Update: The new update to 3.6.2 is out and is safe. If you updated to 3.6.2 and did not open the app, updating to 3.6.2 and then opening the app is safe. (At least it was safe for me.) Lilliputing and a few other sites are reporting that Amazon has said to not upgrade the … Read more
Bookish.com, a new book recommendation website, has entered the fray.
Bookish uses recommendation algorithms like Amazon or Goodreads, but also real editors to make suggestions.
I have only played with it briefly, but I have not been incredibly impressed. You enter a book and it gives you recommendations. More books entered, the better the recommendations supposed to be.
The basic problem with Bookish is that it does not seem to fit a need.
I have posted about ebook price fixing settlements in the past. The short version is that the US Department of Justice sued 5 of the 6 major publishing houses as well as Apple for colluding to fix the prices of their books. That is because they all signed an agreement for what they call Agency Pricing. Agency pricing said that no one could sell the books at any price other than the price set by the publisher.
By definition this is price fixing. The publisher said that with ebook, the ebook stores such as Amazon are not actually the retailer, but but an agent for the sales, so it was not price fixing because it is the publishers themselves that are the retailers.
Macmillan was the last of the publishers to reach a settlement with the DOJ according to CNet and other new sources. Unless there is a settlement prior, Apple is schedule to go trial in June for orchestrating the price fixing agreement.
Amazon announced in October that under the terms of prior settlements, consumers that purchased ebooks under Agency pricing model from April 2010 to May 2012 will be entitled to $0.30 to $1.32 per book purchased depending on a formula that a judge is expected to approve today.
If there is something that is lacking for the kindle, it is book management. Many people are like me and have increasingly large ebook libraries and no good way to manage them. Calibre has been the main option. I use Calibre primarily to convert books between format or to correct book metadata. But I have always thought Calibre was missing the boat on device syncing and working with Amazon on document management.
Scida is a new app for Mac design to just manage Kindles, Kindle books and Kindle Collections.
Scida is trying something different from Calibre. So when I first tried it out I was not sure what it did. It does not convert between formats, it does not download metadata for books (although you can correct book metadata).
Crossway Impact is a reward program from Crossway Books. There is a one time registration fee (but you choose what that fee is) and then you get 25% off of everything you buy from Crossway.org, flat rate $5 shipping on everything except case quantities) and exclusive monthly offers. Yesterday Crossway added a new ebook benefit. … Read more
I was reminded last week that there are a lot of small trick that I use to manage content on my kindle that I have not shared lately. I would love to hear other kindle tips in the comments. Keep inappropriate content from children I am very pleased that Amazon has added basic parental controls … Read more
One of the mostly underutilized features of the Kindle is book lending. About 30 percent of my books are lendable. Lending is a bit of a pain. You only can lend a book once. And you only have 2 weeks to read the book before it expires. The larger problem is figuring out what to borrow. Unless you have lots of friends with kindles and you talk with one another about books, then it is difficult to know where to borrow a kindle book.
This is the problem that book sharing websites are trying to solve. Book Sharing sites like Lendle.me, allow you to put the books you are willing to lend and then to search for books you would like to borrow. I have reviewed Lendle.me and Booklending.com before, but Lendle.me recently changed owners.
While there is not much visually different, the site seems to be a bit faster, the emails you get from Lendle include advertising and most importantly, Lendle has very quietly removed the small payments for lending. It used to be that you would get anywhere from $0.02 to as much as $2.50 for lending a book. I have loaned about 120 books and received around $50 in Amazon gift cards for lending. The amount is not a big deal, but it was a nice bonus for the site.
Today Amazon released a new major update to the Kindle Touch software. (You know the kindle that they stopped supporting when Amazon released the Paperwhite.) It has many of the best software features of the kindle paperwhite, just without the light and crisper screen. If you have Touch you can wait for it to automatically … Read more
If you need a last minute gift and want something more personal than a gift card, you can now give Kindle books as a gift.
As an example I decided to give myself a kindle book to create a how-to post. First you need to find a book that you want to give. I decided to give A Little Book for New Theologians. Underneath the normal purchase button on Amazon is the “Gift as a Gift Button” (see right.)
Instead of your normal checkout page you will get a gift page.
First you need to type in the email of your recipient. You can use any email for the person you are giving it to. But it easier if you send it to the person’s Amazon account email.
The Verso Prologue Cover for Amazon Kindle has changed my mind about using a cover. I have used this cover for nearly three months now.
What I do not traditionally like about using a cover with the kindle is that it usually doubles (or more) the weight and it does not fold back well so that it it is uncomfortable to hold one handed.
However, the Verso Prologue is amazingly light. It looks like it should be a fairly heavy leather cover. But it is not. The inside of the cover has to be some type of hard foam. It will flex slightly, but it withstands a good bit of abuse.