Amazon is banking on the idea that dedicated eBook readers are what will drive paper book readers to the digital format. A recent article in September’s Searcher magazine argues that it is not. Nancy K. Herther, an anthropology and sociology librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries, took a look at the history [...]

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: [...]

Get the Amazon Rewards Visa Card and Get $100 Off Kindle
Thanks to Chase, you get $100 off Kindle when you get the new Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card. Limited time only. Here’s how this works: 1) Apply online. Get a response in as little as 30 seconds. If you’re approved, we will instantly add the card [...]

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 [...]

When I was at RWA, I had the opportunity to see the Kindle and the new Sony Reader with booklight and the Asus EEE PC. These are all viable ebook readers that you can purchase today, along with my personal favorite, the iTouch/iPhone.
Neither the Kindle nor the Reader is a perfect device and frankly, I [...]

I mentioned recently how much I would love for publishers to move to e-arcs as it would be so much cheaper, allow for more copies to be distributed, and create a smaller ecological footprint. Another reviewer asked me the appeal of ebooks as she wasn’t quite there yet.
I think that becoming e- acclimated takes [...]

Samhain Publishing isn’t the only publisher offering Kindle only exclusives. Through the publishing arm of Amazon, Mitch Albom is selling his “Commencement Speech To His Nephew’s Graduating Class: May 30, 2008, Nice France” for 99 cents. The profits are being donated to a Detroit-based charity for the homeless. Amazon expects more of [...]

According to CrunchGear, Amazon is supposedly releasing two new Kindle models in the fall, a smaller one with a slimmer form factor and a larger one about the size of a piece of paper. The rumor also says that the new Kindles would come in a number of colors. It’s hard to say [...]

According to an Amazon insider, of the books that are available in eform, 12% of those sales at Amazon are Kindle sales. On an industry wide scale, ebook sales make up only a single digit market share so Amazon would be exceeding the industry scale if the insider’s tip is true.
It’s difficult [...]

Kindle is working with Princeton, Oxford, Yale and the UC to put some of their textbooks into ebook format so that a student can order and download the book directly from the Kindle. How much savings that will represent for a student is unknown. I tried to always buy used textbooks to save [...]

CollegeDegrees.com has compiled 100 links for making reading on your Kindle more fun such as the frightening guide for taking apart your Kindle and the helpful tips on reading your gmail on the Kindle.

CNN digital biz takes a look at the growing ebook phenomenon and cites the advantages such as instant gratification and disadvantages such as the inability to easily rip a book into a readable e-format. Most of the article is nothing that we haven’t heard before.
The part of the story that I found [...]

Jeff Bezos refuses to divulge how many Kindles Amazon has sold but he claims that the Kindle sales make up more than 6% of total Amazon book sales. In response to questions from Mossberg about why ebooks, Bezos talks about the value added component of ebooks such as dictionary lookup or change in font [...]

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, campaigned hard on Friday on behalf of the Amazon e-reading device. Booksellers are becoming increasingly nervous about the rise of ebooks. According to the New York Times article, Amazon is selling many of its Kindle books below what it costs to buy the book from the publisher. [...]

I know I promised to do a piece on the history of Net Neutrality legislation and what is the current state of the governmental proposals. I still intend to do that within the next couple of weeks. Today, though, is June 1, and next Tuesday, June 9, Steve Jobs will announce the release [...]

SB Sarah wrote me and asked if I would think bad thoughts about her if she bought a Kindle. I said yes but if she agreed to write a review for me, I would think less bad thoughts.  Here it is.
***
My introduction to eBooks came largely when I started reviewing romance novels, because [...]

So, this Amazon thing. It sounds bad. For those who might have missed it, Amazon decided to stop stocking Print on Demand books that do not use Amazon’s own service, Booksurge. I’m not sure who falls under a Print on Demand service. I have always viewed PODs as any publisher who [...]

The Amazon Kindle’s amazing wireless content delivery system relies on Sprint’s EVDO which has great coverage in urban areas and the East Coast but not so great coverage in the Plains and rural areas. You might want to before you hop onto the $400 Kindle bandwagon.

moar funny pictures
MLB Makes Fools out of Fans
In 2003, Major League Baseball offered game footage for fans to download to their personal computers for $3.95 each. Red Sox fan, Allan Wood, took advantage of the digital offerings and purchased nearly $300 worth of digital video game footage. The video was downloadable to the [...]

Amazon’s pricing for mass market books has suddenly gone full retail, no discount since the release of the Kindle. When questioned in Newsweek about the low pricing, Bezos said “low-margin and high-volume sale—you just have to make sure the mix [between discounted and higher-priced items] works." It looks like Bezos is hoping to [...]

What do you think?

David Pogue, the technology reviewer for the New York Times, thinks that the Kindle might catch on once the design is sleeker and the price is lower. The negatives are the

Design
Huge previous/next buttons are so big that they are easy to hit by mistake

The positives:

The web browser
The easy downloading of books
Automatic back up [...]

Amazon advertised itself as having a large digital catalogue of books available at 88,000 plus. This was one point that really worried me. I wrote in one email to a digital director of a major publisher earlier this week, “Are you going to be publishing Kindle only ebooks because that would really suck [...]

I was worried this morning that Kindle would be getting exclusive ebook rights from some publishers so I began emailing around. It didn’t make sense that publishers would refuse consumers the right to purchase a book. Harlequin emailed back right away to say that all frontlist and backlist ebooks would be available in [...]

The Wall Street Journal reported on the blogosphere reaction to the Kindle. Apparently my quotable words were “same fugly hot mess we’ve been seeing for months”.
One of the blogosphere’s question is why Amazon is charging for blog content. I suspect it is because Amazon is not charging for the EVDO access [...]

The Amazon Kindle is available for order. The price is $399 with free shipping. There are some author testimonials from people like James Patterson, Michael Lewis and Neil Gaiman who all extol the marvelous screen which you would think that Amazon invented. It did not. It’s eink technology and the Sony Reader [...]

Despite the fact that the PR gathering tomorrow was supposedly a secret, everyone on the internet knows that Amazon invited a number of publishing representatives and technology folks to New York for a PR event to take place on November 19. No details were given, but based on the people that were contacted and [...]

The rumors of the Amazon Kindle are reaching a fevered state (okay, maybe only in my mind) but I was thrilled for some reason when I read at Engadget that Kindle ebooks were showing up as “other formats”. I did a quick search and sure enough, every book that I know off that is [...]

The MobileRead scoops have done it again. They spotted a French newspaper account of Amazon’s new e venture. According to a French newspaper Les Echos, Amazon is launching its Kindle and an epaper store to feature enewspapers on October 15. Maybe a bunch of business folks will buy the Amazon Kindle [...]

NPR explored the statistical fact that women read more than men in a September 5, 2007 article. According to a recent AP survey, a typical woman readers nine books a year compared to five for men. In every category but history and biography, women outpace men in reading and buying books.
The article provides anectodotal [...]