Kindle Fire: Rekindling the Love for Kindle

Amazon recently announced its newest line of Kindles. They are the Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G, and the Kindle Fire (great pun, right?). Affordable, simple, functional, the new Kindles prove Amazon hasn’t been completely asleep in the tech-race.

A Kindle Carol: What My Book-Signing Experience Would Have Lacked

Audrey holding "New Moon," by Stephenie Meyer and waiting in line for a book-signing.

A few years ago during my senior year of high school, my mom gave me permission to skip school to attend a book release with some friends at a Barnes and Noble bookstore 45 minutes across town. We met in the school parking lot at 5 a.m. to carpool and make sure we were in line by six, and then waited six hours for the actual release.

The book? “The Host” by Stephenie Meyer. For those of you who aren’t familiar with who Stephenie Meyer is, I’ll give you a brief rundown.

Stephenie Meyer is responsible (single-handedly, in my opinion) for the sudden outburst of obsessions surrounding werewolves, vampires and the actor Robert Pattinson. Ringing any bells?

Borders Reorganization Plan, Will It Work?

Feb. 16, 2011, isn’t a significant date to most people. For Borders Inc., however, it is a date probably still ringing in the ears of executives and employees. On that date, Borders Inc. filed for bankruptcy.

Amazons Kindle Books Outsell Hardbacks

Amazon Kindle book sales are now outselling Amazon’s hardback books in the U.S. Amazon says in the last month they have sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. This includes the sales of hardcover books that aren’t being sold in a Kindle book form. Although Amazon hasn’t revealed its sale of paperback books it is still believed that they are selling more paperbacks than Kindle books currently. This could in part be due to the fact that Amazon has millions of books on site but only 630,000 Kindle books available.

Where will books end up?

Matt Stewart, a San Francisco-based writer, posted his entire book, The French Revolution, on Twitter. All 95,000 words of it. This experiment took him four months and 5,000 tweets to complete. With the advancement of technology and all the new forms of communication, Stewart was seeking another way to reach his audience. Now his book is coming out in print form but that isn’t stopping him from trying to make book reading more interesting. He has teamed up with Ricoh Innovations to create a free companion iPhone application to the book. He is intrigued with the idea of giving books the same kind of bonus features and deleted scenes as movies have. An iPad would be able to do this, showing pictures of different locations from the book and interviews, but not many people are reading books on the iPad yet.

E-reader, Here to Stay or Gone Tomorrow?

If you have stepped into a Barnes & Nobles lately, you would have noticed all the advertisements about the Barnes & Nobles e-reader, the Nook. It’s impossible not to notice since the booth is set up directly in front of the doors with a salesclerk holding one of the Nooks up in your face. And who hasn’t heard of the Kindle or the iPad? I always have been curious about these new e-readers. Would it really be more convenient for reading? Would it hurt my eyes over time? And then, if these answers were encouraging…is it going to be worth the cost?

From the Publisher’s Desk: The Semi-Latest Book Publishing Industry News, 4/3/10

So this Saturday finds me up at the office with the blinds shut on my window while getting caught up on a variety of things that I didn’t get done during this four-day week that had a two-day trip out to Abilene wedged into it to discuss all things wind energy: approving pending requisitions, sending out belated emails, and closing out weekly reports. Plus, to top it all off, with all the running around, I didn’t even remotely have time to watch over my rss feeds like I normally would so that’s why this is the semi-latest publishing news as it comes from the week of March 22-26. On the other hand, this week’s news has been dominated by all things iPad and until I actually get to play around with one, I’ll try to stay out of that discussion.

The View From the Publisher’s Desk: Top Publishing News of the Week, 2/26/10

Well, this week I’m still reveling the fact that after a round of serious cleaning at the end of last week and the first part of this one, the top of my desk is as clear and organized as it ever is. The initial shipping of inventory to Midpoint Trade Books continues unabated, the Electromechanical Principles of Wind Turbines textbook now has the search inside the book (SITB) capability at Amazon (a first for us), and we’ve got new projects in the works including Beth Ziesenis’ guide to free/low-cost online tools & apps along with Evada Cooper‘s 100 Years of RV Cooking cookbook.

Apple’s iPad: Next E-reader?

The iPad is the latest Apple product coming to stores this April. The iPad does not have a set function like the iPhone or iPod do, which may leave some buyers wondering the purpose of the iPad. While the product will be able to play music, connect to the Internet, and use all of the applications that Apple has created over the past years as well as applications coming out specifically made for the iPad, the most interesting function is the use of the iPad as an e-reader.