Month: December 2013

Surprises in Amazon’s 2013 Best-Seller List

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2013

Amazon’s announced their list of the best-selling ebooks of 2013 — and it’s got a big surprise. Stephen King had two of the top 10 best-selling print books of the year –but neither one of them is among the top twenty best-selling Kindle ebooks. In fact, 13 of the top 20 best-selling print books don’t even appear anywhere on Amazon’s list of the top 100 best-selling Kindle ebooks. It’s like print book buyers are living in an entirely different world!

For a shortcut to Amazon’s lists, point your browser to
http://tinyurl.com/AmazonBooks2013

Here’s Amazon’s list of their 20 best-selling print books of 2013

1. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
                                   (#27 among Kindle best-sellers)

2. Inferno by Dan Brown
                                   (#1 among Kindle best-sellers)

3. Killing Jesus by Martin Dugard
                                   (#40 among Kindle best-sellers)

4. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
                                   (#4 among Kindle best-sellers)

5. Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics by Charles Krauthammer
                                   [Not on Kindle list]

6. The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia by Akira Himekawa
                                   [Not available as a Kindle ebook]

7. Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton
                                   [Not on Kindle List]

8. Joyland (Hard Case Crime) by Stephen King
                                   [Not available as Kindle ebook]

9. Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander by Mark Schlabach
                                   [Not on Kindle list]

10. Doctor Sleep: A Novel by Stephen King
                                   [#22 among Kindle best-sellers]

11. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
                                   [Not on Kindle List]

12. The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
                                   [#3 among Kindle best-sellers]

13. The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic by Mark R. Levin
                                   [Not on Kindle list]

14. The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays: 140 Step-by-Step Recipes for Simple, Scrumptious Celebrations by Ree Drummond
                                   [Not on Kindle list]

15. Sycamore Row by John Grisham
                                   [#6 among Kindle best-sellers]

16. It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great by Gwyneth Paltrow
                                   [Not available as Kindle ebook]

17. The FastDiet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting by Michael Mosley
                                   [Not on Kindle list]

18. Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
                                   [Not on Kindle list]

19. Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance by Glen Cordoza
                                   [Not available for Kindle]

20. Soul Healing Miracles: Ancient and New Sacred Wisdom, Knowledge, and Practical Techniques for Healing the Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, and Physical Bodies by Zhi Gang Sha
                                   [Not on Kindle list]

Yes, four of the top 20 best-selling print books simply weren’t available as Kindle ebooks. But nine of them were available as Kindle ebooks — and yet still failed to even make it into Amazon’s list of the top 100 Kindle best-sellers for 2013. In some cases there’s other reasonable explanations. (For example, Humans of New York is a coffee table book filled with photographs.) And in some cases, the explanation is even more interesting.

Stephen King made it onto both lists with Dr. Sleep, a fascinating horror novel which lets its readers catch up with the little boy from The Shining. (Danny Torrence is now “a flawed middle-aged man with a tragic past”, according to the book’s description…) But Stephen King had a special place in his heart for his new contribution to the “Hard Case Crime” series of books, according to its page at Amazon. King called his new novel Joyland “One of my favorites,” and said “I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.”

In fact, it’s not just Stephen King who was enjoying mystery novels in 2013. “Last year’s best seller list was filled with Fifty Shades and contemporary romance,” noted Amazon’s Editorial Director of Books and Kindle. But in a statement announcing this year’s best-sellers, she noted that “in 2013 Mysteries & Thrillers captured readers attention, with 11 of the top 20 books falling in that category!” And she had one more interesting piece of trivia. If you look at Amazon’s top 20 best-sellers, 19 out of the 20 sold more Kindle ebook editions than their printed editions.

The only exception was Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.


Here’s Amazon’s list of their top 20 best-selling Kindle ebooks.

1 Inferno: A Novel (Robert Langdon) by Dan Brown
                                   [#2 on Print list]
2. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
                                   [Not on Print list]
3. The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
                                   [#12 on print list]
4. And the Mountains Echoed: A Novel by Khaled Hosseini
                                   [#4 on print list]
5. The Hit (Will Robie) by David Baldacci
                                   [#40 on print list]
6. Sycamore Row by John Grisham
                                   [#15 on print list]
7. Entwined with You (A Crossfire Novel) by Sylvia Day
                                   [#24 on print list]
8. Never Go Back: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child
                                   [#38 on print list]
9. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
                                   [#53 on print list]
10. Alex Cross, Run by James Patterson
                                   [Not on print list]
11. Damaged: The Ferro Family by H.M. Ward
                                   [Not on print list]
12. 12th of Never (Women’s Murder Club) by James Patterson
                                   [#65 on print list]
13. Second Honeymoon by James Patterson
                                   [Not on print list]
14. The Billionaire’s Obsession: The Complete Collection Boxed Set (Mine For Tonight, Mine For Now, Mine Forever, Mine Completely) by J.S. Scott
                                   [Not on print list]
15. Surrender Your Love by J.C. Reed
                                   [Not on print list]
16. The Bet by Rachel Van Dyken
                                   [Not on print list]
17. Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts ‘
                                   [Not on print list]
18. Six Years by Harlan Coben
                                   [#92 on print list]
19. Falling Into You by Jasinda Wilder
                                   [Not on print list]
20. High Heat: A Jack Reacher Novella by Lee Child
                                   [Not on print list]


For a shortcut to Amazon’s lists, point your browser to
http://tinyurl.com/AmazonBooks2013

More Special Deals from Amazon

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The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson back cover

Amazon is giving away a Calvin & Hobbes collection as a Kindle ebook for just $10.99. It’s just one of several special deals they’re offering today, as a kind of welcome to new Kindle owners. And Amazon’s also giving away big discounts on hundreds of digital videos!


For shortcuts, point your browser to these URLs:

tinyurl.com/KindleCalvinAndHobbes

tinyurl.com/AmazonDecemberVideo


There’s also a collection of Snoopy cartoons by Charles M. Schulz that Amazon’s selling as a Kindle ebook for just $7.99. It’s about Snoopy as a surfer, so its title is “Cowabunga!” You can even read it on a black-and-white e-ink Kindle, though the colorful comic strip pictures will display in full digital color if your read it on a Kindle Fire. It’s over 200 pages long, so it’s a nice way to get a new look at a favorite, familiar character…


Snoopy surfing book - cover of Cowabunga


There’s also some other great discounts if you poke around through Amazon today. For example, each season of the TV show Community has been discounted to just $17.99 in Amazon’s “Instant Video” store. You can watch every episode in high-definition video on your Kindle Fire tablet — or in Amazon’s video apps, or even online in your web browser. And “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” has been discounted to just $7.99. (Also in high-definition!) You can buy a collection of 24 shorts by The Three Stooges for just $8.99 — or the original 1971 movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — and the original version of The Sound of Music is now just $9.99.

To browse all the deals, go to
tinyurl.com/AmazonDecemberVideo

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs Movie


Enjoy your holiday weekend!


For shortcuts, point your browser to these URLs:

tinyurl.com/KindleCalvinAndHobbes

tinyurl.com/AmazonDecemberVideo


David Letterman’s Kindle Christmas

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David letterman vs. the iPad and Kindle

Do you wonder who’s getting a Kindle for their Christmas present? I always remember this funny story about David Letterman. Nearly three years ago on his late-night talk show, he’d shown off the tablet that he’d just started using. Around the holidays each year I like to revisit that story, because it’s a good reminder about how fast things have changed — and how sometimes the biggest challenge is simply our own stubborn human nature!

Talking to the leader of his band (Paul Shaffer), Letterman at first actually seemed genuinely confused even about whether he’d bought an iPad or a Kindle!


LETTERMAN: For Christmas, I loaded up — I had one of them iPads, and they put a book in it. You know you can do that now?

PAUL SHAFFER: Oh, yeah. Sure…

LETTERMAN: And so I’ve been reading this book in this iPad thing, and I’m reading and I’m reading and I’m reading. And as you know, you don’t turn a page, in — when you’re reading on the — what do they call them, the Kindles or something?

PAUL SHAFFER: Yeah… They’ve got that, too, yeah. (Audience laughs)


Letterman was probably reading with a “Kindle for iPad” app. (Earlier that week, Amazon had pointed out that it’s one of the top 10 best-selling apps among iPad owners.) But as their conversation went on, Paul Shaffer gently tried to correct Letterman’s confusion as he explained how you turn pages.


LETTERMAN:And so you just — you just kind of do this with your finger.

PAUL SHAFFER: You flip that. Yeah.

LETTERMAN:And the thing’ll…

PAUL SHAFFER: On the iPad and the Kindle…


Letterman was playing up his reactions as a technology curmudgeon — but he was building up to a complaint that I’d heard before. The Kindle used to tell you only what percentage of a book you’d finished reading, without telling you how many real-world pages were left in the book. Now, of course, the Kindle can actually report how much time is left before you reach the end of book — or even the end of your current chapter. But back in 2010, this was irritating the late-night talk show host. Although the punch line turned out to be that his bandleader Paul Shaffer had the perfect answer!


LETTERMAN: And I’m reading, and I realize: something’s wrong here. Something’s desperately wrong. There’s no page numbers on my book!

PAUL SHAFFER: Right. No, well, there can’t be. There can’t be, because you can change the font, and if you have a larger font, then you’re going to have fewer pages and therefore you can’t possibly commit to a page number because as you electronically alter the page you number, you are going to have to change as well the number of pages that you have at your disposal…(Audience applauds)

LETTERMAN: Thank you. Thank you, Steve Jobs.


It’s nice to remember that story, as a reminder of how things have changed. (Amazon eventually even found a way to add page numbers to lots of Kindle ebooks, so maybe Letterman is happier now.) But I still always smile when I remember how skeptical he’d been about the iPad — even in earlier shows. When the device was first released, he’d showed one to his audience, then joked “The radiation this thing gives off is incredible. You’re supposed to wear a lead apron when you operate it!”

But it was especially interesting in light of a research study by J.P. Morgan. Back in early 2011, they’d determined that 40% of the people who own an iPad also own a Kindle — and that another 23% of them planned to buy one within the next 12 months!

It’s a hopeful sign that all iPad owners aren’t as confused as David Letterman! But I still would like to drop his comments into a time capsule, to be opened up by later generations. Even if books are all someday replaced by digital readers, it’ll be worth remembering just how uncomfortable some people were with the change.


LETTERMAN: But see, and then you just — you just whisk it away like that, and then — but look. What do you see? Do you see a page number?

PAUL SHAFFER: No….

LETTERMAN: No. You don’t see no page number.

PAUL SHAFFER: No. There isn’t…

LETTERMAN: How do you know when you’re done, is what I want to know? Or if somebody – somebody asks you, are you reading the — the book? And I say yeah. “What page are you on?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what page I’m on.” For example, this — I’m reading now the Alex Trebeck story, and I have no idea — uh…No, I can’t help you. Sorry!

David letterman vs. the iPad and Kindle

Amazon Discounts Kindles to $49!

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New Amazon Kindle gift wrapped

Today only, Amazon is selling Kindles for $49! “One-Day Sale,” reads the announcement on the Kindle’s official page at Amazon. “Save $20 on Kindle, only $49 while supplies last. ” To make the point, they’d typed in $69 — and then struck through the letters. That’s a 28% discount, and it shows Amazon is getting serious about getting some new customers during the holiday shopping season…

For a shortcut, point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/Kindle49

Amazon discounts Kindle to 49

And the shipping is free, too. (Though they’re saying that your Kindle will arrive within “5-8 business days,” so you might to upgrade to a faster delivery option if you’re buying the Kindle as a gift.) Things always get a little crazy on Amazon’s site right around Christmas time, with a lot of unexpected new offers cropping up to steer customers towards more shopping. Amazon is also offering to deliver bottles of wine to their customers with a shipping charge of just one penny!

Maybe they think we all need a drink, after all the stress of holiday shopping? Actually, Amazon launched their own web site for purchasing high-quality wines online just over a year ago, ” the largest domestic wine selection online, with delivery available to 22 states and the District of Columbia…” There’s over 900 wine sellers who are now using Amazon’s site, and customers can just from over 7,000 different wine labels. “The holidays are a huge selling season for wine…,” one wine-maker points out, “and they probably already have their browser open to Amazon.com!”

Amazon’s also pointing out the you can order your gifts as last as midnight on Sunday, and still have them received before Christmas Day (on Tuesday, December 24th) — for free, if you’re a member of Amazon’s Prime shipping service. And according to Amazon’s press release, there will even be one-day shipping options available for just $2.99 per item. “Those truly last-minute shoppers can choose from millions of gifts, and order as late as midnight on Monday, Dec. 23, using Prime one-day shipping and still receive their package before Christmas!”

But with all the special deal, I’m still most interested in buying a new Kindle. $49 is an amazing price, and to be honest, I’m not buying one as a gift for somebody else. It’s the perfect chance to upgrade to a newer version at the lowest possible price. So I’m buying a $49 Kindle for me!

Remember, for a shortcut, point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/Kindle49

Favorite Free Christmas Stories

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A Christmas Carol original book cover illustration

If you’re looking for something Christmas-y to read, here’s four of my most favorite holiday stories. (Maybe reading on the Kindle can become a new Christmas tradition!) These stories are all available as a free Kindle ebooks, and at least one of them has been around for almost 200 years! Lots of people enjoy curling up someplace cozy, and taking a quiet reading break over the holidays. And this year, more and more of them will doing it with the Kindle!

Old Christmas by Washington Irving

He was America’s first internationally popular author, and he wrote two timeless stories — Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But he also fathered many of our Christmas traditions. At the age of 29, when he was starting his career in 1812, Irving added five nostalgic Christmas stories to a collection of writing, and for one dream sequence, imagined what would happen if St. Nicholas flew over the forests in a flying sleigh. That’s believed to have inspired many of the subsequent stories about Santa Claus and his flying reindeer!

And the stories had an even greater impact. Irving also researched holiday traditions as far back as 1652, according to Wikipedia, and his popular stories “contributed to the revival and reinterpretation of the Christmas holiday in the United States.” Even Charles Dickens himself said that Irving’s stories influenced his own famous novella, A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

It’s not just a story about Christmas. It’s partly responsible for the way that way celebrate it. The story by 31-year-old Charles Dickens “was one of the single greatest influences in rejuvenating the old Christmas traditions of England,” according to Wikipedia, which notes it was published just as new customs were established like tree-decorating and Christmas cards. The book helped to popularize these traditions, though ironically, the story was immediately pirated after Dickens published it, and he realized almost no profits from the story himself!

I’ve always enjoyed the way Charles Dickens writes, with simple yet very moving stories — and I’m not the only one. Every year on Amazon’s list of the best-selling free ebooks, A Christmas Carol always crashes into the top 20. And interestingly, it turns out that Charles Dickens followed this up with even more Christmas stories — including The Cricket on the Hearth, The Chimes, and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain.

And all three of these stories are also available for free in Amazon’s Kindle store…

A Visit From Saint Nicholas by Clement Clark Moore

Here’s something fun to download: the original text of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” (One historian called it “arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American,” according to Wikipedia.) And there’s some interesting trivia about this story. In its first printing in 1823, Santa’s reindeer were named “Dunder” and “Blixem,” which are the Dutch words for “thunder” and “lightning” — but over the years their names changed into the more familiar-sounding “Donner” and “Blitzen”!

Merry Christmas, Mr. Mark by Nelson Algren

There’s one short Christmas story that I absolutely love — by one of my favorite authors. Ernest Hemingway called Nelson Algren “one of the two best authors in America” — and his greatest novel, The Man With the Golden Arm, offered an unforgettable look at Chicago and its lowlifes. (In 1950, it won a National Book Award). But my personal favorite Algren book was always The Last Carousel, another dazzling collection of short works from throughout his career, which he’d published in 1973.

At the age of 64, the author had hand-picked each story himself – though unfortunately The Last Carousel isn’t available on the Kindle. But one lucky December, I discovered that you can still read one of its most touching stories online. On December 4, 1949, the Chicago Sunday Tribune published “Merry Christmas, Mr. Mark,” a story Algren wrote at the height of career, at the same time as his award-winning novel. The 40-year-old novelist remembered being a young newsboy in the 1920s, braving the snows to sell The Saturday Evening Blade at an intersection by the cemetery — and how the newsboys had tried to swindle their customers!

But by the end, they’d all learned a valuable lesson about Christmas…!

Fun Free Kindle Christmas Games

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Amazon Kindle game Picture Perfect Holiday Puzzles menu screenshot

Amazon has now released 18 different free games for their black-and-white e-ink Kindles, and in 2012 they even released two that were designed especially for the holiday season! “We were going to wait to start talking about the holidays, but this new free game for Kindle is getting us in the spirit a little early,” read one announcement on the Kindle’s page on Facebook. “Check it out for yourself, but don’t blame us if you suddenly get the urge to start stringing lights and singing carols!”

And there’s also a free Christmas app for the Kindle Fire!

Their new game for the black-and-white, e-ink Kindles was “Picture Perfect Holiday Puzzles,” and within four hours of the announcement, it had already earned 208 “Like” votes and drawn 35 enthusiastic comments. (Like the woman in Minnesota who posted “OMG! OMG! OMG! This is my all time FAVORITE Kindle game, I’ve been waiting for a Part 2 forever!! YESSSS!!!!!!!”) It was a “sequel” to a free game Amazon released called simply “Picture Perfect Puzzles”. In both those games, users try to form a picture by darkening all the correct squares in a grid, making logical deductions from clues showing the number of squares that need darkening in each row and column. But for the second “holiday” version, Amazon created 35 more puzzles, each one with a fun holiday theme. (The puzzles were grouped into six categories: Winter Begins, Hanukkah, Christmas, Winter Continues, Kwanzaa, and New Years.)

And would you like to write to Santa Claus? There’s an app for that — at least, if you own a Kindle Fire tablet (or an iPad). Last Christmas, Amazon announced a free Santa app to create holidays wish lists, “for children and their parents…to share with friends, family and Mr. Claus.” They’ve identified more than half a million popular “kid-friendly” items available on Amazon, and according to the director of Amazon Mobile, the apps makes it “fun, easy and intuitive for kids to find exactly what they want.” Just point your browser to amazon.com/santa_app

There’s books, of course, but also toys, games, video games, music, and even movies and TV shows — and you can browse the individual categories or search for specific items. By secretly tracking which gifts have been purchased, it can helip different relatives avoid buying the same gift, and Amazon says the app offers “a great way for parents to spend some quality time with their kids…”

And, “to help make certain there’s a smile Christmas morning.”

Kindle eBooks for $3.99 or Less!

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Amazon Kindle 399 ebook sale

Every month Amazon discounts over 100 Kindle ebooks to just $3.99 or less. And this month, they’ve put together an unusually good selection of ebooks — many priced at just $1.99. But in addition, Amazon’s also introducing a brand new kind of discount. Now you can also purchase the audiobook edition of many of these ebooks for just $3.99. Then you can switch instantly between the written and spoken versions of the ebook when you’re reading on a Kindle Fire tablet (or a smartphone)!

For a shortcut, just point your browser to
tinyurl.com/399KindleEbooks

Here’s some of the most interesting deals…


Stardust by Neil Gaiman ($1.99)

Set in the 19th-century, Neil Gaiman’s 1998 novel is “an utterly charming fairy tale in the tradition of The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story,, ” according to the book’s description at Amazon. A young man has to cross the wall that separates his British town from the magical land of the faeries, “in pursuit of love and the utterly impossible. ” This story was originally published as a graphic novel with some lavish illustrations, but even this text-only version still fills 368 pages. And best of all, for another $3.49 you can also get the audiobook version — that’s read by Neil Gaiman himself!


Fire in the Hole by Elmore Leonard ($1.99)

There’s nine great short stories in this collection from the master of crime fiction — and each one features a female protagonist. (It’s original title was “When the Women Come Out To Dance”…) “These nine stories are the great Elmore Leonard at his vivid, hilarious, and unfailingly human best,” reads the book’s description at Amazon, noting how this collection “once again illustrates how the line between the law and the lawbreakers is not as firm as we might think.” It’s been 16 weeks since writer Elmore Leonard died at the age of 87, and this book is now sporting a new cover to highlight its special distinction. Its title story became the basis for the TV series “Justified” on the FX network — now heading into its fourth season — and tells the story of how U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens deals with an old friend who’s now living outside of the law!


In One Person by John Irving ($1.99)

John Irving wrote some of the most famous novels of the last 50 years — everything from The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire to The Cider-House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. But this time he’s written a more poltical story, according to the book’s description on Amazon, which calls it “precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel… brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny!” And for another $3.95, you can purchase the audiobook edition, and hear the entire book — all 488 pages — read by a professional narrator.


Endless Night by Agatha Christie ($1.99)

This isn’t just any Agatha Christie mystery. ” It was one of her favourites of her own works ,” according to Wikipedia, “and received some of the warmest critical notices of her career upon publication.” A young man wandering “Gipsy’s Acre” — a stretch of rustic land said to be cursed — meets and falls in love with an attractive American woman. But before long he’s confronting a gauntlet of eccentric characters, in an unusual Agatha Christie mystery that one Amazon reviewer called “one of the most original books she’s written… A few very well placed surprises catch you off your guard!”


Remember, for a shortcut, just point your browser to
tinyurl.com/399KindleEbooks

Free Christmas Music from Amazon!

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Vintage phonography gramophone record player

It’s a tradition — every year Amazon gives away free .mp3 music files with Christmas songs! Most Kindles can play music files, so it’s a fun way to enjoy some holiday spirit while you’re reading your ebooks. “Starting December 1, every 5 days we’re rolling out 5 new free holiday songs for your collection,” Amazon explains on their holiday web page. And that’s just one way to get free (and discounted) Christmas music files for your Kindle.

For a shortcut to Amazon’s free Christmas mp3s, go to
tinyurl.com/25FreeChristmasSongs

There’s also several other free Christmas songs in Amazon’s music store — including a brand new song by “Straight No Chaser”. The acapella college singing group re-united in 2008 after suddenly becoming internet sensations for their funny version of “The 12 Days of Christmas” (mixed with “The Dreidel Song” and “Africa”). It was recorded in 1998, but 10 years later it landed them a real recording contract with Atlantic Records. And this year, they’re giving away a free song in Amazon’s music store with their own funny lyrics for a song from “The Nutcracker”.

“All holiday shoppers on the road!
My holiday spirit might explode!
Of course, there is no place to park
We’re late, the theater’s in the dark
In no small feat
We find a seat
The show’s about to start…”

Their “12 Days of Christmas” is also bargain-priced in Amazon’s music store for just 69 cents. (And Jeff Foxworthy has recorded his own funny “redneck” version of same song — also available for just 69 cents.) But there’s also entire album of Christmas music that are available for the same price — bargain-priced for just 69 cents. It’s the album “Celtic Christmas”, which feature 20 different songs in the Celtic style. And if you want even more Christmas music, there’s also the album “100 Must-Have Christmas Masterpieces” for $1.99 — a massive collection of traditional Christmas carols (sung by groups like the Vienna Boys Choir and the Mormon Tabernacle).

In fact, Amazon’s created a special web page where you can find all the Christmas songs that have been discounted to just 69 cents — including some of the great holiday standards.

Bing Crosby – Do You Hear What I Hear?
Bruce Springsteen – Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Johnny Mathis – It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
The Kinks – Father Christmas
Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Judy Garland – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
Jose Feliciano – Feliz Navidad
Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmastime
The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick
Eartha Kitt – Santa Baby
Elvis Presley – Blue Christmas
Burl Ives – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Jimmy Durante – Frosty the Snowman
Spike Jones – All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth
Elmo & Patsy – Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
Bing Crosby – Mele Kalikimaka (Single Version)
Burl Ives – Have a Holly Jolly Christmas
Dan Fogelberg – Same Old Lang Syne
Alvin & The Chipmunks – The Christmas Song


For a shortcut, just point your browser to
tinyurl.com/69CentChristmasSongs


There’s nearly 200 Christmas songs discounted to just 69 cents — including several by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. If you’ve got a favorite Christmas song, see if Amazon’s got it on sale. They’ve got everything from Burl Ives’ “Have A Holly Jolly Christmas” to the fast fast, rock version of the Chipmunks’ Christmas song from their first movie in 2007!

There’s also some great deals on albums of Christmas music:

– Several classic celebrity records available as digital downloads for just $3.99.

James Brown: The Christmas Collection
Rod Stewart: Merry Christmas, Baby
John Denver: The Classic Christmas Album
The Muppets: A Green and Red Christmas

– For $3.99 you can also get Verve Presents: The Very Best of Christmas Jazz, which includes Mel Torme’s “Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)”, plus other songs by some great jazz legends, including Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, and Ella Fitzgerald.

– Zooey Deschanel’s new group, “She & Him.” also has a Christmas record you can buy for just $5.99. (It’s called — what else? — “A Very She & Him Christmas”.) And through Saturday, their new album, “Volume 3,” is also bargain-priced at just $5.99.

– Some great celebrity Christmas albums are just $5.99
Jimmy Buffet, Christmas Island
Michael Buble, Christmas
Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas
Barbara Streisand, The Classic Christmas album (Just $5.00)


Happy holidays!


For a shortcut to Amazon’s free Christmas mp3s, go to
tinyurl.com/25FreeChristmasSongs

Amazon Discounts Kindle Fire HD for Cyber Monday!

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Amazon Discounts Kindle Fire HDX for Cyber Monday

Surprise! Just when you thought Amazon couldn’t discount any more proudcts, they pull out new $50 discounts on their high-definition Kindle Fire tablets. Today you can get a new Kindle Fire HD for just $119 — and a Kindle Fire HDX for just $179! Amazon snuck the deal online Sunday, billing it as an “Early Cyber Monday Deal” But the deal is scheduled to last through Monday, so here’s your chance to get a color, high-definition Kindle at a great place!

For a shortcut, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/KindleFireHDX

And now Amazon will even loan you the money to purchase those Kindles, at 0% interest for the first six months. They’re offering an Amazon-branded credit card which includes 6-month financing on any purchase over $149. “Interest will be charged to your account from the purchase date if the promotional balance is not paid in full within 6 months,” Amazon warns. But if your purchase is over $599, Amazon will even offer you 12 months of 0% interest!

It’s the total amount of order, not the cost of any one item — so if you buy the very cheapest Kindle Fire HD, you’ll still have to add another $31 to your order to qualify for the financing. And you can even make your purchase from one of the third-party sellers that uses Amazon as their storefront, and still get the 6-month financing with 0% interest. But watch out: the interest rate is 25.99%, so you won’t want to carry any balances for too long. Amazon is making this offer available only through the rest of December, and they’re sending one very clear message with both the zero-interest financing and the new Cyber Monday discounts.

This year, Amazon really wants you to buy a Kindle Fire HD…!