Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

Here’s your free kindle book of the day (reckon Amazon wants to keep Kindle owners coming back every day during shopping season) -

•  Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda. Reprint of the Original 1946 edition. Its rated 4.5 stars across 75 customer reviews.
  

  Autobiography of a Yogi

This and the deals below are courtesy MobileRead.

There are also some great priced Kindle Books by top-notch authors -

1. Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett for just $1.86. 4.5 stars across 17 customer reviews.  
2. M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman for $3.99. 3.5 stars across 21 reviews.
3. Interworld by Neil Gaiman for $3.99. 4 stars across 36 customer reviews.
4. Regression by Kathy Bell for $1. 4.5 stars across 7 customer reviews.

Anyways, the free new book offers and the added public domain titles have resulted in Free becoming stronger than ever.

Just how strong is the presence of Free in the Bestseller lists?

Well,

• Just 6 of the Top 50 bestsellers are not free books.  
• Just 23 of the Top 100 bestsellers are not free books. 

Here’s a video to clearly demonstrate that there are only 6 paid books in the top 50 –

At some point Amazon is going to have to end this mockery of the definition of a bestsellers list.

Free is taking over completely

Amazon didn’t want to create a separate list because people would gravitate towards that. Now, they have no choice. The main list has turned into a Free List.

It doesn’t help that Amazon have to add public domain titles to match other eReaders and their Google Books. That means lots and lots of great public domain books added – and all are free.

Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Count of Monte Cristo, all the Jane Austen novels that were missing, and so forth.

Amazon had left out the best books by every author and now they’ve been forced to add them and that means public domain books have taken off in a big way.

Value Perception of eBooks is going to Zero

There’s always someone who’ll say there were always big name authors selling their ebooks for $1.87 or giving away their first book of the series free.

Well, there weren’t. It’s been nearly two years and -

• The number of free titles offered has gone from 4-5 in a month to 15-20.
• The number of big time authors offering $2 and $3 books has gone from just a few to quite a few.
• Number of Free Books in the Top 100 bestsellers list has gone from 20% to the current 77%.

Google have managed to start eroding Amazon’s revenue stream. When 77% of your bestsellers are books for which users pay nothing and you pay bandwidth, you’ve got to be a bit upset.

The International Versions Shenanigans

Running into lots of interesting little mistakes -

1. Two different prices for The Blind Side and then you find the lower price is for outside the US.
2. Two different covers for Too Big To Fail and then you find the better cover is non-US.
3. Books that you can’t buy in the US.

Best way to make everyone unhappy.

Kindle owners outside the US are unhappy because they can’t buy US Kindle Books and now US Kindle Owners are unhappy because some countries have lower prices and books that the US doesn’t get.