going to be part of all of our lives. But there is a way to relate to it differently and more skillfully, and I know I will be learning about it the rest of my life, and that this book will inform me probably as much when I’m 60 as now.

Show Notes and Links:

Maho Bay Camps, St. John USVI

Jaimal Yogis Interview – January 28, 2013

Fear Project web site

The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Survival, Success, Surfing…and Love – $9.99 at Kindle Store

Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea – $9.57 at Kindle Store

Jaimal Yogis interviewed by Kathleen Dunn on Wisconsin Public Radio

Jaimal Yogis on NPR

Other Interviews and media coverage of The Fear Project

Charlie Rose Interview with Jeff Bezos – November 16, 2012

(Starts at 25:47)

Click here for the full interview.

Previous Charlie Rose interviews with Jeff Bezos dating back to 1999

Inside the Hangar at Amazon’s Santa Monica Press Conference – September 6, 2012 by Len Edgerly – $2.99 at the Kindle Store

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD, courtesy of IODA Promonet.

Next Week’s Interview

“Kindles in Paradise” – a conversation with my wife Darlene about her new Kindle Paperwhite on St. John, USVI

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The manual is only 60 pages long, but it contains useful information beyond the basics of how to set up and navigate the Paperwhite. For example, there is a good section on how to back up the books in your Documents folder of your Kindle onto your computer, and there is a brief description of the advantages of organizing your eBook collection with the free and frequently updated Calibre program.

A minor flaw I noticed is that the description of the tap zones on the Paperwhite left the impression that the zones on the right and left side are of equal size. In fact, the right tap zone, for advancing to the next page of a book, is much larger than the left zone, which moves you to the previous page. Amazon’s thinking was that this would make it easier to read the Paperwhite with one hand, tapping in the middle of the screen for Next Page.

I agree with Shelby Johnson’s assertion that “The Kindle Paperwhite is the most advanced Kindle Amazon has released to date.” And this new guide to the Paperwhite is a useful addition to the resources available to new users. Another that you might be interested in is this video tutorial that I prepared several months ago.

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Vice President for Editorial and Content Innovation

Semi-Linear, creator of the Citia app

Interview Starts at 22:16

What we’re doing at Semi-Linear with our Citia app is partnering with big publishers like HarperCollins, Hachette, and Penguin and saying, “Let us take a crack at some of your interesting and best-selling science and technology titles, and let us come up with a version that gives a reader the chance to navigate for themselves through a shorter version of the book, and if they’re then interested then go on to buy the full version of the book.”

Show Notes and Links:

News

Amazon earnings release - January 29, 2013

The Guardian‘s report on Amazon quarterly earnings

“How Amazon Trained Its Investors to Behave,” Harvard Business Review blog post January 30, 2013 by Justin Fox

“Amazon’s Kindle Fire Burning Up the Android Chart” - Fast Company, January 28, 2013

Amazon.com outage, as reported by Gizmodo

“Barnes & Noble Closures: 110s of Stores To Go According to Top Executive” in Huffington Post – January 30, 2013

Video of Laura Hazard Owen interviewed at Digital Book World conference on future of Barnes & Noble.

Dennis Johnson, co-founder of Melville House, interview with Robin Young on WBUR’s “Here & Now” – February 1, 2013

Melville House publisher website

Tech Tips

Copia

GetJar mobile

kindle.amazon.com

The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise? by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith – $12.99

It’s Not About the Tights: An Owner’s Manual on Bravery by Chris Brogan – $4.95

Peter Meyers Interview

Semi-Linear on LinkedIn

Citia website

“Welcome to Pine Point” by The Goggles

Kindle Fire: The Missing Manual by Peter Meyers – $9.99

Breaking the Page by Peter Meyers – free preview

Previous Kindle Chronicles interviews with Peter Meyers in May, 2011, and February, 2012.

Content

Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries by Louise Penny available at amazon.ca and at amazon.com

Ten Books that Made Bill Gates Think - links go to review of each book by Gates

1. The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker
2. Deng Xiaoping by Ezra Vogel
3. The Quest by Daniel Yergin
4. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
5. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
6. One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? by Gordon Conway
7. A World-Class Education by Vivien Stewart
8. Academically Adrift by Richard Arum & Joshipa Roksa
9. This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff
10. The City that Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control by Franklin Zimring

Here are the links to Bill Gates-recommended books at the Kindle Store (with Associates coding that will benefit TKC if you purchase them, without adding to the price):

The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker – $9.99

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra Vogel – $23.17 (926 pages!)

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin

Moonwalking with Einstein:The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer – $9.99

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death and hope in a Mumbai undercity by Katherine Boo – $12.99

One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? by Gordon Conway – $14.72

A World-Class Education: Learning from International Models of Excellence and Innovation by Vivien Stewart – $14.82

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum & Joshipa Roksa – $5.13

This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff – $9.18 (or rental from $4.03)

The City that Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control by Franklin Zimring – $12.09

Recommended by George from Tulsa: A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life by Steven Kotler  $1.99 Kindle and $4.99 Audible

Amazon press release February 1, 2013 on exclusive rights to Downton Abbey

The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Surfing…and Love by Jaimal Yogis.

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” This version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD, courtesy of IODA Promonet.

Upcoming Interviews

TKC 236 next week: Jamail Yogis, author of The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Surfing…and Love

TKC 237 on Feb 8: “Kindles in Paradise” – a conversation with my wife Darlene on St. John, USVI, on how she likes her new PaperWhite.

Kindle Fire Sweepstakes

Congratulations to the winner, John Aga. Click here to see Claire choosing his name from the that.

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In this video, you will find out which of the 23 entrants in the Kindle Fire Sweepstakes is our winner. With encouragement from Darlene, our Yorkie Claire actually selected the winning entry from my Harvard cap. The decision of the canine judge is final!

If you can’t watch the video and want to know right away if you won the Fire, please email me at PodChronicles AT Gmail DOT com, and I will give you the info. I hope everyone will enjoy the drawing and the video, and for one of you it will mean an almost-new Kindle Fire will be on its way to you soon!

I want to thank everyone who entered by emailing me or leaving a comment. I received terrific feedback about the show and heard from some long-time listeners for the first time, as well as delightful messages from many old friends of TKC.

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It gives me a personal thrill to be sending our first E-Books for Troops Kindles to a ship, because my father served in the Navy during the Korean Conflict, beginning just a few days after I was born in 1950.

If you’d like to donate a used Kindle to E-Books for Troops, please click here for details. We are on track to distribute 300 new and used Kindles during 2013 to U.S. servicemen and women deployed overseas. You will receive a tax information letter for a tax deduction, because EB4T is an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. You can also use this PayPal link to donate money, which we use to purchase Amazon gift cards, USB cables and power plugs as needed, and new Kindles. So far, we have raised $3,000 of our 2013 fund-raising goal of $17,000.

To accompany me in the satisfying work of loading personal messages from donors onto the Kindles, I am enjoying music by The United States Navy Band on Spotify. If you are on a computer, tablet, or smartphone (not an E Ink Kindle), I believe you can click here to listen along.

Anchors aweigh, baby!

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The Fear Project offers practical, science-based tools for reducing the amount of fear in one’s life. Yogis is an accomplished journalist and surfer who decided to investigate what neuroscience has learned about fear, because he had hit a fear-blocked place in his own life. The resulting exploration might have been just one more Gladwellian romp of smart people explaining their smart ideas, but Yogis wisely took a different path through the material. He wove in his own story, his own fears overcome in long-distance frigid sea swimming, surfing and–scariest of all–committing to a relationship.

I hope you will click here and download a sample of the book, the better to gain further insight into this remarkable young man’s journey. I will post the episode in advance of Darlene’s and my four days on St. John, USVI, so it will go live Friday morning, February 8. You might also want to check out Yogis’s first book, The Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea.

I am also excited about this week’s interview with eBook visionary Peter Meyers, for TKC 235, recorded at the recent Digital Book World conference in New York City. His project is, alas, not available on Kindle or Kindle Fire yet, but if you have an iPad or other iOS device, you might want to check out the creative offerings at the Citia platform.

I will close with this passage from The Fear Project:

Our early brain hardware worked so well over the last few hundred million years that, as we evolved, we retained many of those old brain parts in there and added more and more cool tricks, more neocortex. Fear is part of that very, very early hardware. And though the old hardware and its new upgrades sync up pretty well–”the brain is a symphony of cooperation,” as [Sian] Beilock later put it to me–occasionally there are technical difficulties.

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Vice President / Principal Analyst at Forrester Research

and author of the forthcoming Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation

 Interview Starts at 11:46

Trying to sue your way through into the future has not worked so far, and I think that’s what the book publishers learned. They could very easily have dug in their heels when digital started to finally catch up to them in 2008, but they didn’t. Instead they jumped into the future and attempted as best they could to say “What does my customer really need, and how do I give them more of it?” And that’s really the way you approach digital disruption, regardless of what industry you’re in. And I think book publishers are to be commended for–yes, even though they had a few misgivings–they still jumped into it with both feet in the best interest of the reading public.

Show Notes and Links

News

Amazon press release (1/23/13) announcing that Paperwhite and Kindle now available to customers in Canada

Amazon press release (1/24/13) announcing acquisition of IVONA Software

Macmillan to begin eBook library lending pilot - Publishers Weekly story

OverDrive press release

Tech Tips

Kindle Paperwhite update to 5.3.3

Kindle Software update to version 4.1.1

Copia

GetJar mobile

James McQuivey Interview

James’s blog at Forrester Research

Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation by James McQuivey – $7.99 for Kindle preorder, delivery on 2/26/13

Zeo sleep monitor

Books on disruption by HBS Prof. Clayton Christensen

Content

YouTube video of James Blanco’s Inaugural poem, “One Today”

Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Inaugural poem

Place of Mind chapbook of Richard Blanco’s poem, Kindle edition for $3.99

Guns by Stephen King, a 99-cent Kindle Single

Citia

“What Technology Wants” by Kevin Kelly – Citia free sample at iTunes store for iOS devices

“What Technology Wants” by Kevin Kelly – full Citia app for $9.99 at iTunes store for iOS devices

The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Surfing…and Love by Jaimal Yogis

Comments

Amazon AutoRip for books? - Business Insider story on 1/10/13

An innovative bookstore promo for Kobo

Music

Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named “Well, You Needn’t.” The usual version is “Ra-Monk” by Eval Manigat on the “Variations in Time: A Jazz Persepctive” CD by Public Transit Recording” CD, courtesy of IODA Promonet.

This week’s outro music: “Well You Needn’t” performed by Jon Sass and Sabine Hasicka for Tuba and Tap Dancing - YouTube video uploaded by louieshotpants

Upcoming Interviews

TKC 235 Next week: Peter Meyers, vice president, editorial & content innovation at Semi-Linear (creator of Citia app)

TKC 236 on Feb. 3 Feb 8: Jamail Yogis, author of The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Surfing…and Love

TKC 237 on Feb 10 Feb 15: “Kindles in Paradise” – a conversation with my wife Darlene on St. John, USVI

Kindle Fire Sweepstakes

Next week I will award my slightly used Kindle Fire 7″ to someone selected at random who leaves feedback about this episode or the podcast in general. You can leave your feedback as a comment on this post or you can email it to me at PodChronicles AT Gmail DOT com. I look forward to hearing from you!

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The most unforgettable part of King’s essay is how he came to terms with the impact of a novel that he wrote in high school. When he realized that Getting It On, later retitled Rage, had been found in the locker of a 14-year-old shooter who in 1997 killed three and wounded five at a high school in Paducah, Kentucky, King asked his publishers to pull the novel from publication. His youthful novel concerned a troubled boy with a domineering father, and in the novel the boy ends up taking a gun to school and killing his algebra teacher. But King never apologized for writing Rage. He puts it this way in Guns:

No sir, no ma’am, I never did and never would. It took more than one slim novel to cause Cox, Pierce, Loukaitis, and Carneal to do what they did. These were unhappy boys with deep psychological problems, boys who were bullied at school and bruised at home by parental neglect or outright abuse.

King comes out where you would expect, supporting background checks for gun purchasers, a ban on sale of clips and magazines containing more than 10 rounds, and a ban on the sale of assault weapons such as the Bushmaster and the AR-15. But the path of his argument takes the reader places you have probably never been before.

My favorite is his magic-wand wish, if he were granted one for the U.S, described as follows: “Every liberal in the country must watch Fox News for one year, and every conservative in the country must watch MSNBC for one year.” He says middle-of-the-roaders could stick with CSI. The results of this imagined reordering of news sources, King posits, might be a period of grumbling readjustment during which viewers would realize the networks they hated actually had some non-political news on them. After that, he imagines,

…viewers might begin seeing different anchors and commentators, as each news network’s fringe bellowers attracted increasing flak from their new captive audiences….Finally, the viewers themselves might change. Not a lot; just a slide-step or two away from the kumbayah socialists of the left and the Tea Partiers of the right. I’m not saying they’d re-colonize the all-but-deserted middle (lot of cheap real estate there, my brothers and sisters), but they might close in on it a trifle.

You can almost see the mind of Stephen King growing that seed of an idea into a much longer story. What would it be like if people really did switch news sources for a year? His essay released today as a 99-cent Kindle Single makes you think, as does most everything else he’s written in a long and unrepeatable career.

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“King finished this essay last Friday morning, and by that night we had accepted it and scheduled for publication today,” Kindle Singles editor David Blum says in the release. I suppose one question would be, how come it took from morning all the way till evening to decide to publish the massively popular author’s rant. No matter. It’s still an impressive compression of the publishing cycle, and I’m sure it will be gratifying to King to see his essay rise quickly on the Kindle Singles bestseller list, which it surely will by the end of today.

It’s a rough piece, based on what I’ve read on my Kindle Fire HD so far. A quick search found seven f-bombs, which I don’t see the point of, frankly. An author of King’s skill ought to be able to make his case without using language that will be offensive to some readers. Why limit his audience that way? The content is fierce, beginning with a mocking satire of how mass shootings are covered by the media. Here’s a sample:

Sixteenth, what cable news does best now begins, and will continue for the next seventy-two hours: the slow and luxurious licking of tears from the faces of the bereaved. We’re treated to interviews with weeping mothers and fathers; interviews with stunned siblings and classmates; fleets of hearses rolling from church to cemetery; memorials featuring flowers, teddy bears, photographs, and signs saying WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU.

You get the idea. And that same mocked media will no doubt make sure everyone hears about this latest example of how digital tools are speeding up the national conversation on just about everything, especially if you happen to be an author whose books have sold more than 350 million copies.

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Today Amazon announced that it is purchasing the company that made that better voice possible, IVONA Software. I believe this acquisition is also foretells continuing improvements in the Kindle’s accessibility.

Click here for the full press release, and here is the text:

Amazon.com Announces Acquisition of IVONA Software

SEATTLE—January 24, 2013—(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that it has acquired leading text-to-speech technology company IVONA Software. IVONA delivers world-class technologies that power the “Text-to-Speech,” “Voice Guide” and “Explore by Touch” features on Kindle Fire tablets. Additionally, IVONA delivers text-to-speech products and services for thousands of developers, businesses and customers around the world.

“IVONA’s exceptional text-to-speech technology leads the industry in natural voice quality, accuracy and ease of use. IVONA is already instrumental in helping us deliver excellent accessibility features on Kindle Fire, including Text-to-Speech, Voice Guide and Explore by Touch,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “The IVONA team shares our passion for innovation and customer obsession, and we look forward to building great products to deliver world-class voice solutions to customers around the world.”

“For more than ten years, the IVONA team has been focused on creating innovative text-to-speech technologies,” said Lukasz Osowski, CEO and co-founder of IVONA. “We are all thrilled that Amazon is supporting our growth so that we can continue to innovate and deliver exceptional voice and language support for our customers.”

IVONA offers voice and language portfolios with 44 voices in 17 languages and more in development.

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I know from Canadian listeners of The Kindle Chronicles that this has been a long time coming–more than a year since these latest-generation E Ink Kindles were introduced for U.S. customers more than a year ago.

Click here for the full press release.

I am also copying it here into the blog post for easier reading by those of you who subscribe to The Kindle Chronicles on your E Ink Kindles:

Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Now Available on Amazon.ca

Kindle Paperwhite, the most advanced e-reader ever constructed with higher resolution, 62% more pixels, 25% higher-contrast, patented built-in front light, 8 weeks of battery life and an even slimmer and sleeker design—only CDN$139

Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G—the top-of-the-line Kindle with free 3G wireless—only CDN$199

Latest generation Kindle—small, light and even faster—only CDN$89

Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite also available at over a thousand retail locations, including Staples, The Source and Shoppers Drug Mart

Canada Kindle Store on Amazon.ca offers the largest selection of the most popular books, including the most best sellers from the Globe and Mail and Le Devoir best seller lists, winners of the Giller prize, and over 50,000 French-language titles

SEATTLE—January 23, 2013–(NASDAQ:AMZN)—Amazon.ca today announced that the new family of Kindle e-readers is now available to customers in Canada. The all-new top-of-the-line Kindle Paperwhite  is the most advanced e-reader ever built with 62% more pixels and 25% increased contrast compared to the previous generation Kindle, a patented built-in front light for reading in all lighting conditions, up to 8 weeks of battery life, a thin and light design, and is available in both Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi + 3G models.  Never pay for or hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot with the free 3G wireless Kindle Paperwhite for just CDN$199 or choose Kindle Paperwhite with Wi-Fi for only CDN$139.  The new latest generation Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle ever, with new, improved fonts and faster page turns at the low price of CDN$89. Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G support multiple languages, including French, and are available starting today at www.amazon.ca/kindlepaperwhite.

In addition, Canadian customers can now access the Canada Kindle Store directly from their Kindle. The Kindle Store offers the largest selection of the most popular books, including the most best sellers from the Globe and Mail and Le Devoir best seller lists, winners of the Giller prize, and a broad selection of works from leading Canadian publishers and authors, including Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and Yann Martel. The Canada Kindle Store has over 1.5 million Kindle books, including over 250,000 exclusive books customers won’t find anywhere else, over 35,000 free books, and over 50,000 French-language titles. Visit www.amazon.ca/kindlebooks for more information. All Kindle books are “Buy Once, Read Everywhere”—customers can read their Kindle books on Kindle devices and on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Android and Windows phones and Android tablets using the free Kindle apps.

“We’re excited to make the best-selling and most advanced e-readers in the world available to our Amazon.ca customers for the first time, making it easier and more affordable than ever for Canadian readers to own a Kindle,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “With a Kindle in their hands, Canadian customers can now directly access the Kindle Store with the largest selection of the books people want to read, including the largest selection of best sellers and over 250,000 titles that are exclusive to the Kindle Store.”

“E-readers have found their place in today’s digital lifestyle by providing users with a unique reading experience,” said Mark Shanahan, senior technology merchant at Staples Canada. “Our goal is to help people choose a device that’s right for them by offering a broad selection of popular e-readers like the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite in one convenient place, making it easy for customers to see, touch, and try the product.”

Kindle Paperwhite—The World’s Most Advanced E-Reader

Most Advanced E-Reader Display, 62% More Pixels, 25% More Contrast

Kindle Paperwhite’s display is the most advanced e-reader display ever constructed. Featuring a 212 ppi display, Kindle Paperwhite has 62% more pixels than the previous generation Kindle, making text in books and periodicals crisp and clear at any size. Images are sharper, richer and show even more detail. Kindle Paperwhite’s screen has 25% higher contrast than the previous generation Kindle— the blacks are blacker, and the whites are whiter.

Innovative Built-In Light

Backlit LCD displays direct light up through the display into the user’s eyes. Kindle Paperwhite’s patented front-lit display guides light underneath an anti-glare layer and down toward the display, away from the reader’s eyes. This means a reader can read for hours with less eye fatigue and strain. The screen brightness is easily adjusted for reading in any light. The Paperwhite display provides an incredible experience in the dark and in direct sunlight. 

Breakthrough Battery Life

Kindle Paperwhite’s built-in front light is designed to be used at all times—both in daylight and in a dark room—for the clearest, crispest reading experience. In order to use the light at all times, Kindle Paperwhite requires exceptional power management to maintain the battery life that customers love about Kindle. Amazon’s light guide technology precisely diffuses the light across the screen and only requires four LEDs to light the entire screen (unlike LCD screens which can use up to 50 LEDs). The light guide is so efficient that Kindle Paperwhite has a remarkable 8 weeks of battery life, even with the light on at all times.

Free 3G

Kindle’s free 3G connection means customers never have to hunt for or pay for a Wi-Fi hotspot—they simply download and read books anytime, anywhere.  Amazon pays for the 3G connection on Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G, so customers pay no monthly fees and sign no annual contracts.

Built-In Wi-Fi

Kindle Paperwhite comes with built-in Wi-Fi, letting readers discover new content at home or on the road anywhere you can access Wi-Fi.

Books in 60 Seconds

Find a book and start reading in seconds with our fast, free wireless delivery. No computer required to download content.

New Touch Technology

Kindle Paperwhite’s new capacitive touch technology is uniquely integrated into the Paperwhite display, allowing for a thinner form factor for Kindle Paperwhite and even better touch accuracy.

Slim and Sleek Design

At just over a third of an inch thin and weighing 213 grams, Kindle Paperwhite is thinner than a magazine and weighs less than a typical paperback. The bezel height between the side of the device and the display itself is 77% thinner.

Hand-Tuned Fonts

Every font on Kindle Paperwhite is hand-tuned for maximum readability. The Amazon typography team worked at the pixel level to ensure consistency of stroke thickness and shape profiles across all individual glyphs, aligning each size to the specific grid of the new Paperwhite display. This allows for unprecedented sharpness of fonts. Kindle Paperwhite’s higher resolution display also allows for new elegant typeface options, such as Baskerville and Palatino, which use thin stems that would not render well on a lower resolution display.

“Buy Once, Read Everywhere”

With free reading apps, customers can read their Kindle books on a large number of devices and platforms, including any Kindle as well as on iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Mac, PC, or Windows Phone.

Whispersync

Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes a customer’s last page read, bookmarks and annotations across all of their devices, so they can always pick up where they left off.

Time to Read

Time to Read is a new feature for Kindle Paperwhite that helps readers know the amount of time it will take them to finish a chapter or a book. This feature is smart—it personalizes the time for each customer based on their reading speed and is constantly updated as the reader’s speed and habits change. With Time to Read, it’s never been easier to decide when to start a new chapter or finish the chapter you’re reading.

Explore the “Bones of a Book” with X-Ray

With a single tap, readers can see all passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places or topics that interest them, as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia and Shelfari, Amazon’s community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers. Amazon built X-Ray using its expertise in language processing and machine learning, access to significant storage and computing resources with Amazon S3 and EC2, and a deep library of book and character information.

Features Built Just for Readers

Each Kindle offers a variety of font styles and sizes, so customers can easily customize their reading experience.  Kindle Paperwhite also comes with built-in dictionaries for instant lookup of words, Real Page Numbers, support for bookmarks and annotations, and more.

 Worry-Free Cloud Storage

Customers’ Kindle books are automatically backed up in the cloud, so they can re-download their books wirelessly for free. 

Sharing

Customers can share highlighted sections, notes and meaningful quotes on Facebook and Twitter directly from Kindle without leaving the book.

Parental Controls

Parental Controls allow parents to restrict access to the Kindle Store, Cloud Archive and the Experimental Web Browser so they can give their Kindle to a child worry-free.

 Top-Rated, World-Class Customer Service

Whenever customers shop on Amazon, buy a Kindle, or buy Kindle content, they know that they are also getting Amazon’s world-class customer service. Customers have been shopping on Amazon.ca for 11 years, and they continue to do so because of the unparalleled, end-to-end customer experience.

Beautiful Leather Covers with Auto Wake and Sleep

Covers for Kindle Paperwhite feature a premium textured leather exterior and a subtle woven nylon interior to provide the lightest and thinnest form of protection. The integrated magnetic clasp ensures the cover remains securely closed while in a backpack, purse, or briefcase. The cover automatically wakes Kindle Paperwhite upon opening and puts it to sleep when closed, making it easy to dive right back into the book.

Latest Generation Kindle—Small, Light and Now Even Faster—only CDN$89

The smallest, lightest and most affordable Kindle everis even better, with new improved fonts, 15% faster page turns and a new, unbelievably low price: just CDN$89. In addition, the new Kindle now supports children’s books and comics, and includes new parental controls. Weighing just 170 grams, Kindle is small and light enough to fit easily in a pocket and take everywhere, and still features the same 6-inch electronic ink display that reads like real paper. At just CDN$89, the new Kindle is the perfect entry Kindle for young and adult readers alike.

Kindle Direct Publishing

Independent authors and publishers can make their books available in the Canada Kindle Store using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) at http://kdp.amazon.ca. Canadian independent authors and publishers can utilize the English- or French-language KDP website to make their books available in Canada and more than 175 countries worldwide. They can also price their books and receive payments in Canadian dollars, earn up to 70% royalties on each book sold, all while retaining control of their content and copyrights.

Thousands of authors in Canada are already using KDP to make their books available in Kindle stores around the world, including Montreal resident Matthew Mather, the best-selling KDP author of the Complete Atopia Chronicles.

“My experience self-publishing with KDP has been nothing short of amazing,” said Matthew Mather. “Within weeks of publishing, my book climbed to #1 on the science fiction best sellers list, and now I’ve sold tens of thousands of copies. I’ve just finished my second novel, “CyberStorm,” and look forward to the idea of writing for a living, something I hadn’t imagined possible just six months ago. The best part, though, has been the interaction with readers. I get emails from every corner of the world, contacting me to say how much they liked my work. This is an amazing feeling!”

Pricing & Availability

The Kindle family is available at Amazon.ca and at over 1,000 retail locations across Canada.

Kindle is available for CDN$89at www.amazon.ca/kindle.

Kindle Paperwhite is available for CDN$139 at www.amazon.ca/kindlepaperwhite.

Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G is available for CDN$199 at www.amazon.ca/kindlepaperwhite3G.

For high resolution images and video of Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite, visit www.amazon.com/pr/kindle.

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Start times for interviews:

Jeremy Greenfield – 6:27

Mike Shatzkin – 8:46

Michael Tamblyn (Kobo) – 7:14

Heather Severson – 8:22

Paul Biba – 17:30

Michael David Burleigh (OverDrive) – 24:05

Show Notes and Links:

Digital Book World

Digital Book World conference agenda

My live blog coverage of sessions on the following topics:

Obama campaign digital director Teddy Goff’s presentation on what publishers might learn from the campaign’s digital programs

Authors’ views of publishing, a survey

Hugh Howie, author of the Wool series, and his agent, Kristin Nelson

Jeremy Greenfield, editorial director of Digital Book World

Mike Shatzkin’s Idealog blog

Michael Tamblyn, EVP for content, sales and merchandising at Kobo

American Booksellers Association

The Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass.

Kobo page at Harvard Book Store site

Heather Severson - mercenary writer, gypsy scholar

Paul Biba on Twitter

Paul Biba’s reporting from Digital Book World conference for Good E-reader

Mercy Pilkington’s reporting from the Digital Book World conference for Good E-Reader

Good E-reader home page

Good E-reader launches Indiegogo campaign for HTML5 reading app and eBook cloud storage locker

OverDrive

Laura Hazard Owen’s profile of Inkling, founded by Matt MacInnis

Inkling

Next week’s guest: James McQuivey of Forrester Research

My Guest for TKC 235 on Feb 1: Peter Meyers, vice president for editorial and content innovation at Semi-Linear, creator of Citia

I’d love to hear from you about the live blog posts from DBW or anything else that’s on your mind. You can leave a comment here or email me at PodChronicles AT Gmail Dot Com.

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Click on the headline of this post to see my live updates. Thanks for following along, and I’d love feedback in the comment as to how useful this live blog experiment was, and any tips you might have to improve future use of this tool.   –Len

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Click on the headline of this post to see the live updates. The room is packed. We all must think this is going to be a worthwhile panel! I’m in the front row as always, the better to stay alert.

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