First, the free (and cheap) kindle books -
- Treat Me Like a Customer: Using Lessons from Work to Succeed in Life by Louis Upkins.
- Tiger’s Curse by Colleen Houck for just $1. It’s rated 5 stars on 42 customer reviews – people love it.
- X-15: Extending the Frontiers of Light by Dennis R. Jenkins – free via Nasa. Via the official kindle forum.
Next, let’s look at some interesting Kindle related news.
Apple telling Publishers the iSlate is color TV to Kindle’s Black and White TV
Lots of new information in an iSlate article from 9to5 Mac -
Apple has been pitching itself against Amazon’s model specifically to the publishers. Apple’s “Agency model” gives publishers more control and freedom for pricing vs. Amazon.
Apple also had this to say – “a very-readable 10-inch glass screen smaller in size than the Kindle DX with a similar weight.”
“software was the key to the experience and it would be the game changer”.
Apple also made the analogy of the shift from B&W televisions to Color with respect to the Kindle vs. the Tablet.
The price is supposed to be nowhere near as high as $1,000 which would be pretty bad news for any Tablets or ereaders coming in at over $500 (or even ones that are close).
The Millions interviews a Book Pirater
There’s an interview up on the Millions and everyone is jumping on this little snippet -
TM: What changes in the ebook industry would inspire you to stop participating in ebook file sharing?
TRC: This is a tough question.
I guess if every book was available in electronic format with no DRM for reasonable prices ($10 max for new/bestseller/omnibus, scaling downwards for popularity and value) it just wouldn’t be worth the time, effort, and risk to find, download, convert and load the book when the same thing could be accomplished with a single click on your Kindle.
Even in this situation, I would probably still grab a book if I stumbled across the file and thought it might interest me – or if I wanted to check it out before buying a paper copy.
People are interpreting this to mean that without DRM there would be no piracy.
This is a bit of nonsense for a few reasons -
- The interviewee is pretty vague – ‘i guess’, ‘i would probably still grab a book’, and his mention of prices sliding less according to what he feels appropriate.
- There is no time, effort and risk. Books that are pirated are available as PDF which all eReaders can read.
- Whether or not the interviewee intended to pay for a DRM free book he’d say that he would.
Look at the sheer number of caveats, including the last one of ‘wanting to check out a book before buying a paper copy’.
What the interviewee really wants to say is – Are you kidding me? Why would I start paying for what’s available for free.
He starts off with – That is a tough question. It’s not - It’s tough for him to straight up admit to stealing and wanting to continue to steal. That’s why in his answer he puts in reasons that he can later use to rationalize his stealing.
eReaders not saviors for newspapers?
The Birmingham Business Journal covers a study done by the University of Georgia researchers into the viability of using the Kindle DX to ‘save’ newspapers.
The study found some interesting things -
- Everyone loved the readability of the screen.
- Old users were more accepting though they missed crosswords and comics.
- Younger users compared Kindle DX to iPhone and Blackberry and didn’t like it.
- Everyone disliked the price.
The researchers conclude that newspaper readers need color, photographs and touch-screens -
Researchers at The University of Georgia said Monday that portable e-readers are unlikely to win readers back to newspapers unless they include features such as color, photographs and touch screens.
Professors of advertising Dean Krugman and Tom Reichert, and Barry Hollander, an associate professor of journalism in the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, conducted the research project into e-readers over a six-month period in 2009.
Well, it’d be nice to see someone actually do a test with the supposed solution i.e. a color, photograph rich, touch-screen device and see whether users actually use it to read newspapers and what they think of the price.
Kindle voted most likely to survive Apple iSlate’s arrival
The Huffington Post have an Apple iSlate Will Kill eReaders Poll that rather generously lets you rate the chances of each eReader’s survival -
- You can rate an eReader anywhere from 1 (done) to 10 (might last).
- The Kindle gets rated the highest – a 7.6.
- A lot of the other eReaders (Nook, Sony Reader) get rated brutally.
It’s a little presumptuous when 10 corresponds to ‘might last’.
Filed under: free books Tagged: | free kindle books
