readers – Me and My Kindle

Save 72% on a Kindle 2 jacket!

April 5, 2011April 5, 2011 meandmykindle Leave a comment

I’ve never seen savings like this. They’re authentic leather jackets from M-Edge for the Kindle 2 — and they’re on sale for just $14.99!

Normally they’d cost between $39.99 and $54.99, but a special sale started today at a store called Tuesday Morning. Ten times a year — on the first Tuesday of each month — they’ll announce their biggest new specials on brand-name merchandise. It’s a chain of 842 stores in 47 different states, according to Wikipedia, and it’s “known for its deep discounts on gifts and accessories seen in more upscale department stores.” (Find your local branch here.) I didn’t see any Kindle 3 jackets, but for the Kindle 2 there’s lots of different colors available. This afternoon I saw red, purple, tan, and cream at my local store — and the cashier said the supply should last.

In fact, she also said that she hadn’t sold any all day — and it’s not hard to guess why they’ve been discounted. These M-Edge jackets have built-in straps to hold your Kindle in place, but they’ll only fit around an 8-inch Kindle 2 — and not the newer Kindle 3 (which is 7.5 inches tall). Amazon stopped selling the Kindle 2 in August, so the market for these jackets has to be dwindling. The store’s corporate profile notes they provide “upscale closeout” items, and sure enough, many of the jackets are currently listed as “unavailable” on Amazon.com.

But they’ve received dozens of favorable reviews from customers, and it’s really a nice Kindle jacket. Tuesday Morning is offering discounts on their “Latitude” jacket, which offers a built-in zipper, as well as the “Go!” jacket. (“Selection will vary by store,” their newspaper ad explains.) But both versions offer a slot where you can insert the tiny e-Luminator booklight, and the Go! jacket even doubles as stand, so you can prop up your Kindle and read it with no hands!

Kindle e-illuminator book light by M-Edge

It comes with a package insert promising the product is “Amazon approved,” and their slogan is “Everything EReader.” It’s my very first leather Kindle jacket, and I love the way it feels under my fingertips. Instead of touching cold, white plastic — I’m finally touching real leather. It’s a beautiful cream color, with a tan, saddle-stitched strap, and the interior is a super-soft microfiber. (“Soft, plush interiors protect e-Reader from damage,” the ad explained.) It’s even easier to hang onto — since it adds some extra thickness around the Kindle, which makes it easier to grip.

For me it feels like a whole new way of enjoying the Kindle. (And according to the store’s newspaper ad, the jackets are available “in a wide variety of colors and styles.”) You can view the ad online by pointing your browser to tinyurl.com/TuesdayMorningAd — and then flipping to page 5.

Tuesday Morning April newspaper ad for M-Edge Kindle leather jacket

And if you can’t find your way to a Tuesday morning store, there’s still a few jackets that are available online.

Borders, the Kobo and The Office

February 3, 2011July 10, 2013 meandmykindle Leave a comment

It’s not just the Kindle. Other TV shows are also featuring digital readers — and sometimes, in a big way. In January, NBC’s The Office built an entire episode around the Kobo ereader, suggesting that there may even have been a product placement deal — that is, that the writers were paid to work it into the plot!

I’m just fascinated by these little moments of pop culture that show how the Kindle and other readers are working their way into the popular imagination. They’re appearing in stories that would never have occurred to anyone in even five years ago. This episode opened with Michael Scott (Steve Carrell), who plays the boss at the Scranton branch of the Dunder-Mifflin paper company. “January 23, 2011,” he says into the camera. “A day which will live in famously.”

He’s not the one using the digital reader. (He’s just worried that his former girlfriend had gotten engaged – although he does add that “If she’s engaged, I’m going to go crazy and I’m going to start attacking people.”) But back among the workers, there’s a lively discussion about New Year’s resolutions, with creepy Dwight Schrute teasing his former girlfriend that his goal for 2011 is “Meet a loose woman”. (And his co-worker Andy agrees.) “You know what you guys should do?” suggests Darryl from the warehouse. “Go to the bookstore at lunch. There’s tons of cuties and it’s easy to talk to them. ‘Hey, what book is that? Cool, let’s hang out tonight. Sex already? Whoa…!'”

Suddenly this strange sitcom is veering towards a visit to the bookstore. And it’s really because digital reading devices are a hot consumer trend in 2011. The writers, based on whatever motivation, now find themselves leading their characters into a Borders bookstore. They cut away to a private interview with Darryl, where he reveals that he isn’t really going there to pick up women. Darryl’s New Year’s resolution was to read more books — and he’d really just wanted a ride to the store!

And that’s when the Kobo appears.

“Well, if you read a lot, you should check out our ereaders,” a sweet, middle-aged cashier tells Darryl at the register, adding…

“They’re really neat.”

“I work at a paper company. Those things terrify me. They could put us out of business. I heard those things hold like 10 books at once.”

“Actually, it’s 10,000.”

“Holy ####! What? Let me see it…”

Darryl is impressed. (“It’s so light. Like a croissant.”) But his co-workers are having no luck picking up women, and Dwight announces “This place is kind of tapped out, so let’s roll.” But as they’re leaving the store, it turns out that Darryl is carrying a bag that he doesn’t want his co-workers to see. He claims it contains “A book about oceans,” then later tries to claim that it’s pornography. But later in the episode — as the men somehow end up at a roller-skating rink — Darryl is seen slipping away, to read on his brand new Kobo.

Darryl reads his Kobo with Dwight and Andy at the skating rink on the Office

In a way, I feel bad for the Kobo, though. On their Facebook page, they announced a contest to celebrate the episode — asking “What are you reading at the Office.” You didn’t even have to own a Kindle to enter the contest — the prize was 10 free ebooks or a Kobo eReader — but the response was underwhelming. They received just 40 photographs from people entering the contests. You could also enter just by leaving a comment on their web page, but the total number of comments was just 218. (Although to be fair, you could also enter the contest just by clicking the “Like” button the Kobo’s Facebook page, and there’s now 15,712 people who have done so.)

Maybe they would’ve gotten a larger response if they’d given away a Kindle!

Still More Millions of eReaders

December 20, 2010December 20, 2010 meandmykindle Leave a comment

I’ve been waiting for digital readers to reach “a tipping point”. Is this the week that it finally happens? Last week Amazon announced they’d sold millions of Kindles in just the last 73 days. And now Sony just announced they’ve also sold millions of their digital reading devices, too. In fact, they predict it’ll be sold out within just a few days (“before the holidays”), and their more-expensive model is actually outselling the cheaper one.

But I think ebooks reached another important milestone on Sunday. The second-biggest newspaper in America is the Los Angeles Times, and yesterday in its Sunday edition — which is read by over one million people — their book critic had an announcement for the world. “The great debate of the last several years — whether readers would read book-length material onscreen — appears to have been settled with a resounding ‘yes’.” Elsewhere in the newspaper, he published his list of his favorite books this year. But he’d prefaced it by noting the popularity of the Kindle and iPad (plus the launch of Google’s own ebook store), saying each development “points to significant shifts in how we read.”

In his last column of 2010, David L. Ulin wrote that ebooks were “the story in publishing this year,” and admits that even he now owns a Kindle. (Although he seems a little ambivalent about it, writing “I have a Kindle but I rarely use it, and I don’t have an iPad, although I covet one…”) But surprisingly, he’s not worried about a threat to the printed book, and he argues instead that “none of these media are in competition. They are complementary.” The book, after all, is just a medium for something more important. “The issue is not what we read on, just as the issue is not what we read. The issue is that we read, that we continue to interact with long-form writing…”

And maybe there’s another secret hint about the future that’s hidden in his list of favorite books. I know at least one of the authors also owns a Kindle: Elif Batuman. “The Kindle is wonderful for drunk people…” she wrote in a British newspaper in October. “Before I first acquired a Kindle, exactly one year ago, I didnâ€™t usually buy books while under the influence of alcoholâ€¦ Because I am a writer, people sometimes ask me how ebooks have changed the literary landscape. The short answer, for me, is that I have developed a compulsion to drunk-dial Agatha Christie several times a week.”

She’s a book-lover with a sense of humor, and she called her 2010 memoir The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. Yes, it’s available on the Kindle, offering a semi-serious personal inquiry into the act of reading itself. It just seems to me like everyone’s using Kindles — even the people who write books, about reading books, and the book critics who then criticize those books.

In fact, even that critic’s newspaper — The Los Angeles Times — is available on the Kindle. And the circle doesn’t end there, since tonight my girlfriend will be reading this blog post about that Kindle-using book critic…on her own Kindle!

Kindles are everywhere…

New Kindle Competition: Sharp’s iPad-like Reader, Galapagos

September 27, 2010March 29, 2011 meandmykindle Leave a comment

Sharp Galapagos Reader to compete with the iPad and Kindle

Today Japan’s electronics giant Sharp announced they’ll be releasing two fancy Android-based e-readers in December, to compete with the Kindle and iPad. They’re targetting 1 million in sales for the tablet-sized reading devices in their first year, according to IDG News Service, and they’re calling them Galapagos (after the exotic islands where Charles Darwin studied numerous species). Sharp sees the name as “a symbol of the ‘evolution’ of services” (and devices) “that constantly bring fresh, new experiences to the user.”

It’s an allusion to the fact that (besides updates to its software), the device can periodically refresh its content. Sharp’s press release emphasized its “Automatic Scheduled Delivery Serviceâ€ for newspapers and magazines, though “The first models have Wi-Fi but don’t come equipped with 3G wireless,” notes IDG. And they also report that while there’s some Android apps pre-installed, “users might not be able to download additional apps.” In fact, a careful study of the press release reveals many shortcomings.

1. Sharp promises a total of just 30,000 newpapers, magazines, and ebooks. (Whereas Amazon’s Kindle Store offers 700,000).

2. Sharp didn’t announce its price.

3. It’s got a standard LCD display, rather than the more comfortable e-ink.

But most importantly, Sharp’s press release promises “a network service and device specifically designed for the Japanese market.” This means that it fully supports Japanese characters, but the device is based on the XMDF document format, according to IDG, “a format developed by Sharp and largely confined to Japan”. I think it’s significant that the device comes pre-installed with a “social network service” for sharing comments and lists of ebooks. Text messaging is extremely popular in Japan, but it’s not necessarily a must-have feature for a digital reader.

There’s two models – one the size of a Kindle, and one the size of an iPad — and the cases come in two colors, red and silver. (Though the larger models are only available in black).

But ultimately, I have the same reaction that I did when Apple released the iPad. It just shows that all around the world, people are still very excited about the reader market!