Kindle Tips

Obviously I am a fan of ebooks.  But I am a fan, not just because they are portable, are sometimes cheaper, or because they don’t take up shelf space.  I am a fan of ereaders because of the tools that they bring to reading.

There are three in particular that most ereaders have that everyone should use.

Dictionary – almost every ereader now has a built in dictionary.  For kindle all you need to do is touch the word (on touch screen kindles) or move the cursor to the word on non-touch screen kindles.  That will either pop up a dictionary or bring up an entry along the bottom of the page.  Everyone needs a dictionary at some point, so you might as well get used to using it.  The new Kindle Paperwhite also has a flashcard game that uses the words that use lookup in your dictionary to help teach vocabulary.

Wikipedia – Everyone knows that Wikipedia should not be used to write papers.  But it is a good enough system to give a good overview of almost anything.  On the new Kindles the wikipedia is a tab on the dictionary popup.  So if there is not a good definition in the dictionary then you should try wikipedia.  It is particularly helpful with names and places.

On twitter I was asked about the likelihood of Amazon getting an Oyster-like feature (all you can read ebooks for a monthly fee.)  I think the ‘all you can read’ system, like Oyster, has a pretty low chance of ever being offered on Amazon.  But Amazon does have the Amazon Prime Lending Library. (Sometime referred to as the Kindle Lending Library or KLL).

Many people tried out the Kindle Lending Library when it was introduced and have ignored it since.  When it started you could not search from a computer for Lending Library Books, and it only had about 5000 books to choose from.

Now there are more than 450,000 book, you can search from your computer (although still have to borrow from your kindle) and the quality of the books has gotten much better.

Here are a few hints and tips that has made the Lending Library easier for me to use.

1) Searching on the computer – it is still far easier to look for a book on your computer than looking on your kindle.  You can see all of the Prime Eligible books from this link.  From there click on the broad area you are interested in. For instance the 49,423 books in the Religion and Spirituality area.  Many of these books have been offered for free.  The biggest contributors to the library are independent authors.  But there are a lot more than just independent authors.

2) Use a wishlist – once you find a book you want (or if you randomly see a book doing another search) save it in a wishlist that you just use for Prime Lending.  I try to always keep at least 5 or 10 Lending Library books in a wishlist so that I do not have to scramble on the last day of the month.