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The E-Book Files
MaineWriter:
from the Associated Press:
July 17, 2008
AP Exclusive: A digital Albom through Kindle
By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer
Mitch Albom has a new book out — well, not really a book, but a commencement speech in book form. And not in traditional book form, but as an e-book, published exclusively through Amazon.com's Kindle reader.
"Commencement Speech To His Nephew's Graduating Class: May 30, 2008, Nice France" went on sale Thursday for 99 cents. It won't be a money maker for Albom — proceeds are being donated to a Detroit-based charity for the homeless — but it does offer a test for the digital device that has created a great debate about the future of books and great speculation over how much the Kindle is part of that future.
Amazon.com has declined to offer specific numbers for the Kindle, a vacuum eagerly filled by industry insiders and the media, which has estimated sales as anywhere from a very modest 10,000 to a more encouraging 100,000-plus.
E-books are unquestionably growing although public sightings of the Kindle remain rare enough that one blog, Silicon Alley Insider, announced last month, "Imagine our delight when we got on the subway, sat down, and saw a person reading an Amazon Kindle — right in front of us! — for the first time since it launched last November."
Albom's speech could be a way to measure the Kindle connection. He is a brand-name author whose million sellers include "Tuesdays With Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven." The text of his speech, less than 4,000 words, is brief for a traditional book, but ideal for a quick read on a portable device.
"We thought doing it through the Kindle would be an exciting way to bring readers to Mitch and to his work," Albom's agent, David Black, told The Associated Press, adding that there were no immediate plans to expand the speech and release it on paper.
Albom, whose speech was delivered at The International School Of Nice, said in a statement Thursday: "The immediacy of the Internet and what Amazon is doing with Kindle is interesting to me, as it is to many authors."
Laura Porco, the Kindle's director of publisher management, said Thursday that Amazon.com has been talking with publishers about bringing readers content that isn't available in book form and expects more releases similar to the Albom speech.
Porco reiterated Amazon.com's claim — a surprise to some publishers — that Kindle downloads from early June through early July made up 12 percent of total sales for the more than 100,000 books available both through the e-book reader and in traditional form. In early June, at the annual booksellers convention, Amazon.com head Jeff Bezos said Kindle sales were 6 percent of the market for books in both formats.
Porco declined to offer sales figures for any individual title. Asked if she had seen many Kindle users, she said that she had been "stopped by more than a few people" who saw her with the Kindle and told her that "they knew somebody with that."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DIGITAL_ALBOM?SITE=TXDAM&TEMPLATE=ENTERTAINMENT_GL.html
MaineWriter:
Because I was curious, I downloaded the Mitch Albom speech. It was a fairly typical commencement address with a few funny lines. I wonder how many will sell...it should give some idea of the number of Kindles out there "in the wild."
L
NavyVet:
I've been thinking about getting a Kindle, since I do 90-something % of my reading on-line.
I had read about them a while back on Amazon and thought it would be cheaper and quicker than ordering paperbacks and easier than lugging laptop around to read fiction. Price for the unit is a little daunting though.
I've ordered a few novels published by torquerepress and enjoyed them a lot, but 10, 12 dollars is getting up there for a paperback.
Always on the lookout for recs in m/m romance and erotica! ;)
MaineWriter:
NavyVet,
I have to say, I love my Kindle more than any gadget I have bought in recent memory. When I bought it, I balked at little at the cost but believe me, it has paid for itself ten times over. I am reading more than I have read in years--which I enjoy. I feel like I found my love of reading again.
As for prices of books: there are plenty of free books out there, as well as plenty of stuff for less that $10. The Adrien English stories--which are great--were all around $5, I believe.
I can't tell you how many people on the Kindle forum have said, "I love this thing! I only which I had bought it sooner!"
Go for it, I say!
Leslie
MaineWriter:
From Time Magazine...NB: his comment about how he figured out how to "extend" the battery life is sort of lame. If he had done 5 minutes of reading the Kindle manual, or visiting any of the Kindle forums, he would have known the key to long life is turning the Whispernet off except when downloading content. I keep mine off 99% of the time.
Thursday, Jul. 17, 2008
Warming to the Kindle
By Josh Quittner
Like so many gadget geeks, I am fickle. I fall in love--a sucker for sharp curves that gleam--get bored, then quickly move on to the next new thing.
The Kindle was different. I disliked almost everything about Amazon's handheld digital reader from the moment I saw it. But eight months into our relationship, I've found its hidden charms. My antipathy has flowered into something. Could it be a pure and lasting gadget love?
At first, I hated that the control buttons made it too easy to inadvertently page forward, backward or--if you hit the Back button--somewhere else entirely. I didn't like that it displayed black type on a gray background. (You can't beat black type on a white page.) The battery stank. When I'd put the Kindle in sleep mode and leave it for a few days, it was usually dead on my rearrival. Soon I consigned it to the Quittner Closet Where Old Gadgets Go to Die.
Then one day a few months ago, a friend e-mailed me a manuscript of his first book. It's torture plowing through 350 pages on a computer, and I was too cheap to print it out. So on a lark, I forwarded the document to Amazon, which converts such things into Kindle-book format for free; minutes later, I had a lovely version on the device. And since I like to get something for nothing, I downloaded from other sites a dozen great, free novels, ranging from James Joyce's Ulysses to Cory Doctorow's recent sci-fi novel, Little Brother. The giveaways motivated me to meet the Kindle halfway by figuring out how it wanted to be used rather than how I had expected to use it.
An Amazon exec told me last week that Kindle-ized books now account for 12% of all books sold in digital and print versions on the mega-site. That's up 100% in two months. The company won't say how many electronic readers have been sold, so it's hard to tell how many people out there have learned to live with the device's imperfections. I did so first by eschewing sleep mode in favor of switching it off because booting the device only takes a few seconds anyway. Then I turned off the wireless connection, powering up the free high-speed service only when book-buying. Those two changes gave me nearly endless battery life. I also developed a technique--holding the device gingerly by its edges--to outwit the awkward control buttons. I even came to accept the black text on a gray background: the Kindle turns out to be easier to read in brilliant sunshine than a paperback.
Like Beauty, I found myself carried away by the quiet virtues of the Beast: how the Kindle feels encased in creamy leather, the way the gadget helps me power through a book superfast and how it lets me take my library on a plane.
Best of all is books on demand--delivered in seconds to the kitchen table on Sunday as I read the weekly book reviews. How great is that? With Amazon charging $9.99 a title, often a third the price of a new hardcover, the $359 device pays for itself after you buy about 25 books.
I know that over time, Amazon will fix all the little--insignificant, really--things that initially annoyed me about the Kindle. And when it does? My gadget romance will no doubt be re-Kindled.
LOVE HATE Corner braces hold the device O.K. but look like they were made in a head shop
LOVE The carrying case's creamy leather and suede rival the feel of a well-made book
LOVE Despite the gray background, the screen is easy to read, even in bright sun
LOVE The lengthy page-forward bar works a little too well. It's easy to lose your place
LOVE The cursor is a "smart" navigator that knows what options you need at any given time
* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1823955,00.html
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