After buying the Kindle, she discovered she liked it so much she has used it it constantly ever since—though mostly for travel and commuting, where a slim device that can replace a ton of books is most useful. She will “always choose a ‘proper’ book” for reading at home.

Parks does not have an “emotional attachment” to her Kindle, but acknowledges that some generations might, and thinks that it is a good thing that something has moved non-readers to start reading.

It’s true this isn’t really “news”, but it’s nice to see that at least some e-reader skeptics can be swayed enough to enjoy the device for its advantages without assuming it’s going to “kill” reading.

Wright compares Kindle Select to Michael Roberts’s MP3.com independent music distribution site, which allowed independent musicians (such as Wright) to upload mp3 tracks to catch the attention of the Internet audience.

That was, without question, the most fun I’ve ever had online. MP3.com started providing tools for musicians, including the ability to upload mp3 tracks and convert them into a CD — so you could sell your CD alongside the tracks you were giving away from free. No one had ever thought of this before. It was nuts. And the best part of it was meeting other musicians.

MP3.com set up forums and the musicians would talk, trade recording tips, talk about what kind of marketing worked and what didn’t, advertise shows, and organize meet-ups in the real world. The best part was it was completely cross-genre — I was a punk/noise musician but I was making friends with country musicians, house musicians, funk musicians, metal, hip-hop, gangsta rap… you name it. And I got exposed to music I never would have considered listening to before hand. I still carry most of those MP3′s around in my collection.

However, after the site went public, MP3.com instituted a “Payback for Playback” program, which split a pool of money among the artists whose tracks were most played—a very similar idea to the Kindle Select lending library. This program served as an apple of discord, Wright writes, effectively ending the camaraderie and leading a number of artists to try to game the system. 

Wright sees history repeating itself with the Kindle Select program, and points out that Amazon already has problems with people trying to game the self-publishing system with plagiarized and duplicate content. He wonders how long it will be before the same thing happens with Kindle Select.

He also points out that giving Amazon exclusivity over works harms the publishing ecosystem as a whole. Even if Amazon is accounting for the lion’s share of income right now, keeping content off of its competitors handicaps the competitors’ ability to compete with Amazon.

In the end, whether authors go with Select or not is up to them, but it’s good to hear from all points of view on the issue. It remains to be seen whether Select is vulnerable to gaming or not. As Wright acknowledges in a postscript, the limitation to one book checkout per month for $80/yr Kindle Prime subscribers does restrict how badly the system can be abused, but he is not sure that necessarily removes the vulnerability.

According to their sources, Amazon is going to roll out a retail store in Seattle within the next few months to test the waters and see if a chain of such stores could be profitable. “They intend on going with the small boutique route with the main emphasis on books from their growing line of Amazon Exclusives and selling their e-readers and tablets,” Good E-Reader’s Michael Kozlowski writes.

As a small boutique, the store will stock mainly high-margin or high-end items—such as Kindle readers and accessories. It will also carry Amazon’s own published books, which will in part counteract the major chains’ decision not to carry them.

The store is expected to open before the end of the year to capitalize on the holiday season.

Interesting news, if true. But one swallow does not make a summer, and one store does not make a chain. As a commenter on a previous article noted, Amazon does a lot of experimentation. (I recall that its delivery drop lockers first rolled out in Seattle too.) But not everything that it tests necessarily goes on to see the light of day.

On The Creative Penn, writer Joanna Penn blogs that she used Scrivener for her latest book, and that it was “a truly life-changing experience”. She lists a number of the benefits and useful features it has, such as the ability to drag and drop scenes into order, consolidate research notes into one handy place, and—what Penn calls a “game-changer”—seamlessly export e-books into Kindle and ePub files.

You can now create your own ebooks by compiling and exporting from Scrivener which is under $50, which once paid you can use over and over again. You obviously need to check your created files carefully but for plain text novels with little complications, this is a no-brainer.

Penn still recommends using professional formatters for books with complicated formatting or lots of images—but for ordinary prose novels, this takes a lot of the bother out of creating self-publishable works, and is also great for providing copies to beta readers.

That’s certainly less expensive than a professional publishing app, and if it doesn’t necessarily provide you with the same fineness of control over everything that those apps do, fiddling with fine detail may not matter to people who just want something that will look all right on a screen. (Of course, I don’t know how much fine detail control it allows, not having used it myself, but Penn seems happy enough with it.)

I think I’m really going to have to look into trying that thing out one of these days.

In the first part, he talks about why he made the decision to go exclusive with Amazon. It boiled down to having greater comfort developing for Amazon’s platform, and liking the kind of control Amazon gave him over the presentation of his book that he didn’t feel he could get with Barnes & Noble. (And also, he never ended up selling that many copies of works he had offered through B&N anyway.)

Then he gets into discussing the Lending Library.

This is an interesting wrinkle here in this story. See, Amazon dedicates a set amount of money (right now it’s $700,000. It was $500,000. It fluctuates a bit) for it’s Amazon Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and so, when readers “borrow” one of my books, it’s not like giving it away. I get a little portion of that money.

The interesting thing: apparently, the size of the portion one receives is unrelated to the price of the book borrowed. At least, so far as I can see. I have several short stories and an essay available for sale for 99 cents, and for which I receive 35 cents or so of every sale (as opposed to the $1.70 I would receive from a $2.99 sale, or the $3.50 I receive from a $4.99 sale). But whether someone “borrows” a 99-cent short story or a $4.99 novel (or even, I would assume, novels costing $7.99 or, egregiously, $9.99 or $12.99 or higher yet), the royalty is (or was, anyway) $1.70.

Entrekin notes that, of course, the amount will fluctuate over time. But it’s still a decent chunk of money, and it has important implications for pricing: if you’re going to get the same royalties every time your book gets checked out, why price higher? And it’s also a pretty good argument to go exclusive with Amazon, he points out—if Amazon wants to give you money for letting someone read your book without even having to pay for it, why not let them?

I would point out that nobody knows how much longer Amazon will be content to pay authors that kind of money for library checkouts—but on the other hand, as long as you don’t let yourself get too dependent on it, perhaps it is a good idea to grab the money while you can.

By the time VIP Deals ended its rebate on Amazon.com late last month, its leather case for the Kindle Fire was receiving the sort of acclaim once reserved for the likes of Kim Jong-il. Hundreds of reviewers proclaimed the case a marvel, a delight, exactly what they needed to achieve bliss. And definitely worth five stars.

Amazon has since pulled the reviews and all VIP Deals’s products. It told the New York Times that its guidelines specifically prohibit compensation for customer reviews.

As the Times points out, as popular as the Kindle is, there are enough cases on the market to make it hard for any particular one to stand out from the rest. But there are plenty of other products that also feature that kind of competition, and since a lot of customers make their decisions on the basis of user reviews there is growing incentive for merchants to cheat.

Researchers are working on ways to detect fake reviews, but for now the best philosophy might be caveat emptor—pay attention to the contents of reviews, not just the star ratings. A number of the reviewers of VIP Deals’s products did note the compensation in their reviews. (Amazon declined to comment why it nonetheless took a query from the New York Times to get them to act on the matter.)

Of course, this isn’t the first time fake reviews have come to light on Amazon. Earlier this month we posted about a book that had been salted with 250 fake reviews by its author, and I seem to recall seeing reports of similar “astroturfing” scandals in years gone by.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens as screen display technology gets better and lets tablets steal some of the screen-readability and battery life benefits of e-readers. Will dedicated e-readers stay around? Will they get so cheap that people treat them as disposable? Will tablets get that cheap?

It’s amazing how much the prices on big-screen high-definition TVs have come down over just the last few years. I regularly talk to people in my “day job” who paid a thousand bucks for a TV that has an equivalent costing less than half that today. Electronics prices can drop fast if enough economy of scale is applied.

So far, we haven’t really gotten to that point with tablets yet (perhaps, aside from the display issue, because only two tablets have ever really taken off marketwise). But sooner or later, we will. If nothing else, Amazon has a pretty big incentive to make both e-ink and tablet devices as cheap as possible so it can sell more e-books and movie streaming.

Of course, as Nate Hoffelder points out at eBookNewser, this is just an estimate. And for that matter, 216 Kindle Fire owners is a remarkably small sample size considering just how many of them Amazon is estimated to have sold.

I would also point out that the veracity of those claims that the Kindle Fire was sold at or near a loss has always been under question—as many conflicting estimates as there were, it’s unclear who to believe on the matter of how much the units really cost.

At any rate, it’s hard to be surprised over this. Amazon didn’t get to where it is today by throwing money away, and we all know how often analysts don’t really know what they’re talking about. If Amazon ever seems to be doing something that doesn’t make financial sense, the right answer is usually to keep watching rather than to point and laugh.

But this startup is about more than just letting people pick the story they want to by flipping to page whatever. The article suggests that the e-books will return feedback on what choices readers make so that the publishers and authors can create a better-tailored product.

Coliloquy enables episodic content unlike anything previously available on the Kindle. It’s more democratic. Authors can adjust their future offerings based on what they learn about their audience from the choices they make. It’s in-story analytics. And the readers get the satisfaction of influencing the outcome not just of one story but of a whole series.

I’m not sure how effective that’s really going to be, though. I know that when I read CYOA-style books, I would go back and read through every story branch to see what happened if I had made different decisions. (And why not? Any single “story” chosen from such a book would only be the length of a short story, because they had to devote space to all the other possible stories. If I read more of them, I’d at least be seeing more of the book.)

This seems to be comparing them more to those gimmick TV show episodes they tried back in the 1980s where you would call a 900 number to vote for how the episode ended, or the infamous comic book gimmick where fans voted to kill Robin. I don’t know how successful that’s going to be. I know that my parents were offended by the idea when murder mystery show Matlock tried it because it defeated the whole point of trying to work out on your own "whodunnit” if it could have been anyone depending on how the audience voted.

And there are other ways to get reader feedback than just looking at choice metrics. On-line writing circles, including professional projects such as Elizabeth Bear’s Shadow Unit or Neal Stephenson’s Mongoliad, let writers and readers interact directly, with more meaningful contact than “X% chose Choice A, Y% chose Choice B.”

Still, experiments are how we make new things. It should be interesting to see how this one works out.

This is, of course, Amazon’s end run around Apple’s restrictions on in-app purchases—a way to provide an iPad-based Kindle store without having to give Apple 30% of its revenue. (An iPhone version will reportedly be out soon.) It looks just like any other application on the iPad, but as a web app it is not subject to Apple’s requirements. It looks very well-polished, and will undoubtedly help drive more revenue to Amazon.

We’re all trying to think of ways that we can make her life easier now that she only has one hand (and her non-dominant hand at that). Needless to say, I’m suddenly a lot more interested in e-reading solutions that can support one-handed use.

We had given Mom a Kindle Touch for Christmas, and she has it in the hospital and has been using it to read some, and I showed her how to check her Facebook with the built-in web browser. I watched her using it some last night, and it was still a little awkward for her to hold and operate it at the same time. She kept tapping the wrong areas on the screen by accident, and I wondered if she might not have been better off with the non-touch version that has forward and backward buttons on both edges of the case. Of course, she can easily operate it if it’s sitting on a flat surface, but holding and working it at the same time seemed to be a little problematic.

I also wonder if it might not be a good idea to get her an iPod Touch and teach her how to use it. As Steve Jobs planned, the 3.5” screen allows one to hold it in one’s hand and touch any part of it with his thumb. It could be very handy for her for e-reading, and also for checking email and Facebook.

I did see a story about a congenital amputee who found great reading success with a Nook, and tales like that give me hope something like that will work for my Mom. And even the Kindle Touch will still be easier for her to handle than a paper book. But I’m very interested in other ways that e-reading and tablet technology can help make her life easier, and any that folks want to point out in the comments will be greatly appreciated.

Pointing out that the Fire’s explosive sales debut (compared to HP’s TouchPad fizzle) proves that devices need compelling content services in order to sell, and that Amazon is (allegedly) selling the Kindle Fire at cost as a way to boost those services, the CNet article quotes analysts who think Amazon will entice tablet makers into partnerships. Richard Windsor, global technology specialist for Nomura Securities, had this to say:

"I’m not convinced Amazon’s going to stay in the hardware business very long. Look at their business model–they are selling this thing at cost in order to make money on content. So if you can get someone else to make the tablet for you and sell it with your user experience on it, what do you care?"

I’m not so sure I can really see that, though. For one thing, if Amazon went into partnership with other tablet makers, those other makers certainly wouldn’t be able to sell them as cheaply as Amazon is selling the Fire. That would mean fewer people would buy them, which would in turn mean fewer people would buy Amazon’s content. And Amazon would lose some of its total control over the user experience, And as other analyses I’ve posted have shown, it’s not really clear whether Amazon is actually selling the Kindle Fire “at cost” to begin with.

Analysts will analyze and pundits will pund however they like, but I just can’t see Amazon rushing to change a system that is clearly working pretty well for the company already. It will keep making the Kindle apps available for all platforms, of course, but the Kindle Fire is the bait Amazon dangles to tempt consumers’ gadget lust. (My uncle, who already owns an e-ink Kindle and has been very happy with it, is already talking about selling it to get a Kindle Fire after falling in love with the one he got for his wife for Christmas.) I can’t see the company leaving that in someone else’s hands.

As a result of having plenty of unread books on his Kindle, Basch now finds he doesn’t watch TV anymore—there isn’t ever a time when he no “next” book to keep him from watching something on the tube. He also finds that he goes through books a lot faster than he used to because he can also read them on the Kindle app on his computer or his phone. He writes that whether a book is available for Kindle influences his decision on what to read next, and is seeing printed books as deadweight. He also reports that the Kindle is so cheap now that he sees it as a “physical app”—he’ll use it until it breaks and order another one without a second thought.

And he had some comments on piracy as it relates to e-books and consumer desire:

I don’t pirate books unless there’s absolutely no alternative. An ebook typically costs $5 to $15. I’m going to spend hours reading it, and I value my time highly. I also value the enjoyment I expect to get out of the book. With Amazon’s one-click delivery to my Kindle, paying for it is a no-brainer. The only reason to pirate a book is when I want to read it NOW and nobody sells an e-version. I’ll spend a couple of minutes searching for an "unofficial" e-copy. If the quality is acceptable, I’ll read it. Publishers please take note: printed books are going the way of CDs. I have bought mp3 albums a few times in the past year; I have no idea when I bought music in a physical container for the last time.

It seems to me that this attitude is becoming more and more common—that people will buy e-books when they can, but will find them elsewhere when they can’t buy them, and feel justified in doing so. Leaving aside the morality of the matter, which has been rehashed countless times already, this does suggest (again) that the best way to fight this kind of piracy is just to make the books available for legitimate purchase at a reasonable price, and the problem will take care of itself. (Of course, there is disagreement over what kind of price would be considered “reasonable”, but from the paragraph above Basch doesn’t seem to have much of a problem paying standard agency pricing rates for the enjoyment he gets out of e-books.)

I have found that my own e-reading experience more or less mirrors Basch’s, at least as far as the flexibility and portability of e-reading goes. I wonder what kind of effects this will have on society as a whole when nearly everybody reads that way? I think we’ll find out in just a few years.

The UK blog PC Pro lists a number of these works, split about evenly between public-domain works and newer titles. I’m not sure whether all of them are available in the US version of the store, international rights being what they are, but it is at least a starting point.

On Kindle Review, blogger switch11 lists well over twenty works for free (and one for $1.49), linking directly to them with what appears to be an affiliate link (undoubtedly hoping that readers will buy some paid works while they’re browsing, having arrived on Amazon by one of the free links on the site).

The article also notes that Amazon seems to shuffle around its free offerings at random, and suggests that this is to take advantage of the slot machine “reward + unpredictability” effect—offering random rewards (of variable quality) entices people to spend more time on the site and possibly buy more. It even suggests Amazon intentionally skimps on quality control to make the good stuff stand out more.

Chances are – people would get tired of free kindle books if it was a guaranteed amount of good free kindle books per day. The terrible stuff makes the good stuff more appreciated. The working hard to scan through books make readers appreciate the books they do find to their tastes more. If you took 10 minutes to find a 4-star rated Science Fiction novel, then that’s going to seem more of a find than something in your email inbox that took you 5 seconds.

You know, I think switch11 may be onto something there.

As a reminder, we’ve got our own Amazon affiliate deals in the column on the right-hand side of the screen. If you’re planning to go to Amazon to buy something anyway, why not click through and then search for your item? It won’t cost you anything, and will help support the site.

M-Edge’s complaint claims that, two months after signing a 3-year contract for 15% royalties on the cases, Amazon turned around and tried to pressure M-Edge into signing a contract for 32% royalties instead, and threatened it with delisting from the site when it refused. Since Amazon represents 90% of the company’s revenue, it was unable to hold out and finally signed the new contract, costing it $6.5 million it would not otherwise have had to pay.

M-Edge also alleges that Amazon created a light-equipped Kindle case of its own in violation of one of M-Edge’s patents, and played with its rankings and inventory reports in the on-line store to make it harder for customers to find.

It’s certainly no secret that Amazon plays hardball with its suppliers—witness the kerfuffle last year when five of the big six publishers imposed agency pricing on it. It would be good to see that kind of behavior get firmly smacked down. Still, I have to wonder whether there will be any satisfactory income for M-Edge. Nothing says Amazon has to carry its products at all after the terms of the current contract expire. If Amazon represents 90% of the company’s revenue, its days might still be numbered even if it wins.