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…!

Amazon Announces Surprise Thanksgiving Deals!

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Amazon discounts Kindle Fire for Cyber Monday - gift-wrapped for Christmas deal shoppers

Amazon’s offering a 30% discount on every book in their store! (“Take an extra 30% off any book offered by Amazon.com,” reads an announcement they’ve tacked onto every page in the store…) It’s just one of several special offers they’re offering for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, which also include big savings on Kindles.

For a shortcut to Amazon’s book discount, just point your web browser to
http://tinyurl.com/Amazon30Percent

Amazon’s also offering special pricing on their Kindle Fire HD. The big 8.9-inch device (with a high-definition color screen) has been reduced to just $229. That’s what it’d normally cost just for the 7-inch version of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX. Amazon lowered the price when they added these tablets to their list of holiday gift suggestions.

For a shortcut to all of Amazon’s Kindle tablets, point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/KindleFireHDX

Amazon’s also offering 30% discounts on their Kindle DX. WIth a 9.7-inch e-ink screen, it’s the largest Kindle available — and they’ve reduced its price to just $169. Currently you can also buy a used Kindle DX for just $133. This has always been my personal favorite Kindle — because the only thing better than an e-ink screen is a giant e-ink screen! :)

Kindle DX discount

Of course, Amazon’s not the only one offering discounts this weekend. Best Buy’s web site will also let you purchase a Kindle for just $49. And while supplies last, Staples will sell you an original color Kindle Fire tablet for just $79. If you to go an Office Depot store, they’re currently selling the same model for just $139

So if you’re looking for a good deal this holiday, there’s some great prices on Amazon Kindles!

Eight More Free Kindle Comic Books

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Eight Free Kindle D.C. Comic books

Just in time for the holidays! D.C. Comics has teamed up with Amazon to offer eight different comic books on your Kindle for free! There’s Batman, Superman, and the Justice League — plus a comic book that’s based on The Vampire Diaries. The sale ends on Monday, December 2nd — so it’s a good time to snatch up some fun free Kindle ebooks for the Thanksgiving weekend!

For a shortcut, just point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/8FreeComics

Each of the free comic books is a recent first issue for a currently-published titled — and one of the most interesting new titles is Batman ’66. “Put on your go-go boots and get ready to ‘Batusi’ back to the Swingin’ ’60s,” reads its description at Amazon, “as DC Comics re-imagines the classic Batman TV series in comics form for the first time!” One reviewer noted that the characters were drawn to resemble the actors who’d played them on the 1960s TV show, and another said it brought back fond memories from their childhood. And one reviewer specifically applauded the retro storyline for being “a comic to read and not have to toss myself into anything too serious…”

For a more modern take on the Batman character, there’s Legends of the Dark Knight and Batman Beyond 2.0. And for Superman fans, there’s also a free first issue of Adventures of Superman, plus a comic book called Smallville Season 11. The title is a nod to fans of the TV show (which was actually cancelled in 2011 after it had just completed Season 10). And there’s a fascinating story about who could replace Superman in Justice League Beyond 2.0 (starring Green Lantern and Captain Marvel)!

Amazon’s quietly touting the sale on the pages of some other comic books in their Kindle store. (“Through December 2, download eight free books from DC Comics including Legends of the Dark Knight #1 and The Vampire Diaries #1.”) When the holidays roll around, I like to relax and forget about work and enjoy some of the same things I enjoyed as a kid.

And now thanks to this holiday weekend special, there’s eight free Kindle comic books to choose from!

Remember, for a shortcut, just point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/8FreeComics

A Funny, Free Turkey eBook for Thanksgiving!

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A funny turkey ebook

Yes, it’s that once-a-year tradition, sharing this funny free ebook about turkeys — mine! It’s a fun short mystery that’s written entirely in rhyme, with 12 cartoon-y illustrations that tell the story of four turkeys on Thanksgiving Day waiting for the farmer’s axe. (“But one of the turkeys has a plan to escape!” read’s the book’s description at Amazon. “Can the farmer figure out which one? And can you?”)

For a shortcut to this free Thanksgiving ebook, just point your browser to
tinyurl.com/TurkeyBook

It’s called “The Turkey Mystery Rhyme,” and it was a real labor of love. (For five days every November, I make it available for free in Amazon’s Kindle Store.) Over the years the ebook has even had some strange adventures of its own. The day after I published it, I’d discovered that my turkeys had snuck onto Amazon’s list of the best-selling children’s ebooks about animals – and stolen the #73 spot from a book about Curious George!

And my friends surprised me one year by insisting that we all read the whole ebook out loud on Thanksgiving Day. They’d connected their widescreen TV to their computer, so it was mirroring whatever appeared on its desktop, and then they’d pulled up Amazon’s Kindle app on that computer, and led it to The Turkey Mystery Rhyme. It was a great way to get some real reactions to the story, especially since most authors never get to actually be in the room while their ebook is being read! And then we all took turns reading the rhyming story out loud.

“For Thanksgiving, try this game. Find the guilty turkey’s name…”

I remember we had a teenager in the room, and his mother asked if he knew which turkey had launched the daring plan for escape. But that mother was a sharp cookie, and she challenged one of the book’s important fictional premises.

Fearing folks on every street
hungering for turkey meat,
In the farmer’s yard’s a spread
where Thanksgiving turkeys bred.

When the daylight brightly broke
all the farmer’s birds awoke.
And, since it’s a holiday,
all turkeys can talk today…


“What?!!” she said, to laughter from the room. “Since when can turkeys talk on Thanksgiving Day?”

“Everyone knows that,” I joked. “You’ve just never been on a farm…” And then we laughed some more, and continued reading…


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Read the free rhyming Thanksgiving turkey mystery at
tinyurl.com/TurkeyBook

Four Kindle Mystery Bargains by Agatha Christie

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Agatha Christie mystery book covers

She’s the best-selling novelist of all time, according to Wikipedia. In fact, there’s now over four billion copies of Agatha Christie’s novels scattered around the world — and dozens of her books are now available on the Kindle. This month Amazon is offering big discounts on three of her most intriguing mysteries. And there’s at least one more Agatha Christie ebook that’s now available for free!

For a shortcut to Amazon’s Agatha Christie page, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/AgathaChristieEbooks


Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie ($2.99)

This is a Hercule Poirot mystery — one of 33 novels that Agatha Christie wrote about her famous French detective. He also appeared in 50 more of her short stories, but for the month of November, Amazon is discounting this full-length 320-page mystery. “Mystery writer Ariadne Oliver has been invited to a Hallowe’en party at Woodleigh Common,” according to the book’s description at Amazon — where inevitably, one of the guests is murdered. “[I]t retains all the trademarks of what make Christie’s intricately woven, delightfully detected mysteries so endearing and timeless,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, calling it “quick-paced and filled with a cast of characters who seemingly all have something to gain, or hide!”


Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie ($2.99)

Miss Marple is the detective for this mystery — another favorite Agatha Christie detective, who appeared in 20 different short stories. But there are just 12 full-length Miss Marple novels — and Murder at the Vicarage was the very first one. “[A] dead body in a clergyman’s study proves to Miss Marple that no place, holy or otherwise, is a sanctuary from homicide…” warns the book’s description at Amazon. There’s lots of twists in its 307 pages, warns one reviewer, and “The minute you think you have it figured out the author throws you a curve…!”


Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie (Free!)

There at least one Christie novel which has actually fallen into the public domain. Secret Adversary opens on the Lusitania — a British mail ship that was sunk during World War I. “The Lusitania had been struck by two torpedoes in succession,” Christie writes in an exciting prologue that opens the book, “and was sinking rapidly, while the boats were being launched with all possible speed…” Christie introduces her some funny new “detectives” in this novel — two unemployed young men named Tommy and Tuppence — who “quite accidentally get sucked into an international mystery that reaches to the highest levels of British government,” according to one review on Amazon.


The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (99 cents!)

It’s Christie’s first published novel ever — and it’s also her first story about detective Hercule Poirot! (At a mysterious estate, a wealthy woman is poisoned shortly after drawing up a new will, and Poirot is asked to investigate.) I’ve seen public domain versions of this ebook available too, but currently it’s only available in the Kindle Store for 99 cents. According to one Amazon review, Christie only wrote this book because her sister dared her too. (“With his egg-shaped head and his well-groomed moustache, Poirot enters and soon becomes one of fiction’s best-loved detectives…”) And the reader also makes their first acquaintance with his sidekick Captain Arthur Hastings in this novel, who first appears “recovering from a war injury at the upper-class household known as Styles Court.” (Watch out! There’s going to be a murder!)

Remember, for a shortcut to Amazon’s Agatha Christie page, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/AgathaChristieEbooks

Two Big Announcements from Amazon

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Custom-Covers

Amazon’s gearing up for the big holiday shopping season — and they’ve just made two surprising new announcements.

Your Own Photos on Kindle Cases!

You can now upload your own favorite photo to Amazon, and they’ll make it into a case for your Kindle! You can also convert the photo into a Kindle skin — a thin, rubber wrap-around protector. And Amazon’s also got their own selection of designs to choose from, including illustrations of Snoopy and the other characters from Peanuts. Amazon’s press release promises they can even put images from Star Trek and other popular TV shows and movies onto your Kindle’s cover — and even characters from Breaking Bad!

Breaking Bad Kindle Cover

For a shortcut to the whole selection, just point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/CustomKindleCovers

Unfortunately, they’re only supporting Kindles from the last three years — as far back as the Kindle Touch, but not as far back as the fourth-generation “Kindle” (or the Kindle Keyboard…) But that still leaves a lot of Kindles that are now eligible for customer covers. “With this new service, we’re making it possible for customers to dream up virtually any design and seamlessly turn it into a Kindle cover — at no cost…” explained one Amazon Kindle executive. “We’re excited to bring this all-new technology to Kindle accessories and we can’t wait to see what customers come up with.”

This holiday season, some people may wind up receiving some very creative gifts! And Amazon’s also announced another new service that will make it even easier to finish your shopping…

Sunday Delivery of Packages!

I couldn’t believe it, but Los Angeles and New York City are now both getting packages delivered from Amazon on Sundays! And Amazon plans to expand the service to more cities in the next year, including Phoenix, New Orleans, Dallas, and Houston! “We’re excited that now every day is an Amazon delivery day…” announced Amazon’s vice president of worldwide operations and customer service. (It’s only available to members of Amazon’s Prime shipping program, which offers one year of free two-day shipping for a flat fee of $79 – and as a bonus, includes free access to Amazon’s online library of movies and TV shows on the web and with your Kindle Fire tablet)

To make this happen, Amazon’s teamed up with the U.S. Postal service. One business site pointed out that the post office could use the money, since traditional paper letters have been declining, now that more people communicate with e-mail. The post office actually beat out Federal Express for the right to deliver Amazon’s package, as well as U.P.S., but in the long run, the real winner may be Amazon. A business analyst at The Motley Fool points out that people who join Amazon’s Prime program ultimately use Amazon for the majority of their online shopping, and end up spending more than twice the amount spent by non-Prime members. In fact, on average prime members spend $1,200 a year on Amazon’s web site.

So it’s no wonder Amazon’s willing to try Sunday deliveries as a way to attract even more Prime customers. And The Motley Fool predicts that soon, Amazon may be offering Sunday delivery service to the entire country!

A $40 Credit When You Buy a Kindle Fire

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Amazon discounts the Kindle Fire HD with a red gift bow for the Christmas holiday

For the next two days, Amazon is offering all their customers in the U.S. a $40 credit for “digital content” when you buy any new Kindle Fire. That’s $40 for ebooks, or any other digital content (like apps, music, movies, or TV shows). It’s almost like getting a Kindle Fire for $99 (since the cheapest model currently costs $139).

For a shortcut to Amazon’s promotion, point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/KindleFire40

Just be sure to enter the code “Kindle40” when you’re completing your purchase. And Amazon’s making it even easier to try out one of their new Kindle Fire HDX tablets. At the side of each Kindle’s web page, they’re now touting a 30-day “risk-free” trial. “If you’re not 100% satisfied, you can return your device in new condition within 30 days”, it explains. But if you read the fine print, Amazon will actually let you keep your Kindle for almost ninety days before returning it.

If you purchase a Kindle any time between November 1st and December 31st, Amazon will let you keep it all the way through January 31st, and still return it for a full refund (according to Amazon’s Returns web page). And it’s got another interesting policy I didn’t know about. Apparently you can always return a Kindle within 60 days of its purchase for an 80% refund. Basically, Amazon’s trying to make it as easy as possible to try out your new Kindle to see if you like it.

One Amazon customer even reports that Amazon’s $40 credit may be just the beginning. After chatting with a customer support rep at Amazon, she posted on the Kindle Boards forum that “they are planning several promotions over the next few weeks.” It makes sense that Amazon would want to encourage people to Kindle Fire tablets during the big holiday shopping season. It’s got me wondering what else they might offer us in the future that could be better than a $40 credit?

By the way, I found the $40 credit on a technology blog that’s called “Gotta Be Mobile,” and they noticed that there was one more thing to watch for. The $40 credit apparently expires in March of 2014. (So about three and a half months from this week). “March of next year is a ways off,” the blogger writes, “and most users could go through $40 worth of credit in a heart beat, but if you’re the kind of user who likes to save your credit until something good comes along, it’ll be important to keep that expiration date in mind.”

But if you’re already wondering if you should buy a new Kindle Fire, now Amazon is giving you one more reason to say yes!

For a shortcut to Amazon’s $40 credit promotion, point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/KindleFire40

Free Comic Books For Your Kindle!

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Batman Li'l Gotham Halloween coverThe GIrl with the Dragon Tattoo graphic novel cover
The cover of the first issue of Mad MagazineBatman Flashpoint graphic novel cover

I love reading comic books on my Kindle. The colors look great on any of the Kindle Fire tablets, and you can read them in black in white on most of the newer Kindles, too. So I was delighted to see that Amazon’s giving away some new comic books for free, making it easy for people to give them a try. And one of the free comic books is the very first issue of MAD Magazine — plus a preview of a new comic based on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!

To find all the discounts, just point your web browser to tinyurl.com/KindleComicBooks . Towards the bottom of the page, Amazon’s Comic Book Store for the Kindle lets you select “Sort By Price: Low to High”. It’s fun to read the 1952 letter that appeared in the first issue of MAD Magazine. (“…in the next few moments, you will be one of the many who are deciding the fate of MAD all over the country.”) Each issue cost just 10 cents, and its first issue included parodies of horror movies and TV westerns.

You can also read the color versions of all these graphic novels on other devices by using one of Amazon’s Kindle app. (It’s even possible to read Kindle ebooks on a Nook, by installing Amazon’s Kindle app from the Google Play Store!) But it’s also kind of fun to read a story-with-pictures on a black-and-white e-ink Kindle. Thanks to Amazon’s arrangements with all the top publishers, including D.C. and Marvel, there’s a lot to choose from, and many full-length graphic novels have also been discounted to between $3 and $4!

Also free is the 25-page preview of Vertigo Comics adaptation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” (“Delve into the dark mystery of the Vanger family, as disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired to uncover the truth behind a teenage girl’s disappearance over forty years ago…”) At least one reviewer on Amazon said it was a great companion to the best-selling mystery trilogy, adding that “The artwork in it is amazing!” and giving it five stars. The full edition (for $9.99) was just published last year, so it’s relatively new — and they’re giving away 25 of its 152 pages free!

There’s also a funny free Thanksgiving comic that looks at Batman when he was a child — as part of D.C. Comics special series, Li’l Gotham. It’s one of two stories in D.C.’s “Halloween Comic Fest 2013”, a 22-page holiday give-away that’s a nice way to celebrate the season. “Every once you in a while you just want to see the citizens of Gotham in a new light,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, “and that’s exactly what this book is all about.” And of course, they added that the artwork of the superheroes as trick-or-treating children “looked like fun to draw!”

Also free is the 22-page Batman comic Flashpoint — the first chapter of a longer Batman graphic novel. (“When the Joker kidnaps the children of the city’s District Attorney, the Batman takes the case,” reads its description at Amazon. “But the man under the mask may not be the Dark Knight we know!”) Amazon’s also promising that ten D.C. graphic novels featuring Batman for $3.03, including Batman & Robin: Born to Kill, The Dark Night: Knight Terrors, and Batman: The Court of Owls. I got the 144-page novel Catwoman: The Game for just $3.03, and the same discount is also available for Justice League: Origin, Batgirl: The Darkest Reflection, and Teen Titans: Its Our Right to Fight..

Catwoman comic book cover

And Amazon’s also announced that they’ve discounted single issues of many classic comic books by Alan Moore to just 99 cents — including stories about The Watchmen and his original V for Vendetta.

But Marvel comics also has some graphic novels on sale, including the legendary Ultimate Comics: Wolverine vs Hulk, a 144-page graphic novel for just $1.99. Several more graphic novels are $3.82, like Spider-Man: Anti-Venom, X-Force: Sex and Violence, and Ant-Man & Wasp: Small World. There’s also discounts on graphic novels starring Iron Man, The Avengers, and Thor, though I don’t think the Kindle Store has any single issues available for Marvel Comics. But there’s another way to get free single-issue comics from both Marvel and D.C. if you have a Kindle Fire. Just install an app called Comixology, and there’s lots of free comic books to download from all the major publishers!

That’s a lot of comic books — but it’s a fun way to enjoy the weekend. On a lazy Sunday afternoon, it’s fun to curl up on the couch and avoid the chilly autumn weather, staying warm and cozy, and enjoying some colorful stories…

Find all of Amazon’s Kindle Comic Books at
tinyurl.com/KindleComicBooks

Amazon Thanks Airlines With One-Day Kindle Sale!

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Alex Baldwin plays a pilot on Saturday Night Live

Today only, you can buy a new Kindle on Amazon for just $59! And a Kindle Fire HD is just $118. Even a new Kindle Fire HDX will only cost you $195 today.

For a shortcut to all the Kindle deals, just point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/KindleFireHDX

And Amazon’s offering the discounts for a surprising reason. They’re celebrating a new rule that now allows Kindles (and other electronic devices) to be used on an airplane, even during the take-off and landing. “Thank you, FAA” read a big announcement on the front page of Amazon today. They even included a link to the official press release on the web site for the Federal Aviation Administration. (“… the FAA has determined that airlines can safely expand passenger use of Portable Electronic Devices during all phases of flight, and is immediately providing the airlines with implementation guidance.”)

To claim your discount today, Amazon’s even created an appropriate promotional code: ThnksFAA. “To say thank you, we’re taking 15%,” Amazon’s announcement explains. “You can now use your Kindle from take-off through landing!” It’s a one-per-customer discount, and Amazon’s also announcing their standard “while supplies last” disclaimer. But it’s still a nice way to celebrate the new ability to read your Kindle through the entire duration of any flight.

“We’ve been fighting for our customers on this issue for years,” one Amazon executive announced in a press release, “and we are thrilled by the FAA’s recent decision.” He called the FAA’s decision “a big win” for customers, and noted that even though the new policy was just announced on Thursday, Delta Airlines and JetBlue have already implemented the new rules on their flights.

It’s been fun to see the reactions online. One technology web site joked that Amazon was celebrating “the best way it knows how…holding a sale!” And the Washington Post notes that at one point, Amazon actually loaded up an airplane with Kindles — all of them turned on — to drive home their point to the FAA that Kindles should be allowed to operate even during a plane’s take-off.

But my favorite story came from the Boston Globe, which shared stories from flight attendants about facing children with tears in their eyes who didn’t want to turn off their videos. And there’s even a story about TV star Alec Baldwin, who in 2011 wanted to keep playing the game “Words with Friends” on his tablet, who made so much noise about it that he was finally kicked off the plane! Ironically, Baldwin got the last laugh by appearing on Saturday Night Live later that month — by playing a pilot from the same airline who believed that the actor was in the right. Don’t phones interfere with the plane’s communications system, the parody newscaster asks the actor.

“Oh, you don’t believe that, do you…? ” he replies. “Would you really get on an airplane that flew 30,000 feet in the air if you thought one Kindle switch could take it down? C’mon, it’s just a cruel joke perpetrated by the airline industry.

“And we would’ve gotten away with it, but Alec Baldwin was just too smart for us….!

Remember, for a shortcut to all the Kindle deals, just point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/KindleFireHDX

Zombies on your Kindle!

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Cover illustration from R. L. Stine's Goosebumps zombie high school ebook

I have a special holiday tradition. Each year on Halloween, I creep up on the Kindle Store, and take a peek at just how many zombie titles have crawled out into the marketplace. On Halloween night in 2011, there were 2,269 different Kindle ebooks with their word “zombie” in their title. But by 2012, that number had more than doubled, with 4,874 zombie ebooks now available on the Kindle. And this year? OMG!

Amazon’s Kindle store now has 8,052 zombie ebooks!

I’ve joked about the “rising zombie ebook invasion,” but the numbers really do show an unmistakeable trend. One Halloween, I noticed that one of the top 100 free ebooks in the Kindle Store was something called Super Zombie Juice Mega Bomb. But the real message may be that each Halloween, there’s more and more self-published authors who are writing zombie fiction. Even the Library of Congress only has 674 books with the word “zombie” in their title (up from 523 in 2011 and 601 in 2012). Oh my god, run everybody — Amazon’s Kindle store now has nearly 12 times as many zombies!!!

Even if they’re not real zombies, there’s something that’s almost viral about their popularity, suggesting that the Kindle store’s amateur authors are especially attracted to the zombie genre. Or are they? Sometimes it’s hard to tell the amateurs from the pros. Take a peek at the new titles, and you’ll be startled at just how many zombie ebooks there are. Don’t look now, but the living dead could be shambling up to your Kindle!

Here’s some of the stranger ebooks.


Zombie Girl Invasion
Wesley and the Sex Zombies (Free!)
The Scarlet Zombie Sketchbook #1
Zombie Day Care (Free!)

A Girl’s Guide To Falling In Love With A Zombie
Rock And Roll Reform School Zombies
My Life as A White Trash Zombie

Zombie Lust and The New Flesh
How to Make Love like a Zombie
Zombie Road Trip
Jesus vs. the Zombies of Perdition


To be fair, “Texas Biker Zombies From Outer Space” is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, “intentionally designed to give the reader an interactive experience using the advantages over print that E-Books allow.” And Zombie Spaceship Wasteland was written by actor/comedian Patton Oswalt, using the horror movie monsters as a metaphor in a collection of essays “vividly evoking his zombie-like co-worker,” according to Booklist‘s review. Even 71-year-old literary author Joyce Carol Oates — twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — named her 1996 novel Zombie (P.S.) It’s about a serial killer — named Zombie — who keeps a diary as he pursues his victims.

But yeah, most of the titles in the Kindle Store aren’t as ambitious.


I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It
Married with Zombies
Zombie Blondes
Zombies Eat Lawyers

Confessions of a Zombie’s Wife
Slow and Sweet: A Love Story, With Zombies
Zombie Erotica: An Undead Anthology
Never Slow Dance with a Zombie

A Cold Dark School with Zombies at the Gates
Zombie Queen of Newbury High
Zombie Fight Song
Jesus Camp Zombie Bloodbath

The Code of the Zombie Pirate
Battle of the Network Zombies
Hungry for Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance
Diary of a Duct Tape Zombie


I can understand why some of these books aren’t in the Library of Congress. (It’s probably more surprising that there’s any zombie books in the Library of Congress.) But to explore the popularity of stories about the shambling undead, I asked my friend Thomas Roche, a professional writer for more than 15 years, who’s just published his first novel about zombies. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten a quote back.

I think zombies may have actually eaten his brains.

Or maybe he’s just busy reading all the ebooks he’s competing with…


Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies
Zombie Dawn Apocalypse
Breaking News: an Autozombiography
Brains For Lunch: A Zombie Novel in Haiku?!

Road Kill: A Zombie Tale
I, Zombie
The Christian Zombie Killer’s Handbook
Zombie Hero #3: “Keep On Truckin”

Zombie Combat Manual
The Zurvivalist – Real Life Solutions to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse
Zombology: A Zombie Anthology
Brains: A Zombie Memoir

Zombie Sniper
You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News
Zombie P.I.
Why I Quit Zombie School


That last book is actually the newest book in R. L. Stine’s popular “Goosebumps” series of scary stories for younger readers (which have sold more than 350 million copies. I used its colorful cover at the top of this blog post. It’s easy to laugh at the titles, but they may have tapped into a storyline with some primal universal appeal. Some authors have enjoyed wild success by re-creating our darkest nightmares, and maybe that’s the ultimate irony.

It’s not that the zombies are attracted to our brains. It’s that our brains are attracted to zombies!


Zombies vs Unicorns
Zombies Sold Separately
Zombies and Power Tools
Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime: A Book of Zombie Love Songs

Zombie Jamboree
Zombie Safari
Zombies for Jesus
Attack of the Shark-Headed Zombies

Jailbait Zombie
What Do You Do With Dead Zombies?
Zombiestan
Forward, Shamble!: A Bob the Zombie Novel

The Art of War for Zombies – Ancient Chinese Secrets of World Domination, Apocalypse Edition
Superheroes vs Zombies
The Adventures of Zombie Boy
Zombie Butts from Uranus


There’s even zombie Christmas books, believe it or not, including A Zombie Christmas Carol and A Christmas Carol of the Living Dead: a zombie holiday tale. (Plus A Zombie Christmas and “A Christmas Wish: A Zombie Tale for the Holidays.”) If you think that’s confusing, try reading The Christmas Zombie: The story of why zombies celebrate Christmas. And if you’re just looking for holiday cheer, there’s It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies (Christmas carols “composed specifically for…the decomposing).”

Some authors have also tried their hand at creating zombie books for other holidays. (Like Dangerous Hunts: A Zombie Father’s Day Tale.”) And A Very Zombie Holiday even follows a zombie father as he attempts to celebrate every holiday with his living family. If you’re after a classic bedtime story, there’s Snow White and the Seven Dead Dwarves: A Zombie Fairy Tale.” And for educational purposes, there’s also something called Zombie Ed Counts To Twenty, and its sequel, Zombie Ed Loves Halloween. (“Text-to-speech enabled… Finally! A zombie book for children! “)

And — uh-oh. Here comes another wave of more strange zombie ebooks…


Zombies vs. Nazis
Don of the Dead: A Mafia Zombie Novel
The Zombie Cookbook
“Rednecks Who Shoot Zombies, on the Next Geraldo”

501 Things to do with a Zombie
Zombies Wearing Hats
Zombies Hate Vegetables, Too
Grampa’s Zombie BBQ

Frankenstein, The Zombie Hunter
Love in a Time of Zombies
An Inconvenient Amish Zombie Left Behind The Da Vinci Diet Code Truth
Zombies Don’t Play Soccer

Dr. Zombie Lives Next Door
Zombies Ride Motorcycles
Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion
Zombies at the Bar Mitzvah


I’m not sure what to make of an ebook called James Joyce and the Zombie Priest, though it’s attracted at least one positive review on its web page at Amazon. (“If there is a better zombie version of Araby by James Joyce, it would be news to me!”) This trend probably all started when real-world bookstores started seeing big sales of a 2009 parody novel called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (crediting Jane Austen as a co-author). It rose to #3 on the New York Times best-seller list, according to Wikipedia, apparently spawning a new generation of even stranger zombie novels — and zombie ebooks. There’s even a Garrison Keillor parody called The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten that’s attributed to an author named Harrison Geillor. (“The humor in this parody lies in the simple truth that even a zombie bear with a hatchet in its head won’t faze a Minnesotan,” writes Publisher’s Weekly.)

And there’s zombie parodies of other books — like Zombies of Oz (and The Terrible Zombie of Oz). There’s also The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim and Wuthering Heights and a Werewolf…and a Zombie Too.” Someone’s even written zombie versions of two Sherlock Holmes stories, a book of zombie fairy tales, and a zombie version of The War of the Worlds (“plus Blood, Guts, and Zombies”). And if you liked Great Expectations, you might try Pip and the Zombies, by Charles Dickens and Louis Skipper.

In the two years since Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the concept has apparently festered its way into a full-fledged literary movement. I was surprised to see a book titled simply Zombies for Zombies — until I realized it was a parody of the “For Dummies” book (receiving thirteen 5-star reviews). There’s also The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Zombies, which strangely is not a parody, but an official title in the “Idiot’s Guide” series, which traces the origin of zombie stories with chapters about books, movies, and comic books. But just when it couldn’t get any creepier, I discovered that there’s even some zombie books that are actually about personal investing.


Zombie Economics: A Guide to Personal Finance
How to Prosper During the Coming Zombie Apocalypse
Workplace Of The Living Dead: What Zombies Can Teach Leaders About Engaging Employees
Zombie Project Management


And there’s also some zombie history books. (Which, honestly, throws some doubt over their historical accuracy.)


A Zombie’s History of the United States
A Tale of Zombies in Czarist Russia
A Tale of Zombies in the Old West
Everything My Grandmother Taught Me about Killing Zombies
The Eagle has Re-Animated
Pappy’s Old Time Zombie Radio Show
Zombies Take Manhattan


There’s something strangely inspiring about the sheer number of books that have ultimately been inspired about zombies. It’s nice to see this massive outpouring of new creativity, as people all around the globe start wondering what’s going to happen in their own imaginary zombie scenario. In fact, zombies are turning up in a surprising variety of different kinds of books. Though some authors even seem to think that maybe the lonely zombies just need a friend…


Zachary Zombie and the Lost Boy
Jude and the Zombies
Peter Crombie, Teenage Zombie
Nobody Wants to Play With Zombie Jesus

Jasper, the Friendly Zombie
How I met Barbara the Zombie Hunter
The Student from Zombie Island
Zombie Joe and the Pogo Stick legs

Growing Up Zombie
Oh No, Our Best Friend is a Zombie!
Timothy Holbrook and the Zombie Curse
Proper Care and Feeding of Zombies

Zombie Mommy
Phredde and the Zombie Librarian
Day of the Field Trip Zombies
Mom and Dad Aren’t Getting Along (Now That Mom’s a Zombie)



Maybe they were also inspired by the success of the Twilight series of books about a vampire’s teenaged romance. (One ebook author has even written Vampire Among the Zombies.) But I had to laugh when I saw an ebook titled “Where are the Zombies?”

Dude, you’re not paying attention. They’re everywhere!

Amazon Offers Free Kindle eBooks For your Print-Book Purchases

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Curious George
I was really surprised when I first heard the news on the Kindle’s page on Facebook. “Imagine you bought a book from Amazon 18 years ago… and then 18 years later, you could add that book to your Kindle library for free or no more than $2.99. We call it Kindle MatchBook, available starting today.”

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

At that URL, Amazon offers a link that displays a list of every print book you’ve purchased from Amazon in the last 18 years that’s now available as a free (or discounted) Kindle ebook. “Over 70,000 books are enrolled in Kindle MatchBook,” Amazon explains in a press release — adding that every day, even more Kindle ebooks will become available. “It’s been great to see the positive response to MatchBook from both readers and publishers,” announceds Amazon’s Vice President of Kindle Content, noting that it took just a couple of weeks for the number of titles to jump from 10,000 to 70,000 — and predicting even bigger jumps in the months ahead.

I’ve never seen anything like this — and it’s stunning to see the scope of this program. “Print purchases all the way back to 1995 – when Amazon first opened its online bookstore – will qualify once a publisher enrolls a title in Kindle MatchBook,” Amazon explained in today’s announcement. The only bad news is I haven’t purchased many of the print editions which would qualify me for the big Kindle discount. This morning I clicked the link at Kindle Matchbook, and discovered there was only one Kindle ebook where I’d qualify for a discount: the children’s picture book Curious George.

But even that brought back a happy memory. At first I couldn’t even remember buying the book — and why had I bought it in 2006? Then I remembered a friend of mine who’d been teaching children in the Marshall Islands. I started a campaign to show her some support, suggesting to her friends online that we should all mail her one of our own favorite children’s picture books (from when we were schoolchildren). And I’d thought that the children in the Marshall Islands might enjoy the story about the happy monkey in the jungle who meets up with a Man in the Yellow Hat!

I enjoyed that experience, because it’s fun to share the joy of reading — and in a small way, I feel like Amazon is offering a similar experience. Kindle owners are getting a chance to read a lot of ebooks that Amazon knows we’re going to like — because at some point in the last 18 years, we’ve already purchased a copy! Of course, Amazon is also encouraging people to start doing their reading on their Kindles — but like a lot of stories, it all comes down to one basic truth.

Reading is fun, no matter where you do it. (Or, in the case of Amazon’s KindleMatchbook program — no matter when you did it!) :)

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

My Favorite Free Halloween eBooks

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Edgar Allen Poe

It’s a cold, blustery October night, and there’s leaves blowing against my window. It’s the perfect time for remembering some of the greatest scary stories ever written — especially since they’re all now available as free Kindle ebooks!


The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Ichabod Crane had heard the ghost stories about a headless horseman that rides through the night. On that very night, traveling home alone himself, under the light of a full moon he has his own legendary encounter with…ah, but there’s a twist at the end. And all these years after first hearing the story, I’ve discovered it’s just part of a much larger work. Washington Irving was the very first best-selling author in America, and he’d followed up his first sensational debut with a new collection of essays and stories — including some scary new folk tales that he’d actually made up himself! This collection also includes the famous story of Rip Van Winkle, who falls asleep before the American Revolution — and wakes up 20 years later, after the colonies have revolted and formed their own independent nation!


The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a surprising number of America’s best-known horror stories, including Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum. His poetry is also very dark — Ulalume actually takes place around Halloween night — but his obsession with morbid themes also ultimately led him to become the author of the first detective story every written. It’s a murder mystery, of course — you’ll never guess who actually committed The Murders in the Rue Morgue — and Poe later even wrote two more stories using the same detective — The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter. But there’s also a surprisingly scary tale where a murderer is unmasked in the most shocking way possible — entitled “Thou Art the Man”. Twist endings were actually very popular in Poe’s time, and I’ve been surprised just how well some of his stories hold up!


Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Percy Shelley died when he was 29 — though he was acclaimed as one of England’s greatest romantic poets. Some of this is through the efforts of his wife Mary, who promoted and edited his poems. And it’s been said that he may have had an infleunce himself on her intense novel, Frankenstein. Its idea came from a nightmare, and turned into her gothic story about about a promising young man who suffers the death of a loved one, and then embarks on a scientific experiment which he’ll later come to regret. It was first published anonymously in 1818, though it’s since gone on to become a classic monster story. (And Wikipedia has uncovered another strange historical twist. Mary WollstonecraftShelley was actually romantically interested in Washington Irving, the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow!)


Dracula by Bram Stoker

Written just 126 years ago, Dracula is relatively modern for a classic horror story. Its author, Bram Stoker actually died in poverty just 14 years after publishing Dracula, according to Wikipedia, and his horror novel didn’t become popular until well into the next century. (It just goes to show how the invention of moving pictures changed everything — including the way we experienced our monster stories.) But interestingly, an early fan of the novel was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the Sherlock Holmes series. If you reach back 100 years, you’ll find lots of clever authors who appreciated both mystery and menace — and the joys of a good scary novel.

And 100 years later, you can read them all for free on your Kindle!

Amazon Announces New Geeky Toy List

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Mattel's Barbie Digital Dress

Sometimes I’m just a big kid — and I love how Amazon’s created a special page with their “top picks” for new holiday gifts. (For a shortcut, just point your browser to tinyurl.com/AmazonToyList ) And last week Amazon finally announced their 2013 picks — adding that for the first time ever, it’s including toys that were voted on by “Amazon Moms”, a free program that offers discounts to parents on supplies from their children. Amazon’s goal, of course, is to create what they’re calling “a one-stop destination for holiday shoppers.” But it’s still fun to browse through their selections…and window shop for all the fun toys!

For example, did you know that a large Kindle Fire HD (with an 8.9-inch screen) now costs just $229? It’s one of Amazon’s top gift suggestions in their “Electronics” category (of course) — though it’s competing with nine different Furbies. But the coolest electronic gadget is, strangely enough, a new digital Barbie Doll from Mattel. She’s wearing a dress with real flashing LED lights, “combining fashion, sound-activation and on-trend technology” (according to Barbie’s web page on Amazon.) Little girls can punch in their own rhythms, or use one of Barbie’s built-in light shows — and here’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear. “Barbie doll’s black dress uses a 4.5 square inch resistive touch panel and 114 tri-color LEDs…”

Amazon’s also selling — and I’m not kidding — an Angry Birds Advent Calendar. There’s little gifts behind each square, and the game comes with little Angry Birds that you can actually shoot at stacks of little blocks — using a real-life version of that catapult from the Angry Birds phone app! “Now you can bring the Angry Birds experience from your smartphone to real life,” explains the web page at Amazon, which identifies it as one of the best gifts for children of 2013. It’s also an Amazon exclusive, and according to at least one reviewer on Amazon, “If you are a fan of Angry Birds, you absolutely MUST have this set. It is so adorable!”

Angry Birds Advent Calendar

Amazon’s also selling a speaker that you can plug in to your Kindle Fire that’s shaped like Minnie Mouse! It’s got a standard speaker jack, so it works with any audio source, and its web page on Amazon promises a “size-defying sound”. There’s also one shaped like Iron Man from the Avengers — or Captain America, and even Spongebob Squarepants.

And I thought it was cool that now you can even buy your daughter a pink journal that’s protected by digital technology. It only opens when its owner speaks a password into a microphone — and the journal even uses voice-recognition technology to make sure that the password was spoken by the right person! It’s manufactured by Mattel, and the Password Journal also comes with an “invisible ink pen” — so girls can write messages which can only be seen when they’re light up with the journal’s built-in ultraviolet light. And behind the journal (built into its pink plastic case), there’s a hidden “secret compartment” which has its own second password. Girls can even record a greeting, which is played back every time they open it up!

Mattel's Password Journal

But the most exciting thing about Amazon’s “Holiday Toy List” is the fact that they’ve incorporated one of my all-time favorite Amazon features — the “Lightning Deals”. Every day for a few hours, they sell a small quantity of a specific item at a big discount. Amazon tracks exactly how many seconds are left for the offer, and what percentage of the item has already been sold! (Right now they’re offering a 40% discount on Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles — a hardcover book giving you all the backstory on your that little Yoda “minifig” from Lego — and with 20 minutes and 43 seconds left to go, they’ve already sold off 47% of them.) Like I said, sometimes I’m just a big kid — especially when it comes to cool, cutting-edge toys.

And now Amazon’s collected them all together into one place — and started selling them at a discount!

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

The Kindle Fire HDX is NOT the Best Tablet Ever?

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Kindle Fire HDX shows Iron Man

I really enjoyed CNN’s review of the newest Kindle Paperwhite, which they’d called “the best digital reader ever.” So I had to laugh when I saw a review for Amazon’s new color table, the Kindle Fire HDX. Business Insider gave a review with a headline that was exactly opposite. They wrote that newest Kindle Fire was “Not The Best Tablet You Can Buy”.

But they still called it Amazon’s best tablet ever.

So what did they like about the tablet? First, its 7-inch screen “is sharper than the relatively weak display on Apple’s iPad Mini”. And the design of the tablet has been improved too, so it’s now got a comfortable angular shaped (as opposed to the box-with-rounded-corners design of the earlier Kindle Fires). Their reviewer, Steve Kovach, ultimately concludes that the device’s battery life was “pretty good,” lasting about six or seven hours on a single charge. And I think that’s a bigger deal than he recognizes, because high-definition screens always do tend to use up more of your battery’s charge.

So what didn’t he like? Hisfirst real complaint seemed to be that Amazon’s app store has a lot fewer apps than Google’s own app store (which is available on most other devices). He even writes that the selection of apps for the Kindle Fire is “tiny” — just 85,000, versus the nearly 1 million that are available in Google’s store. But ultimately I think the reviewer makes a mistake when he writes that the Kindle Fire is “missing” popular Google services like YouTube and Gmail. You can watch YouTube videos just fine on a Kindle Fire if you download a free third-party app like FREEdi YouTube player — and you can also set up the e-mail application on your Kindle Fire so it’s downloading its email from Gmail.

I think Business Insider makes that mistake because it fits into their larger percerption — that just like the earlier version of the tablet, the Kindle Fire HDX “is a pitchman that tries to entice you to buy more stuff from Amazon at every turn…. The tablet is constantly encouraging you to dip into the bank and buy more stuff from Amazon.” But their reviewer acknowledges that there’s a perfectly good reason why Amazon is doing this, calling it “part of the reason why you can get the Kindle Fire HDX for just $229.”

But the most interesting line of his review isn’t even in the review, but in the author’s byline, which includes this disclaimer. “Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.” On the one hand, you could worry about what happens when our news outlets are being purchased by the people that they’re supposed to be covering. But on the other hand, it seems pretty clear that their reviewers still aren’t pulling any punches!

I think my favorite line of the review came when they were discussing one of the newest features on the Kindle Fire HDX — its “Mayday” button, which instantly connects you to live a human being who can help you with technical problems. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has always insisted that customer service is a big part of what made his company so successful, and even Business Insider applauded their newest approach. “[I]t’s pretty cool that Amazon has invested so heavily in customer service that it has real humans waiting to help you out 24/7 at the push of a button.

“That’s much better than running down to the Apple Store and waiting forever for a Genius to help you!”

For a shortcut to Amazon’s Kindle HDX page, go to
tinyurl.com/KindleFireHDX

Columbus Day Meets the Kindle!

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Portrait of Christopher Columbus

Monday is “Columbus Day” in America, remembering the day in 1492 when the European explorer finally succeeded in crossing the Atlantic Ocean and “discovering” North America. (And it’s also celebrated in some Latin American countries as Dia de la Raza, and as Discovery Day in the Bahamas, according to Wikipedia.) It’s a federal holiday in the United States, so the banks and the post office will be closed. But fortunately, there’s lots of ways to celebrate Columbus Day with your Kindle – including several free ebooks!

I remember being fascinated last year when I learned exactly what happened when Columbus approached Queen Isabella’s court. I’d been taught for years that 15th-century scholars insisted that the world was flat, while brave Columbus had argued that no, the planet was round. But it turns out that’s a horrific myth, and “there never was a period of ‘flat earth darkness’ among scholars…” according to Stephen Jay Gould (in a book cited by Wikipedia). And I’d also discovered another startling truth while browsing Wikipedia with my Kindle: that Christopher Columbus story has a surprising connection to a very famous American author from the 1800s.

He wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as well as Rip Van Winkle and Washington Irving was one of the first American authors to gain literary recognition in Europe. (Both those stories were part of a larger collection called The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, which is available as a free Kindle eBook!) But Washington Irving also perpetrated one of the great literary hoaxes, placing fake newspaper ads seeking a fictitious Dutch historian named Diedrich Knickerbocker, and threatening to publish his left-behind manuscript to cover unpaid bills! Though in fact Irving had written the manuscript himself, and it became a best-seller when he finally had it published! (That book is also available as a free Kindle ebook…)

Another story about the author says that Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was even interested in him romantically, according to Wikipedia. And yet after an early spark of youthful success, the critics began panning Irving’s books, and by the age of 41, Irving was facing financial difficulties. But his past literary success earned him an appointment in 1826 as an American diplomatic attache in Spain. And it was there that he gained access to historical manuscripts about Columbus that had only recently been made available to the public.

Irving used them to write The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, a work which became wildly popular in both the United States and Europe. By the end of the century, the book would be published in over 175 editions. Yes, it’s also available for the Kindle, though for some reason only Volume 2 is available in the free edition. (“…a new scene of trouble and anxiety opened upon him, destined to impede the prosecution of his enterprises, and to affect all his future fortunes.”)

Another 19th-century American also assembled his own exhaustive biography about the life of Columbus. Edward Everett Hale is most famous for the patriotic short story, The Man Without a Country. But he also created a scholarly work called The Life of Columbus From His Own Letters and Journals and Other Documents of His Time. You can download it for free from Amazon’s Kindle store, and savor the historic moment when Columbus first makes contact with the New World. “It was on Friday, the twelfth of October, that they saw this island… When they were ashore they saw very green trees and much water, and fruits of different kinds.”

There’s also a historical book called Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery that was published in 1906. It’s scattered as free ebooks throughout Amazon’s Kindle store, though it’s Volume 2 where Columbus first makes landfall. (“…it was a different matter on Friday morning, October 12, 1492, when, all having been made snug on board the Santa Maria, the Admiral of the Ocean Seas put on his armour and his scarlet cloak over it and prepared to go ashore.”)

This text was prepared by Project Gutenberg, and this particular paragraph comes with a disillusioning footnote. Columbus may have recorded the date of his landfall as October 12, but “This date is reckoned in the old style. The true astronomical date would be October 21st, which is the modern anniversary of the discovery.” Columbus may be one of those historical figures who’s become so familiar, that we actually don’t know him at all!

                        *                        *                        *


Click Here to Read about Columbus on Wikipedia

Free ebooks about Columbus:

Washington Irving’s The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,

The Life of Columbus From His Own Letters and Journals and Other Documents of His Time.

Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery

CNN Calls The Paperwhite “The Best Reader Ever”

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The CNNMoney and Fortune magazine logo

You hear it all the time. People want to gush about how happy they are — after a good meal, for example — and they’ll say “This is the best sandwich ever.” I always smile, since you can’t actually have surveyed every single sandwich ever created in the history of time. But it is possible to test out every Kindle, every Nook, and every digital reading device ever made. Someone’s finally done a comparison of every single device, and they’ve declared that Amazon’s newest Kindle Paperwhite is, in fact, the best digital reader ever.

It was CNN.

America’s prestigious 24-hour news channel just posted a new review of the next generation of Kindle Paperwhite — and I’ve never seen such a positive review. “Once upon a time, there was an argument to be made for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader,” the article begins, “but with the introduction of the Kindle Paperwhite last fall, that battle turned from competitive to no contest.” They applaud the thin, light design of the new devices, saying the Kindle Paperwhite ” finds a perfect sweet spot of size and weight without becoming too difficult to handle or feeling too cheap.” And they also loved the display of the Paperwhite, noting it’s high-contrast and the way it refreshes the words on the screen quickly.

Even while they were complaining that Amazon’s estimate of the battery life might be a little high, they admit that most users will be able to read on the new Paperwhite for several weeks before having to recharge it. And they even praised the touchscreen interface for being quick to respond to the user’s touches. I know people who love their Kindles, but it’s really impressive that one of their new fans is CNNMoney — which is also the online home for two well-respected American finance magazines, Fortune and Money. And according to Wikipedia, more than 10.8 million people visit the CNN Money site each month — so this could become a very influential review.

But there was also a very interesting twist. One of the advantages CNN cited for the Paperwhite was the exclusive-to-Amazon “Kindle Singles” — the short, cheap works written by established authors, which you can’t get on any other device. And they cited something which I agree is one of the most compelling features about Amazon’s ecosystem: the Kindle Lending Library, which lets you borrow one ebook from the library each month without having to pay for it.

Of course, to be fair, the Nook lets you read almost any ebook for free — if you’re willing to actually take your Nook into a Barnes and Noble Store. But CNN’s reviewer wasn’t swayed, and came down unequivocally in favor of the new Kindle Paperwhite. Their conclusion?

“Ultimately there’s no reason not to buy an Amazon e-reader right now. It provides the best hardware and the best ecosystem.”

Amazon is Sold Out of Kindle Paperwhites!

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Amazon announces shipping delays for new Kindle Paperwhite

I noticed something funny this morning when I went to Amazon to buy a Kindle Paperwhite. I couldn’t do it! Amazon isn’t able to ship the new Kindle Paperwhite any time this week, and is warning customers that if they purchase one, Amazon’s warehouse will actually ship it out “in 7 to 10 days”.

What’s really interesting is the new Kindle Paperwhite has only been available for nine days. But Amazon had been taking pre-orders since September 3rd, when they first announced the next-generation of their popular high-contrast (and glowing) screen. (“World’s best-selling e-reader now even better,” read the headline on Amazon’s press release…) And what’s even stranger is the 10-day delays may actually be an improvement. Friday one technology blog reported that Amazon was warning customers that the new Paperwhites would be shipping from their warehouses “in four to six weeks!”

Amazon prefixed Friday’s warning about a shipping delay with the words “Due to popular demand”, according to the technology blog — a nice way to acknowledge that their newest Kindle has been very popular. But Amazon also put a new restriction on Kindle purchases: “Limited to two per customer.” I no longer see that restriction on the Kindle Paperwhite page today — which is almost even more disturbing. Does this mean that Amazon has suddenly caught up with the initial onslaught of orders, and now has enough Paperwhites to last through a delay that they thought would last three weeks? Or did one of their suppliers suddenly resolve a problem getting the components to build the devices — so they can now start producing them at a faster rate. This is good news for Amazon’s customers — since their “countdown to Kindles” is now much shorter.

Still, you might want to get your order in early if you’re thinking about buying one of Amazon’s newest Kindle Paperwhites. There’s no guarantee that the shipping delay will remain at 7 to 10 days — and the delays could be even longer when more people start purchasing Kindles as a gift for Christmas. Maybe the new Kindle Paperwhite will be this year’s “Cabbage Patch Kid” — a gift so popular that it’s impossible to get, which makes more people want to buy them just so they can re-sell them at a profit. If that actually happened, then the delays get longer and longer — and you’d have a much harder time getting your own Kindle Paperwhite any time before January!

I wondered if Amazon might sell the previous generation of Kindle Paperwhites, but they obviously want to make sure their customers are only getting the very latest technology But what’s more interesting is that even before the new Kindle Paperwhite was released, Amazon was already sold out of the previous model. In fact, I have to applaud the technology site Geek.com, which reported in August that Amazon was already sold out of the WiFi-only Paperwhites. Because they correctly recognized that this was a sign that Amazon was about to release a new model of the Paperwhite — and that prediction was spot-on, because Amazon did just that, just six days later. (“Get your wallets ready,” Geek.com had urged their readers….)

And that’s still good advice — especially since supplies may be running out, at least temporarily, for the new Kindle Paperwhite.

People React to Amazon’s Newest Kindle

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Amazon Hidden Camera Kindle Interviews

Amazon’s just released a new ad for their Kindle Paperwhite — and I wish I could put it into a time capsule. Because it perfectly captures a moment in the evolution of reading. Of course, from Amazon’s perspective, it’s just another way of reaching out to the people who are still resisting the idea of reading ebooks on a Kindle. But they came up with a really clever way to do it — and it makes for some very compelling viewing!

You can watch the video of this ad — and all of Amazon’s newest Kindle ads — at YouTube.com/Kindle . This one is called simply “Real People, Genuine Reactions to the All-New Kindle Paperwhite “. And it’s the candid reactions that make it so much fun to watch! Amazon filmed people using their newest Kindle — and caught their reactions on a hidden camera!


“Wow!”

“Holy Cow!”

“This is amazing…”


Amazon’s narrator explains enthusiastically that “We invited book lovers to try the new Kindle Paperwhite” — but that’s really an understatement. Because Amazon actually set up a miniature living room in the middle of a city plaza — and then invited people to sit down in its overstuffed furniture! It’s a nice gimmick, and it seems to have really made Amazon’s “test subjects” comfortable enough to open about their feelings on books. “I’m such a passionate reader,” one of their subjects explained — and another added “When I’m reading a book, and I really love what I’m reading, I get lost in the story!” But what’s remarkable is how specific they get about the advantages of the Kindle.


“It’s as clear as a book…”

“There’s no glare from the sun.”

“A thousand books in your back pocket?”

“The Kindle is fantastic!”


Of course, by identifying the people in their ads as “book lovers,” Amazon is making a specific point of their own: that reading on a Kindle is just as much fun as reading a print book. (“I love it!” gushes one of their subjects at one point.) And another one even jokes that when Amazon’s through interviewing them about their new Kindles, “We’re not giving ’em back!” But one of the most touching reactions came from what looks like a couple who has been together for a long time.

The husband, looking off towards the future, murmurs reflectively, “We might have to get two…”


Remember, you can watch the video of this ad — and all of Amazon’s newest Kindle ads — at YouTube.com/Kindle

My New Free App in Amazon’s App Store!

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500 Inspiring Quotes

For two weeks straight, I spent every waking minute trying to finish my first free app. But it’s finally here, and here’s the big announcement: it’s ready for downloads from Amazon’s “Apps for Android” Store. Unfortunately, it’s not available yet for the Kindle Fire (or for any Apple devices). But you can still download it now to your Android tablet — or even to an Android smartphone!

For a shortcut, point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/500Quotes

Yes, the app is called “500 Inspiring Quotes,” and it came out much better than I expected. My girlfriend took a wonderful photo during a visit to Alameda’s Crown Beach, and the night that I finally released my app, I surprised her by including it as the app’s “cover photo!” For over a year I’ve been struggling to learn how to write a computer program. That night was my chance to prove that I could really do it.

Everything in the app was meant to be both simple and positive, and I read thousands and thousands of quotes searching for 500 that could always deliver a real lift whenever you sat down to read them. There’s quotes by everyone from Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Seinfeld to Winston Churchill, Voltaire, and even Cervantes. But I also worked in quotes from some of my favorite authors — like Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, Henry Miller, and Mark Twain.

There’s not any ads in the app, since it was never meant to make money — just to share some warm moments of inspiration. And ultimately, it was a very personal experience, since I was weighing the words of the greatest minds of our civilization — and then trying to cherry-pick the words which would mean the most to the people who read them. I found some surprisingly great quotes from unexpected sources, like Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy and even tennis player John McEnroe. And this also gave me a chance to include some nice thoughts from both Roger Ebert and Annette Funicello, who both died this year, but are living on in their words.

In the end I even spent part of my birthday looking for more inspiring quotes — since it took a long time to find over 500 of them. So this app represents a personal triumph for me in more than one way. I finished all the quote-gathering, and finished all of the computer programming too. And now instead of downloading apps for my device, I can upload one instead, to share it with everyone else!

It’s ultimately given my app a very interesting relationship with Amazon. More than two years ago, Amazon started an Android store so they’d have their own place for selling apps when they eventually launched the Kindle Fire (back in the autumn of 2011). But all of those apps in Amazon’s store are also available on other Android devices, which is how you can download my app to other non-Amazon tablets and Android smartphones. Because my app is an Android app, I also uploaded it to Google’s own app store (the Google “Play Store”), which ended up with a very funny twist for this Kindle-loving man.

Even though I was trying to build an app for the Kindle Fire, so far (through the Google Play Store), it’s only available on the Nook!

For a shortcut, point your web browser to
tinyurl.com/500Quotes