Bookwi.se

A Picture of a eBook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the biggest promises of digital books is the ability to continuously update, correct and improve the text.  The author catches a typo after the book is published, they can correct it without waiting for a new edition of the book to be published.  A fact is discovered to be wrong (or changes after the book is published), it can be changed.

Unfortunately, the way Amazon structured it book updates means that up until now, when a book was updated the reader lost all notes and highlights from the old edition of the book.  Amazon learned that they need to ask for permission to update a book because of that.  So this is what the email used to look like from Amazon
Continue Reading…

If you try to buy free kindle books long enough you will accidentally purchase a book that is no longer free, or at a price you are unwilling to pay.  The best way to prevent this is to refresh the page just before you purchase it to make sure you have to most recent purchase price.

If you do happen to buy a book that you thought was free, you can return the book within 7 days very easily.

First, you need to make sure you pay attention to your email receipts from Amazon.  This is the best way to catch a book that was not free.  In the past Amazon has sent you a receipt for every individual book that you purchased.  Recently, Amazon has been grouping books together so you get only one receipt a day.  This is much easier to look through and make sure you kindle book was actually free (or the price that you intended to pay.)

Continue Reading…

Pottermore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

JK Rowling is late to the ebook game.  And she still has not really bought into it completely.  But it is now possible to get the Harry Potter books on your kindle legally.  It is not as easy as it should be.  But Rowling has created her own store, requiring a you be redirected to the Pottermore site and then buy it there.

What I do like is that you buy it at the Pottermore site and it is available in multiple formats (readable both on Kindle and Nook and other ebook readers.)

Continue Reading…

Sometime earlier this week Amazon made a small little change that will be very helpful to people that share a kindle account with several people or like to re-read books.  In the past there was no way to reset your place in a kindle book.  Once you finished the book, the book was finished for everyone on the account or for you when you were re-reading it again.

This is particularly a problem if you use the sync feature to read on multiple devices.  You start on your kindle, then want to read a few pages on your iPhone while standing in line at the grocery store.  On a book that has not been read before, all you have to do is open the book and it goes to the last place read and you keep reading.  Then when you get back to your kindle, it asks you if you want to sync to the furthest point read and you keep right on reading. But once you (or someone else on your account) has read to the end of a book that sync feature no longer works.

Luckily this week, Amazon introduced a re-set button.  If you go to “Manage Your Kindle” on a computer in your Amazon account, and look at the options under each book you will now see “Clear furthest page read (see below). Click that and you are ready to read again.

Hopefully this is an indication that Amazon is starting to pay attention to the real weaknesses in their book management systems. Regardless it is a nice little tweak.

As I have been publishing free ebook posts over the past month.  I have started seeing a trend that I have not noticed before.  A number of authors, many in that mid range (you have heard of them, but they don’t sell millions of books) are taking back the digital rights of their books.

In some cases this is easy because digital rights were not in the original contracts (many of these books were published in the 1970-1985 range).  In other cases there are some clauses in the original contract that specified terms (usually out of print in paper and/or a buy-out amount).

Continue Reading…

Image by agirregabiria via Flickr

I am a fan of digital media.  I prefer my kindle to paper books.  I haven’t purchased a physical CD in a while.  I no longer have a CD-rom on either my computer or my wife’s computer.  I have whole-heartedly bought into the digital system of media.

In spite of this, I am alway frustrated when simple actions with physical media are no longer simple with digital media.

On the good side, digital media allows for cheap distribution, easy updates and a wide variety of creators.  I can upload a book to Amazon and sell it.  Someone can let me know a mistake, I can make a change and then send that change to Amazon and Amazon can send out updates to anyone that wants one.  On the whole I think that is great.

The problem is that sometimes publishers, instead of updating the file, remove the book and submit a new book.  The old book then gets orphaned.  Yesterday I went to loan a Kindle book to someone. When I tried, I just got referred to an Amazon 404 page.  Eventually after emailing and chatting with Amazon help I discovered that this is what happened for the book I was trying to lend.  It was a good book that I wanted to lend to someone.  After 30 minutes on email and chat and then drafting this post, I got a request to borrow a book from Lendle and again, another book I wanted to lend, that I have a legal copy to and I purchase with the rights to lend, had been orphaned by the publisher, and my lending rights removed.

Continue Reading…

Amazon released an app to make getting your documents from your computer to your kindle just a bit easier.  It only works on Windows PCs, but seems to work well and I would guess that it will be released on other platforms soon.

I frequently use email to send documents to my kindle, which is fairly easy, but there are some good reasons to use the app.

• It allows you to specify whether you want the document to be delivered over wifi (free) or whispernet (paid)
• It allows you to specific which kindle on your account it should go to (or you can send to multiple kindles)
• You can send one or many documents at the same time
• It allows you to archive the document in your Amazon Cloud storage
• It allows you to rename and specify the author as you send the document

I do not use a Windows PC, but I installed on my Mac in a Windows partition.  I tried it out and if there were a native Mac app I would most likely use it instead of email to send documents.

Download Link

I have not purchased a Kindle Fire for myself.  I have a Kindle with Keyboard and an iPad so I did not feel the need to buy a Kindle Fire.  But my Mother got one for Christmas, so I have spent a good bit of time over the last week playing with it, helping her use it and getting a good overall impression of its good and bad.

Conclusion

I will start with the end.  If you have an iPad you will not want to buy a Kindle Fire.  But if you would like a small tablets to watch videos, surf the web, do some occasional reading and play games, the Kindle Fire is a very good option.

The Good

The screen is quite good.  I watch some videos and they were sharp and clear.  It is a bit reflective but I did not think any more reflective than the iPad.  It will be hard to read in direct sunlight, but that is true with any LCD screen.

The interface is easy to use and the cover-flow idea works for people that are new to tablets.  I think it is easier to use than the standard Android system, especially for new users.

The speakers are mobile speakers, so you can’t expect huge sound, but they are sufficient.

The 7-inch size is much better for reading than the iPad.  If you are going to have an LCD screen (I really prefer eink for reading, see below) I think the 7 in size is the most natural.

Continue Reading…

If estimates are right, around 5 million people have purchased or received as gifts a Kindle this season.  So now what do you do.  Below the jump you can find out about borrowing books, importing books, audiobooks, tracking the prices of kindle books, finding new books, getting your questions answered and more.

Cover via Amazon

Free Books

One of the first things you want to do is check out free books.  There are a lot of free books, in fact because of the new Kindle Select program for authors there will probably be around 100 free books a day for quite a while.  So you have a couple of options.  The two I recommend are ereaderiq or Booksontheknob.  They take two different tacks.  Ereaderiq will send you a daily email of pretty much all the free books, divided into genre, with a short summary and a book cover.  It is such a long email lately that my gmail account will not open the whole thing in preview, I have to open it as a specific email and scan through them.  Book On The Knob for the most part ignores all the independent books and only talks about free books from the major publishers.  You can follow Books on the Knob on their RSS, Facebook or Twitter Feed.

Continue Reading…