Mar 1 2009
Amazon unveiled Kindle 2.0 a few weeks ago and with it the announcement that the Kindle 2.0 would have the ability to convert the text to speech. This feature has been referred to as TTS. Almost immediately, Authors’ Guild voiced dissent over TTS. "They don’t have the right to read a book out loud," said [...]
Feb 9 2009
The press conference pertaining to the Kindle 2.0 has been completed and the details are out. (Manual here). The new Kindle is very thin, only .36 inches wide. It’s lighter than a typical paperback and has a new “5-way controller” to allow for “more precise note-taking and highlighting both up and down and side to [...]
Feb 3 2009
Penguin and Amazon are launching their second annual search for the next great fiction writer . The prize is a hefty $25,000 advance (that's big money, particularly in today's publishing economy unless you are a celeb or writing a Dan Brown knock off). Amazon reviewers get first crack at the slush pile and the top 500 [...]
Jan 30 2009
UPDATED LINKS: Rather than make a new post, I’m adding a few links to the existing one: Greek opposition leader, George Papandreou, argues for a Kindle for every reader. (Sony, get yourself to Greece Stat!). Thanks Xandra G. UK’s RNA announces its shortlist which includes India Grey, a favorite of Meljean Brook, and Fiona Harper, [...]
Jan 13 2009
Kresley Cole is giving away a free Sony Reader. You need to pimp, post, and then be lucky. Other links: AAR Rachel interviews Julia Spencer Fleming, one of my favorite new to me mystery authors that Keishon has been dunning us to read for years. Keishon’s got good mystery taste even though I’m not quite [...]
Dec 4 2008
File this one under: I Should Have Seen It Coming. Amazon released an iPhone application that uses pictures you to take of an object to scan and upload it to Amazon. Once on the Amazon servers, underpaid workers will try to find products that match said object that is on sale at Amazon.com. Amazon Pirates [...]
Nov 6 2008
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/11/oprah-wont-boos.html Anaylust Mark Mahaney of Citigroup does not believe that the Oprah endorsement of the Kindle will raise sales of the device for Amazon sufficient to make an impact on Amazon's bottom line. The support buttressing his argument is poor sales data from other online vendors. This is not to say that Mahaney doesn't think that [...]
Oct 27 2008
Amazon has unveiled a beta version of a new way to browse for books, movies, and music. The site is both scrollable and zoomable. It’s easiest to use with your keyboard (right and left arrows and space bar for zooming). I would like longer excerpts for books. Right now I think the new site is [...]
Oct 26 2008
Oprah Winfrey has enormous consumer influence, particularly with the reading public. There is not an Oprah Book Club book that hasn’t enjoyed bestseller status for an extended period of time. A mere mention of a product on Oprah can “make” a retailer. So it was with no small sense of wonder that I received the [...]
Oct 24 2008
Was it only two years ago that Harriet Klausner was featured in Time Magazine, the Year of You? Because time moves swiftly in the interwebz. A concerted effort was made to devalue Klausner’s reviews and she is now fallen from No. 1 to No. 442. Via Ed Rants. Thanks to Bookseller Chick for the link.
Oct 24 2008
Oprah has indeed endorsed the Kindle as one of her favorite gadgets. This summer, Oprah received a gift that she says changed her life. “I’m telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,” she says. Along with her endorsement, Amazon is offering $50 off of the Kindle until November 1. The [...]
Oct 23 2008
Amazon.com showed another great quarter of sales and income. Net sales ended September 30 are up 31% to 4.26 billion and net income is up 48% to $118 million. It has been said that Amazon's pricing of hardcovers for the Kindle at $9.99 represents a loss to Amazon for each sale but it is easily [...]
Aug 28 2008
I’ve had the opportunity to purchase a gently used Kindle from a friend of mine but I’ve held off, thinking that there might be a new Kindle coming out in October. According to a report to the Times, though, Amazon says that there are no new Kindles slated for release in 2008. Update to Add: [...]
Aug 26 2008
Amazon continues its inexorable march to buy everything on the internet related to books. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Amazon, an early investor in Shelfari, is now buying the book lover site outright. This might signal some kind of merging between Shelfari and LibraryThing.com as Amazon will soon own a stake in both. AbeBooks [...]
Aug 21 2008
Amazon is attempting to lure new readers (and perhaps existing ebook readers) to the Kindle by offering exclusive fiction. Samhain Publishing has had three free book giveaways for the Kindle only. There was another Kindle exclusive announced a few weeks back (the name of the book I cannot remember). Now, the first novel of Terry [...]
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