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MaineWriter:
Rumor has it that tomorrow on Oprah, Oprah is going to announce that the Kindle is her newest favorite gadget. Speculation is rampant that everyone on the audience will get a free Kindle -- those lucky folks! They gave away Kindles on The View a few months ago and many of those showed up on eBay in the following weeks. So, eBay shoppers who desire a Kindle at a bargain-basement price...this may be your chance!

http://www.amazon.com/ref=br_ss_null

Watch the teaser video....you can see a Kindle in the first second.

Leslie

MaineWriter:
It's official. The Kindle is Oprah's new favorite gadget!

http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/20081024_tows_kindle

If you've been thinking about buying one, she's offering an awesome deal: buy one before November 1st and get $50 off the price ($309). Excellent! Use the coupon code OPRAHWINFREY at checkout.

L

MaineWriter:
Periodically, Amazon offers free books for the Kindle, but this is the first time I've seen an article from the author about why the book is free! BTW, I downloaded this book and started reading it. It's good so far but I'm just a few chapters in ... You don't have to have a Kindle. You can download it and read on your computer. The link is in the article.

October 24, 2008

M.J. Rose

Why Is My Book Free?

For the next ten days anyone who wants one can download a free copy of my last novel, The Reincarnationist. http://www.mjrose.com/books/reincarnationist_free.asp  But why is my book free? It's a question everyone has been asking me.

Well, it's not because I'm independently wealthy or because I think The Reincarnationist is worthless.

My book is free because my husband always asks me to bring home cookies from Sant Ambrose whenever I go into New York City. It's because I wear one of the L'Oeuvre Noire perfumes by Kilian. And it's because we both use L'Occitane Verbena Shower Gel. And what all those things have in common is at one point in my life as a consumer - or his - we sampled them.

When I was the creative director of Rosenfeld, Sirowitz and Lawson, a NYC ad agency we introduced a new Charles of The Ritz fragrance to the tune of 40 million dollars in TV commercials and print ads. You'd think that was enough to launch it, right? It wasn't. We still made sure that every woman who stopped at every perfume counter in the country got a lovely little pink bottle of the stuff to take home and wear for a week or so. And when we introduced a new breakfast sandwich at McDonald's we gave out coupons to lunchtime customers so they could come back the next morning and eat for free.

It's because trying something for free is the best way of discovering it. And free doesn't mean sampling a quarter of a cookie - it means the whole cookie. It doesn't mean someone spraying my wrist with perfume - it means them putting a small bottle of the fragrance in my shopping bag. It means spending a weekend in a hotel and taking two showers using the same soap. It doesn't mean reading the first five pages of my book online - it means reading my whole book for free as a way of discovering me as an author.

As consumers we are faced with hundreds of choices - and when it comes to books thousands of choices.

So how do you choose?

I was a reader before I was a writer - one of those kids who walked home from school with a book up to my face, about to fall in the proverbial pothole because I couldn't see where I was going. And now I'm one of those people whose books are triple shelved and who can't go anywhere without carrying two titles - one that I'm reading and one back up.

And so as a reader I'm suffering along with every other reader by a wealth of books (over 1000 novels are published every month) but not a wealth of wallet and so every time I walk into a bookstore or go to a bookstore online I'm confronted with more titles that I want to read than I have money to buy.

Books on their own aren't insanely expensive compared to other things; three large cappuccinos cost more than a paperback and two and a half gallons of gas cost more than a paperback. But these days we are all watching our dollars and I find that faced with so many books to buy, I wind up with choice fatigue and all too often end up buying the safe bet - the book by the author I've read before who I'm sure will offer a satisfying read and passing over new books by authors I haven't heard of even if they look interesting because I can't buy everything and I can't afford to make many mistakes.

But if you buy books this way you're bound to miss out on a lot of exciting discoveries.

Back in 1999 and 2000 a few of us... a very few of us... Douglas Clegg, Seth Godin and I... offered free electronic copies of our books in an effort to reach an audience we otherwise wouldn't have reached and to test out a new marketing concept for books. Despite the industry screaming we were crazy, it worked. We each wound up selling many more copies of the books that we gave away than anyone expected and for each of us the experiment was a success. Back then many thought it an audacious move and even though we proved free books led to increased books sales it's been hard for me to convince any of my publishers to try it again. Until now. I guess it's an idea whose time has come, or I've gotten more persuasive, or the VP I asked at my publishing house recently got a nice sample of a new moisturizer at the department store and understood the idea ... but whatever the reason, I'm thrilled.

For the next ten days The Reincarnationist is free to anyone who wants to download it from Amazon's Kindle Store or from my website. Why? So readers like me can take a chance on... well... me.

M.J. Rose is the author of The Reincarnationist that has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, raves from People, Entertainment Weekly, The Chicago Sun Times, The Providence Journal and more. She's also the creator of AuthorBuzz.com - the first marketing service for authors and she's one of the founding members of International Thriller Writers. Her next novel, The Memorist, will be released on November 1st.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rose/why-is-my-book-free_b_136374.html?view=print

MaineWriter:
Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I posted!

I have two wonderful books to recommend: Ransom and its sequel Winds of Change, both by Lee Rowan.

Ransom takes place in 1799. Captain Smith of the Calypso and his two lieutenants, David Archer and William Marshall, are taken hostage by pirates. Here's the description from Amazon:

It's 1796 and not only is love between men taboo, it is punishable by death. Lt. David Archer is an officer in His Majesty's Navy and a gentleman of Regency Society. He is also hopelessly in love with his shipmate, Lt. William Marshall. David is certain that his feelings, if expressed, would be met with revulsion. Afraid of losing the strong friendship that he has forged with William, he vows to never speak of or act on his desire, promising himself to take the secret to his grave.

Although William is young, his innate talent has allowed him to quickly rise above his humble background and gain a reputation as a promising officer. The Royal Navy is his world, and in that world there is no room for anything as frivolous as romance.

Then, in a twist of fate, the two men are abducted by a ruthless pirate who finds pleasure in toying with his captives. Thrown together in close quarters and wondering if they will survive, they're are faced with some difficult choices. William struggles with his growing feelings for David and, try as he might to dismiss them, he can't. When David makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect the man he loves, the reason for it is clear and the passion that the men have denied for so long is realized for the first time. Before the lovers can have any sort of life together, they must first escape. After that, they face an even greater challenge-is their love strong enough to survive a clandestine life under the ever-present threat of the Navy's implacable Articles of War?



I loved this book! I was excited to discover the sequel, Winds of Change, which I might love even more. It starts in 1801. William and David are still serving under Captain Smith on the Calypso, but he receives a new assignment and they are all forced into a bit of espionage. This story focused more on the romance and less on the action than Ransom, but I like romance so that was fine with me. William and David are maturing and as men, must grapple with the depth of their feelings but also the understanding that their forbidden love could result in both of them being hung.

Very touching--I shed more than a few tears over this one!

Both books are available at Amazon in Kindle and print editions. You can also order them directly from the publisher, Linden Bay Romance.

L

MaineWriter:
Check it out...I'm in the news!

From msnbc.com

E-readers' high prices may hinder adoption
Amazon's Kindle, Sony's 'Reader' gain ground as devices for word lovers
By Suzanne Choney
updated 9:05 a.m. ET, Wed., Dec. 3, 2008

Tech holiday gift checklist: LCD TV — maybe. New BlackBerry or iPhone — possible. E-reader — are you kidding?

No, not kidding. While they're unlikely to be high on many shoppers’ lists, Sony’s recent e-reader, the PRS-700, and Amazon’s Kindle, out for more than a year, are starting to generate interest. Whether they’ll generate sales remains to be seen.

Their relatively high prices — $399.99 for the Sony and $359 for the Kindle — won’t help either one in a season of frugality. But for those who are voracious book readers, travelers or students, the devices’ costs could be outweighed by the their ability to lighten the schlep load and save money on book-buying.

New York Times’ best-selling hardcover books generally cost $9.99 for the Kindle, and $11.99 at Sony’s eBook Store. Both prices are significantly lower than print versions of books.

Easier on the eyes

Both Sony’s Reader Digital Book, as it’s called, and the Kindle use a technology called E Ink. It helps digital pages look real, and is easier on the eyes for longer periods of reading.

“All of us can read short PDFs and e-mail on our BlackBerrys and our computers,” said Brennan Mullin, Sony Electronics vice president of audio. “But when you’re reading a novel or reading research materials and sitting for one or two hours, the experience on those devices is not great, the battery life is limited, and it’s hard on your eyes.”

Those are some of the reasons devices like smartphones, iPods and portable game players may not be the best options for reading books, although they certainly can be used for that.

“Cell phone screens are undeniably getting larger, and may emerge as a better fit for shorter-form content in the near future, such as magazine features blogs,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for The NPD Group market research firm.

“The Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle have certainly made progress. But, there’s going to be a limited market for a dedicated device that reads books simply because a relatively small percentage of the U.S. population are avid enough readers to justify purchases of such a device, even as prices come down, which they will continue to do.”

For e-readers to become “a mass-market item,” prices will need to drop, and they’ll “need to be embraced by the education market” to succeed, he believes.

Some of that is starting to happen. Sony says books can now be downloaded to its readers from some public libraries around the country. And, this fall, the company donated 100 of its readers to Penn State University’s libraries to see how students use the device for research projects, as well as for classroom and leisure reading.

Differences between Sony, Amazon

Amazon, which constantly releases statistics on everything from on who’s buying what and when — down to the hour — has not publicly shared information about Kindle sales.

The company recently noted that Kindle is sold out, “due to heavy customer demand,” and said orders placed now will not be delivered until after Christmas Eve.

Research firm iSuppli said earlier this year that the Kindle has "proven there is a viable market for eBooks with shipments expected to reach 1 million units in 2008."

“It's possible that Amazon's Kindle could do for eBooks what Apple's iPod did for MP3 players,” said Vinita Jakhanwal, principal analyst for mobile displays at iSuppli, said in a report.

Sony’s first digital reader was released in Japan, then in the United States in 2006. The company has another reader, the PRS-550, which retails for $299.

One of the main differences between it and the newer model, the PRS-700, is that the PRS-700 uses a touchscreen and readers can highlight, annotate and search for words in books.

The biggest difference between Sony’s readers and the Kindle is how books get onto the devices.

The Kindle uses a wireless connection over Sprint’s phone data network to deliver books to the device, so it can be done from just about anywhere in the country, except from Montana and Alaska. No computer is necessary, and there is no extra charge for the connection.

Sony’s readers download books to a PC. The Sony Reader comes with a USB cable, which is connected to the PC to transfer books to the device.

Both the Sony and Kindle readers are fairly lightweight, between 10 to 11 ounces, and have 6-inch display screens, adjustable font sizes and long-lasting batteries of a week or more (less time with the Kindle if you use the wireless connection frequently).

One of the Kindle's draws is that customers can get discounts on suscriptions for newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Newsweek and Time.

So far, Amazon has more than 190,000 books for the Kindle; Sony’s eBook Store has 57,000, with more than 100,000 expected by the end of the year, said a spokeswoman. She added that Reader users can also buy and download books from “lots of places,” both free and paid, including Manybooks.net, Gutenberg.com and Fictionwise.com.

Book publishers ramp up

Publishers are ramping up the number of digital books in their collections. Random House, with more than 8,000 electronic books, said recently it plans to increase its digital holdings to nearly 15,000 volumes.

“More people are doing things on screens every day, and I don’t see valid arguments why trade books or consumer books would be fundamentally excepted from that trend,” said Matt Schatz of Random House Technology Services.

“My sense is that most of the time when people buy a book, ultimately it’s to read the text, to learn something new, to fall in love with a character, to be transported to a different time and place.” There’s no reason that can’t happen on a screen, especially with display technology improving, he said.

“There are lots of reasons print books will remain, such as coffee table books or books with beautiful images or pictures. And clearly, there are also people who like having books on their shelves. They like the warmth it brings to a room, or what the books say about them.”

Books, both electronic and printed, will continue to thrive, “just as there’s a healthy population still buying CDs for music,” along with digital music files, Schatz said.

Sony and Amazon’s products are the two leading digital readers available in the United States. In Europe, iRex Technologies, a Philips Electronics company spin-off, has the iLiad Book Edition, a digital reader that is being sold by Borders in the United Kingdom.

Sony’s e-readers are sold at Borders stores in the United States, as well as at Sony retail stores and various chains. Because travelers are an obvious market for e-readers, Sony will place representatives, with e-readers in hand, at Grand Central Station in the weeks ahead to promote their devices.

The company is pushing its “see it before you buy” advantage that the Kindle does not have quite as handily.

'See a Kindle in Your City'

Amazon has a "See A Kindle in Your City" program, where those who want to see the device can link up with Kindle owners in their areas. And, Kindle owners are quite passionate about the device.

“In November, I read eight books, three short stories and my almost-daily New York Times,” using the Kindle, said Leslie H. Nicoll, a nurse from Portland, Maine.

“That is probably more books than I read in all of 2007. I love the Kindle because it has gotten me reading like I did in the ‘old’ days — when my eyes were better and my wrists didn't get tired from holding a book.”

Nicoll, who is also the editor of two professional nursing journals and an e-book publisher, answers questions from other Kindle owners at “Kindle Discussions” area of Amazon.com. She also wrote “The Amazon Kindle FAQ” e-book ($1.59), sold through Amazon.

Kindle users can get discounted subscriptions on various publications, including The New York Times, a big draw for Nicoll.

“My New York Times subscription costs $168 a year vs. paying $665 a year for a paper subscription here in Maine,” she said. “That’s a huge savings.”


URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27955831/

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