Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Here’s a quick round-up of interesting Kindle and Publishing related threads -

Free eBooks and eReader Deal

1. NewEgg have the jetbook-Lite on sale for $117. It’s their shell shocker deal (found via MobileRead).
2. All Romance eBooks have a free romance book a day for the next 11 days.
3. Free Sci-Fi novel that’s been published by Tor (out December 28th as paperback).
4. Free Audible books at Audible’s Twitter account (repeating to make sure people get it).
5. A Christmas Carol is free at Audible. Performed by Tim Curry (found via Books on the Knob).
6. Lots of free kindle books in the last 5 days - 3 in the Kindle Store, 5 free white papers from MIT press, 3 free PDF books, and 4 free audiobooks from Audible.

Lots of Kindle developments

1. Kindle for iPhone App now available in 63 countries.
2. 2 self-published books hit the Kindle Store Top 25, including MetaGame hitting #2.
3. Borders UK has found a buyer for 23 of its stores (out of 45 total) – Could it be Amazon?
4. The Internet Archive made its 1.8 million free books available in Kindle format.
5. Kindle’s enemies started bonding – Sony and B&N both are switching to ePub. Sony has already done it, and B&N are in the process of.
6. Amazon said they would add features in 2010 to make the Kindle more accessible.

Amazon Vs Publishers gets very, very interesting

1. Rumors that Apple is approaching Book Publishers with an offer of 70% of book sales.
2. 3 of the 6 big Publishers announced plans to delay ebook releases by 4 months.
3. First Amazon offered Kindles at 40% off to anyone working in the Publishing companies.
4. Then Amazon signed an exclusive eBook deal with Stephen Covey.
5. The battle for eBook rights of old books took center stage.
6. 5 big magazine publishers teamed up to form a Grand Consortium and Hearst even have their Skiff Reader in the works.

Nook has problems, still selling out

1. Nook came out and was panned in reviews, including by David Pogue and Walt Mossberg.
2. Buzz still seems to be high – Nook is now sold out till February 1st. The bad reviews don’t seem to have killed sales.
3. Lots of differences in opinion on whether the sluggishness is a bit of a pain or a real pain.
4. There are reports that next week will see a firmware update to fix some issues, including the ‘formatting’ of a book every single time it’s opened.
5. Nook owners figure out they can get Sony Store eBooks and Library eBooks on to the Nook.
6. The Nook gets hacked and hackers get root access. They’re excited by the prospect of stealing AT&T’s bandwidth.

Alex Reader is the Wild Card

1. An Alex Reader video was discovered and it seems Kindle Vs Alex will be more significant than we realize.
2. The Alex Reader video is very impressive – it’s everything the Nook should have been.
3. The excellent way in which they do ‘browse and find content on the LCD, and then read on eInk’ makes you wonder why B&N didn’t.
4. The court case between Spring Design (makers of Alex) and B&N is supposed to be given an early trial date by the Judge.

So not only is Alex Reader a good, strong competitor but there is also the possibility that Spring Design’s court case affects the Nook.

It continues to surprise me that the ‘really cool features’ seem to be so evenly distributed between different eReaders.

Filed under: free books, news Tagged: | free kindle books, kindle news roundup