Despite many predictions to the contrary, eBook readers are still going strong. They may not be as flashy as tablets, but they are great devices with long battery lives, clear readable screens, and lightweight both in size and on your wallet. Most people tend to pick an eBook reader based on their bookstore preferences, what their friends and family use, and similar criteria. But if you’re the type looking for lots of statistics and specifications to compare and contrast, it can be tougher to find truly technical reviews of eBook readers. That’s where Reader Rocket, a newly launched site, thinks they can fill the void.

Reader Rocket is an interesting site. They let you do head to head comparisons of eBook readers, even pitting tablet-y readers against eInk ones. Their comparisons can be a little bit questionable sometimes (more on that below), but they pull a tremendous amount of specifications together in one place. If you’ve ever been curious about the battery life of a Kindle Paperwhite versus a Barnes and Noble NOOK, or whether a Kobo Glo is more or less responsive to page turns than a Kindle, this is the place to visit. It’s refreshing to have these comparisons on an independent site, as opposed to a stacked marketing one from a source looking to sell you their particular device.

I tested Reader Rocket when it was in beta, and they had a few bugs with their comparisons that have been improved immensely with their launch. However, in cases where there’s a tie, it still insists on picking a winner, and it’s not terribly clear how it does so. For example, the Kindle Paperwhite vs the Kobo Aura ends with the Kobo device “winning”, though the specifications end up at a tie. When we were discussing Reader Rocket internally this morning, Mike Anderson noted that it seemed like Kobo kept coming up on top, second only to the Kindle in many head-to-heads. This isn’t actually that shocking, as Kobo actually makes decent hardware, but it does expose a flaw in looking solely at statistics. In a more nuanced view, it’s clear that Kobo is a distant third in the United States, but has far more reach overseas. This influences content, accessories, even price…but isn’t factored into the filter, and so it can make the comparisons a bit wonky depending on your region.

Still, despite that, Reader Rocket fills a niche left behind by the flocking of the market to tablets. It feels a bit like it’s a few years too late to really be a widely used site, but if you have a need to compare multiple eBook readers in several categories, this is a pretty comprehensive way to do it!

Reader Rocket

Hey, want to buy a NOOK? Barnes & Noble would very much like it if you did. That’s not surprising — they’re fighting hard for marketshare in an increasingly crowded market. But hot on the heels of their “buy a tablet, get an eBook reader!” bizarre promotion, they’ve been reminding everyone of another reason to buy a NOOK: They’ll pay you in NOOK credits. Essentially, they want to handcuff you to the NOOK ecosystem one way or another!

But are there better ways to market the NOOK family of products?

First, let’s look at the promotions. If you want an HD+, Barnes & Noble will give you a $50 gift card. This is a clever way to “cut” the price of the HD+ by $50, but instead of leaving you with an extra $50 to go spend wherever, the credit means you’ll use it on games, movies, and books, so B&N at least keeps you tied closer to them with that credit. And if you’re buying a NOOK, you’re going to appreciate having a boost at getting it filled with content!

That’s the logic in the other NOOK deal currently outstanding, which encourages you to share the NOOK ecosystem with your friends. If you get your friend to buy a NOOK, you get a $25 referral credit, and your friend gets $25 as well. This only works for the NOOK HD and HD+, so don’t steer your friends towards a NOOK Simple Touch and expect a credit!

continue reading

Image courtesy Guardian UK

The fine folks at Forbes raised an interesting question this week: are eBooks really books? Their take is that eBooks are more like software, due to their digital nature. And yes, they are looking specifically at the education markets. But this touches on a larger debate, one that comes up quite often. Opponents of eBooks argue that they are not really books, because the book experience is not the same. Now, I rarely get to dust off my philosophy degree, but this seems like the sort of debate that lends itself quite well to a simple analysis of the identity of a book. Does moving from the physical to the digital alter the nature of the item? Is an eBook a book? Or is it something else?

First, we need to establish the nature of a book. Is it a pile of papers bound together? Does the act of publishing make it a book? Or is it a broader concept, one that can be defined by content and not physicality? Let’s start with content. Roughly speaking, a book is a narrative of fiction or non-fiction, typically with a defined theme and a beginning, middle, and conclusion. We cannot use word count as an accurate measurement, since most would consider a book aimed at children to be a book, yet this would come in well below the word count of a book written for an adult audience. So loose narrative structure of the written word is probably the simplest way to define the content aspect.

The physical book is also difficult to define clearly. Do you define it as a bound grouping of papers? Again, variations mean we cannot narrow it down to type of paper, or even the type of binding used. Is the act of printing the book enough to define it as a book? Printing translates the written word to the physical world, but a book can be handwritten as well. Further, unless you are working with a manual printing press like Gutenberg, the printed word is stored electronically before ink meets paper. Given that the mere act of printing is simply transferring the electronic file to a physical form, and since the act of printing itself has moved on quite dramatically from the early days of movable typesets, it seems unlikely that this alone defines a book.

There are those who say that any printed form, bound and held together as a continuous work, is a book, while keeping it stuck behind a screen makes it “other”. They argue that a book is defined by the sum of its parts, that everything from the printed pages to turning the pages and cover art all help define “book” quite clearly. But the book does not solely exist in print or electronic form. No one objects to prefacing “book” with “audio” to form a spoken word version of a book. Yet this is even farther from the book than the purely electronic version. Listening is a different act than reading, and audiobooks by their nature exert extra editorial control that the written word does not; the inflection and tone in a narration can alter how it can be perceived and interpreted by the reader/listener. Yet the people who object vociferously to the electronic book do not bring up the audiobook. Is this because audiobooks occupy a niche so far outside the norm of a book that they pose no threat to the paper book? Or is it that by allowing for an instance where a book can, in fact, break free from the confines of printed and bound paper, a precedent is set for the electronic version to still be a book?

In fact, there is one clear way an eBook and paper book demonstrate how much closer they are to each other than an audiobook is to either of them. A paper book can be scanned into a computer and the resulting file can be converted into a readable eBook. Likewise, an eBook can be converted to a printable format, and with enough patience, printed and bound like a book. These can be done very easily with any personal computer. The act of converting an audiobook to a printed book and vice versa is far more specialized. When an ebook can convert to a paper book, and paper books to ebooks, the insistence on a strong distinction between the two gets even more silly.

So far we have seen a few ways that the basic objections to an ebook not meeting the standards of a book are flawed. The most damning and difficult of the objections, though, is with respect to ownership. At this time, due to corporate policies and concerns about copyright, many commercially sold ebooks contain digital rights management, or DRM. Because the consumer does not control the authorization or maintenance of the DRM, there is the risk, however unlikely, that a book purchased from a bookstore may become unusable in the future. This is a limitation paper books purchased from a store do not have. In addition, and as a related concern, an electronic book can be altered easily, while mistakes or changes in paper books cannot be altered but must be reprinted.

Let’s start by unpacking the concerns about DRM and whether this makes ownership an ephemeral concept. Any ebook can be downloaded and stored in an offline fashion via a hard drive or solid state storage, thus giving the purchaser some physical control over his or her copy of the book. Further, there are many solutions, some more simple than others, that allow a user to remove the DRM from an ebook entirely. Other ebooks can be purchased without any DRM encumbering them, so the DRM is not a defining characteristic of an ebook as a whole, just something specific to certain ebooks. So ownership and control can be established in an ebook regardless of DRM. While this requires some effort on the part of the consumer, this is not so different from locking ones door to keep thieves from removing physical books from your home. Establishing ownership requires insuring the items are in your possession and if there is concern that the digital nature of an ebook removes a layer of ownership protection there are ways to address that.

In addition, ownership is not a requirement to being considered a book. If it were, library books would need to go by a new name, as libraries own books and merely loan them to patrons. The patron must abide by the library’s rules regarding the handling and care of the book, and no one doubts the library owns the book, not the reader. So while ownership may be important to a reader, it is not a defining characteristic of a book and cannot be used to remove the “book” from “ebook”.

The library also gives us a way to address the most troubling objection to ebooks. A digital file is mutable, and so the written word can be adjusted or twisted even after it has been published, leading to concerns about censorship and rewrites. This is a danger with ebooks, and one that leads back to both saving offline copies as well as determining whether you have trust in the retailer selling the ebook. At the same time, school libraries have had their own clashes over censorship. A book is carried one day and banned the next, or removed and replaced with a different version. This is also an issue in countries where information is tightly controlled. So while the ebook is at risk for someone reaching in and changing it, content control and censorship is not unique to the ebook. Not to mention, a digital file is much harder to burn than a stack of paper.

In the end it is clear that the ebook is a fraternal twin to the paper book. They share enough characteristics in common that to say an ebook is not a book is to be unnecessarily narrow-minded. Denying the ebook, while allowing all manner of children’s picture books, photo-heavy books, hardcovers with premium paper, mass market paperbacks with poor quality paper, and other permutations of print to be “books” based solely on an arbitrary physical distinction is to ignore the true nature of a book: it is a vehicle to convey information and content using the written word. Printing is optional.

In the Harry Potter books, Voldemort’s symbol appears above the houses of wizards who have been marked for death. Lately, it seems like Barnes and Noble’s stores have the Dark Mark over them. No matter what the company says or does, the news is always greeted with the same reaction: DOOM!

The latest round of “B&N WILL DIE” is due to comments from the company that they plan to downsize their stores from almost 700 to closer to 450 in about ten years. Is this the beginning of the end, or a natural and planned contraction? Will there be a Barnes and Noble in ten years?

First, let’s really consider if “closing excess stores” is cause for alarm. I don’t know precisely what B&N’s strategy is in choosing what stores close, and I don’t know their exact criteria. But what I do know is that Barnes and Noble expanded quite rapidly and has areas of significant overlap. I looked up my zip code, and found 10 stores in under 20 miles from where I am. Two of them are under 5 miles from me; four of them under 10 miles. The truth is, we probably don’t need that many bookstores all clumped together in the middle of central New Jersey.

Would it make it a bit more difficult for some people to shop at B&N if there wasn’t a store every 4 miles? Probably. On the other hand, it would make B&N more of a destination than a “hey, we just left dinner and don’t want to go home yet, let’s browse the bookstore” choice, which might mean less random foot traffic but more people entering with the full intention of purchasing books. If that’s the case, then closing stores over time makes complete sense. For comparison, I ran the same search near Newton, MA, where I used to work for Borders, and came up with the same results-ten stores, all less than 20 miles, and several within ten miles. Barnes and Noble had a tendency to expand in clusters, and as the business has changed, there’s nothing wrong with declustering a bit.

At the same time, the same red flags that I do think are cause for alarm are still there. Barnes and Noble does an awful job of promoting the NOOK business. They were slow to run ads, and they didn’t give people enough of a compelling reason why the NOOK HD was a better product than the Kindle Fire or the iPad Mini. If B&N wants to expand the NOOK business, they need to make it seem attractive not on its own merits but on the idea that it is superior to the more popular platform. I noticed when I went looking for stores on the store locator that many locations list “NOOK classes”. This is fantastic, and exactly what B&N should be doing! Train your customers on NOOKs, teach them not to be scared of ebooks, and get them to come into the store to do it. Perfect! But why I am only learning about it when I look for a location? Why isn’t being offered to me when I add a NOOK to my shopping cart? I even looked for a NOOK under the “pick up in store” option, and not a word about a NOOK 101 class. This would be the perfect time to take a customer who might buy online and get them to do in-store pickup. It feels like Barnes and Noble has all the puzzle pieces, but can’t seem to get the basics down. When you’re building a puzzle and can’t find the corner pieces, it makes it hard to believe you’ll get the rest of it filled in correctly.

Finally, there’s the issue of the rapidly disappearing bookstore customer. I love bookstores, and I usually wander into a bookstore if I’m walking past one. But a few weeks ago we were in Portland, Maine, and I opted not to duck into the local bookstore to look around because I had no desire to browse for books. I have more books on my Kindle than I have time to read, and there wasn’t anything that seemed to excite me from the windows of the store. Yes, I love eBooks, but I worked for a bookstore for three years. And if I want to find a new book, Amazon always has suggestions, and I’m slowly coming around to using Goodreads more often. And in a twist, more of my friends are reading now that everyone uses a Kindle or iPad than ever before…so I’m not hurting for books, or suggested books for the future. That, more than whether they have 10 stores or 15 or 5 in a 20 mile radius, is what’s really hurting Barnes and Noble, and I think is the real fear everyone has for them. Eventually they will either adjust or perish, but closing some of the stores has to happen no matter the outcome. Maybe B&N tightens their company, improves their marketing, gets more investments for NOOK Media, and surprises their critics by flourishing in a tough environment. Maybe B&N follows Borders to that great big bookstore in the sky. But both paths overlap at closing some of the stores-succeed or fail, there’s no denying that 700 stores is simply an untenable number for a struggling chain!

I love books. I know I am slightly biased, being a former bookstore employee, but I like to think that most people like reading books. The hard part is finding books you want to read. Maybe you can’t find the right authors, or books have gotten too pricey, or you haven’t made the leap to ebooks yet…but don’t worry. No matter the obstacle, at Gear Diary we are here to help you make sure your 2013 reading list stays nice and full!

Book Discovery:

This is the hardest part. Maybe you have a local bookstore you can pop into and ask an employee, but if you don’t, you’re at the mercy of the hundreds of thousands of titles and options available. Do you dig into a series? Take a chance on a new indie writer? Go back and read those classics you skipped in high school? Luckily, there’s a few good ways to narrow down your choices.

Goodreads: This is a great site if you like discussing and discovering new books. Tell Goodreads what you’ve been reading, and how you liked it, and you get recommendations in return. Rate the various books you’ve read, and share your thoughts with friends. Check out what your friends liked. Take quizzes on books. Basically, it’s a book-themed social network, and a great way to discover books that you may not have heard of, or to check out what’s generating a buzz in your social circle. There’s apps as well as a website, so you can manage your library, ratings, and recommendations on the go.

Inkmesh: Ever want to compare eBook prices across multiple stores? Or are you getting tired of trying to hunt down free and discounted titles? Inkmesh is great because it aggregates all of those searches for you into one search engine. You can look for free titles from each store, search for an author or book and find out the price and availability of it in each eBookstore, even hunt around by genre to narrow your search to your tastes. It is much simpler than a site like Goodreads, but it has a very clear purpose: make searching for books easy.

Buying and Reading Books:

We have a bit of an eBook bias here, but there’s plenty of eBook and non eBook ways to make reading books affordable. Sure, brand new titles can cost upwards of $20 in paper form and $10-12 in eBook form, but you can track stuff down for much cheaper without giving up reading quality stories!

Library: this is an obvious one, but so many people forget the public library! It’s usually free to join, and they have best sellers as well as a deep backlist. The major downside is that for a very popular title you may have to sit on a wait list…but it can be worthwhile to grab a stack of books for free! Libraries also carry audiobooks, which can translate to a huge savings when you consider new audiobooks can easily run in the $20-40 range.

Overdrive (Digital Library services): You may or may not realize this, but your local library also offers eBooks and digital audiobooks! Most libraries use Overdrive, though there are competitor programs. However, assuming you have access to Overdrive, downloading eBooks is very simple. You can send them your NOOK or Kindle, and even return them to the library right from your eReader. If you’re a tablet or smartphone user, Overdrive has an app that let’s you read books and listen to audiobooks. I know I’ve used their audiobooks many times, and it works great. Plus, the whole service is free!

Kindle Daily Deals: Amazon has an email newsletter with daily Kindle book deals. Sometimes it’s just a few dollars off, sometimes it is a more dramatic deal, but either way it’s a daily list of cheap books! Sign up here.

Barnes and Noble Free Fridays: Barnes and Noble’s blog offers up their version of a weekly deal, called “Free Fridays“. Just like the name implies, it’s a free book each week. Depending on how fast of a reader you are, and how broad your tastes are, this could keep you well stocked for quite a while!

Smashwords: If you want to find a solid self-published title, you’ll find it on Smashwords. It take some work to separate the good from the bad, but it’s a great way to find a new voice that may have been drowned out by mainstream publishing. As an added bonus, most titles are far more affordable, with most being anywhere from free to under $5!

Amazon Prime Lending Library: This one is only affordable if you already have a Prime membership and a Kindle. But if you do, this is a great deal. Any titles in the Prime Lending Library can be checked out and held for an unlimited amount of time, but you can only check out one at a time, and only one title per month. If you have a Prime membership already, this is a great way to get the full use out of it and save some money on your book budget!

Paperback Swap: For those who aren’t 100% eBooks, Paperback Swap is a great way to access new books. You list books you want to swap, and in turn search for books from others. It doesn’t cost anything to request a book, but you are on the hook for the cost to mail books of yours out to others. Since media mail will only run you a few dollars, it’s a great, low-cost way to keep your library in check and still find new books to read!

What’s your favorite way to discover or buy books? Let us know how you plan to stock up in the new year!

Various developers have been trying since the original iPad to make enhanced and video eBooks a success. There seems to be this impression that books+tablet+video=profit! Yet plain old eBooks have managed to hold their ground quite nicely, leaving the question of whether there’s really a market for a book with video, music, and other bells and whistles. Byook think they can add to the eBook reading experience, and I had the opportunity to test a few of their titles and experience the multimedia eBook for myself!

My first Byook was Sherlock Holmes “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”. The Byook has music and accompanying artwork that adds to the atmosphere of mystery in the story, but one thing I appreciated was that the actual words appeared right away, and any multimedia touches faded in and out of the background. If you’re a fast reader and you don’t care for some of the artwork, you can continue to flip pages and are not forced to wait for every doodle to appear. The music acted just like it would in a movie or show; as the action peaked, so did the background soundtrack. While it was jarring at first, it did seem to fade into the background as I became more focused on the book. It also worked better when I turned the lights out while reading. Even though I read “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” years ago, there was just the slightest sliver of creepiness that slipped in from reading it in a dark room with forboding music playing. The background art fading in and out added to the creepy factor as well, so in that sense the Byook accomplished it’s goals, as the reading experience was definitely enhanced.

Then I tried “Tara Duncan”, a Byook for the iPhone. It was a poor experience from the start-while the Sherlock Holmes book loaded quickly, this one took so long I honestly thought it froze my iPhone 4S. Then I read the story, and wished my iPhone had frozen. It was a fairly juvenile tale, and if I had read it in an anthology of fantasy tales aimed at pre-teens I wouldn’t be so harsh. But as an enhanced eBook that costs $2.99, PLUS “bonus features” that cost between $0.99 and $1.99, it’s pretty awful. The musical cues and additions that made Sherlock Holmes atmospheric and fun just felt jarring here. And there were multiple pages where the prior page’s passage was simply repeated with a new image, making the reading experience very redundant. If I hadn’t read the Sherlock Holmes title first I don’t think I would have wanted to try it after the “Tara Duncan” book.

Overall, the Byook experience hasn’t totally sold me on the value of a regular book with a soundtrack and animation reel. I could see the benefit of a classic like Sherlock Holmes getting the enhanced treatment, as it was a fun read in the dark, and it could make for a fun parent/child reading experience. But the blatant cash grab of the “Tara Duncan” title (really, “bonus” material for a short story-bringing the total cost of the title from $2.99 to almost $6?) left me with a bad taste in my mouth. If Byook pursues apps like the Sherlock Holmes one, I think there’s a market for it. But it needs to be applied to stories worth reading, and the whole cost needs to be rolled into the price of the book. Otherwise, it will just end up being another footnote in eBook history.

MSRP: Sherlock Holmes “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” for the iPad is $1.99./”Tara Duncan” for the iPhone is $2.99.

What I liked: Proper match of books and music enhances the experience; artwork was well designed; animation was smooth

What Needs Improvement: Poor integration of music and book can drag down the experience; “bonus” materials feel like a rip off; enjoyment of books+music+animation varies wildly and may not be your taste.

I’ve said for a long time that Barnes and Noble’s key to success in the ebook world was through their retail channels. The more they find ways to leverage the advantage of being both the neighborhood store AND an instant gratification web presence, the better they will be able to compete with Amazon. It looks like they are looking for creative ways to do that, and their latest one is actually pretty clever.

This newest promotion is called “Buy One NOOK Book, Gift One NOOK Book for Free“. The concept is pretty great all by itself; buy one qualifying ebook, and gift another one to a friend. What that means is now two people are participating in the NOOK ecosystem, or being tied more closely into that system. Maybe you have a friend that flips between the Kindle and NOOK apps on their iPad…now they have one more reason to use the B&N app instead.

The other hook is the really interesting part. You can’t jump online and take advantage of this promotion. Instead, you have to go into a physical B&N store to buy your book and gift the one to your friend. It’s the holidays, and there’s always a line, so probably while you are in there you’ll browse, maybe buy a book for a non-eReading family member or friend, and the next thing you know you’ve bought a few things besides that initial sweet ebook deal. That’s what makes this a great idea; even if only some of the people who take advantage of this pick up extra items, it won’t take much to drive extra revenue.

Think about the last time Amazon ran a deal like this (say, the AmazonLocal voucher). Chances are, you headed right for the website, bought your voucher, clicked over the eligible titles, bought those, and clicked away. Browsing a website can be a very narrow shopping experience, but a store is the exact opposite. There are items everywhere to tempt you, from the front door to the checkout line. Barnes and Noble is competing with Amazon (free ebooks!) but doing it while also stacking the odds that extra sales will offset the cost of free ebooks. This is how you fund competition against a much more aggressive competitor, and I hope the gamble works out for Barnes and Noble!

You can check out the full list of eligible titles here. It’s a short list, but it includes titles like “The Hobbit”, “The Hunger Games” trilogy, and Stephen Colbert’s new book! Lots of great choices for you and a loved one!

Digital textbooks always sound like a great idea on paper. They save money! And children don’t struggle under the weight of giant books! What’s not to like?

Well, there’s the medium for reading on them for starters. Kindles crashed and burned on the college level, and while iPads are great, they are also expensive and far more fragile than a spiral bound notebook. Some schools have managed to have pilot iPad and computer based textbook programs successfully, but it still leads to many questions: who pays for the iPads? Do you upgrade them yearly? What about textbook licenses, are they yearly as well? And most importantly, do you require students to have Internet at home to take advantage of these programs?

According to The Digital Reader, at least one school has discovered the Internet problem was a fairly big one. Not every student had a high-speed connection, and this made it difficult to use the textbooks purchased and assigned by the school. This has forced the school to return to paper books for now, but it does expose a major issue for public schools: how do you integrate technology without putting pricey financial expectations on students?

It’s a tough path, and one that isn’t going to be answered overnight. In this case, it isn’t just a matter of the right hardware, which is what helped retail ebooks take off. It isn’t just a matter of polished software. It’s a matter of figuring out how to create the software and the hardware in such a way that it’s cheaper for both schools and families…that day is coming, but not yet.

Do your kids have eTextbooks? How are they handled? Let us know in the comments!

We are three weeks from Christmas, and B&N is trying to make your shopping even easier. They have slashed the price of the NOOK Simple Touch Reader to a jaw-dropping $79! This is a very impressive price for a small, touchscreen ereader.

This does make me wonder just how low prices will go. Who will be the first to sell a new, not refurbished ereader for $50? Amazon? B&N? A super cheap ereader is clearly coming…think the ereader equivalent of an iPod Shuffle. Something small, with less features. In the case of eReaders, the Simple Touch is darn close.

Another side benefit? All those folks who migrated their Fictionwise and eReader accounts can pick up a NOOK very cheaply!

The new price takes effect on December 9th, so get your wallet ready!

Looks like Barnes and Noble finally got the kinks worked out of their eReader/Fictionwise transition! A few days ago I saw reports that the transfer links were finally working properly, and sure enough, clicking through promised me a forthcoming email with more details. This time, the message didn’t come with a side of time travel, so I figured it had to be fairly accurate. Finally, yesterday, I received an email with the promised code, and, miracle of miracles, my eReader account transferred!

Here’s what the email said:

Dear Fictionwise/eReader Customer,

Welcome to Barnes & Noble and NOOK®!

You are ready to start the process of transitioning the eBooks you purchased through Fictionwise to a NOOK Library at Barnes & Noble.

The code below represents all of the titles that we will transition to a new NOOK Library for you.

Code: [redacted]

Click here to go to the code redemption page.

· Click through to the redemption page and simply enter your code as prompted. This will move your existing eBooks into a NOOK Library. Depending on how many titles are transitioning to your NOOK Library, this process could take some time.

· If you do not have a BN account connected with this email address, you will be prompted to create one once you enter your access code.

· A few titles may not transfer due to discontinued publishing programs. You will be able to see which titles are not able to be transferred by clicking here. In most cases, you can back up these Fictionwise files by downloading them to your personal hard drive on a Mac or PC. To learn more about backing up these files, please click here http://www.fictionwise.com/BN-Transition-FAQ.htm.

· If you are new to NOOK, you will be asked to add some account information, including a credit card. A credit card is required to access some secured titles. Please note, however, that your credit card will not be charged for any of the titles that you transferred from Fictionwise nor for the transfer itself.

· If you already have a Barnes & Noble account, you may use that account in the transfer process. Once the transfer is completed, your transferred Fictionwise titles will appear alongside your existing content in your NOOK Library. You can also choose to create a new Barnes & Noble account for this transfer process.

We’ve made our best effort to ensure that as many of your purchased Fictionwise titles as possible will be available to you as NOOK Books that can be read by downloading NOOK’s free mobile app to your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, as well as reading your eBooks with your PC/Mac web browser, or on the award-winning NOOK® devices.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to get started reading your eBooks with our award-winning products, software and content.

The NOOK Team

The transition took all of fifteen seconds, though admittedly I had a small eReader library; Judie had 431 books make the transition (70ish of her titles must have been part of the discontinued publishing programs, as they didn’t transfer), and hers took only a little bit longer.

I was livid with B&N for their lack of communication, and my mind is still boggled by their slow response to the bugs, but in the end they have ironed it out and retrieved everyone’s bookshelves. The question is, will the customers left twisting in the wind forgive and forget? Only time will tell!

My social circle is of the age where we are past the “weddings” phase and have moved into the “babies” phase. As a result, I have had the chance to observe how toddlers and young children interact with technology. All of my friends kids love playing with iPhones and tablets, and they seem to instinctively grasp poking and touching and flipping virtual pages. I’ve also entertained more than one upset child with some quick YouTubing of Sesame Street clips. The folks at Amazon clearly have similar experiences, since their new “Kindle FreeTime Unlimited” is aimed squarely at the new generation of tech-savvy toddlers.

See, Amazon is smart. They know kids love playing with tablets, reading books, watching movies, and of course, playing games. But parents aren’t just going to fork over a tablet and let their kids have fun, there’s too many things they could accidentally click or select. And some games sound like fun, but are just too difficult for little hands. So Amazon is solving all this, for just a few dollars a month. They are offering unlimited access to age-appropriate games, movies, and books, all on the Kindle Fire line. So all those parents considering whether to get their kids an entry level tablet just cancelled any Nexus 7 or NOOK HD orders…because Amazon is making it cheaper, easier, and more age appropriate to give your kids access to ebooks and multimedia. What really surprised me, and speaks to the incredible amount of back-room negotiating that must have gone on, is that Amazon managed to get a who’s who of kid-content, from Nickelodeon to Disney!

It’s going to be a great holiday season for Amazon…and a very disappointing one for their competition!

Introducing “Kindle FreeTime Unlimited”—The All-You-Can-Eat Content Service Built From the Ground Up Just for Kids—Available Exclusively on the All-New Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD

For the first time ever, bringing together all the types of content kids and parents love—books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows—into one simple, easy-to-use service for kids ages 3-8

Unlimited access to thousands of titles including exclusive-to-Amazon Android apps and games—all curated for age-appropriateness—a special price for Prime members of just $2.99 per month per child, or $6.99 per month per family

Featuring the best in children’s entertainment from Andrews McMeel Publishing, Chronicle Books, DC Comics, Disney, HIT Entertainment, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Marvel, Nickelodeon, PBS, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Workshop and more

Owners of the all-new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD get one month of FreeTime Unlimited for free

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dec. 5, 2012– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today introduced Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, bringing together for the first time all of the types of content kids and parents love—books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows—into one simple, unlimited, easy-to-use service for kids ages 3-8. For a special monthly price of just $2.99 per child or $6.99 for the whole family, Prime members get unlimited access to thousands of popular kids titles. Customers who are not yet Prime members can sign up for FreeTime Unlimited for a monthly price of $4.99 per child or $9.99 per family. FreeTime Unlimited will be available on the all-new Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9” as part of a free, over-the-air software update that will be automatically delivered in the coming weeks.

Kids will love FreeTime Unlimited because:

They can explore all the content on their own and pick for themselves what to read, watch or play next

All of their favorite characters are included—Elmo, Dora, Thomas & Friends, Cinderella, Buzz Lightyear, Lightning McQueen, Curious George and more

With individual profiles, everything in their library is theirs—no sharing a home screen with siblings or parents and no losing their place in a movie or TV show when someone else picks up the Kindle Fire

They can easily explore their favorite topics—pick a favorite subject like “Princesses” and navigate seamlessly between princess books, princess games and princess TV shows

Parents will love FreeTime Unlimited because:

All apps have in-app payments, advertisements and social media removed

They don’t have to worry that kids will run up a bill

All-you-can-eat pricing means they don’t have to enter into negotiations with kids about what to buy or rent—“You already rented that yesterday” is a relic of the past

All of the content is already pre-screened for age-appropriateness

“As a parent it’s hard to predict what my daughter is going to enjoy, or which movie she’s going to watch 50 times in a row—so I buy a range of content and hope for the best—but I get it wrong frequently,” said Peter Larsen, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “FreeTime Unlimited gives kids the freedom to explore age-appropriate content on their own and pick for themselves what they want to watch, play or read next. For as little as $2.99 a month, your child will have unlimited access to thousands of popular books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows from Disney, Nickelodeon, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, PBS, Sesame Workshop and more.”

Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is an optional extension to Kindle FreeTime, a free feature on the new Kindle Fire family, which re-invents parental controls and offers parents new tools like Time Limits, which helps parents manage their kids’ screen time. FreeTime Unlimited is designed to make FreeTime even better for parents and kids: when a parent signs up for FreeTime Unlimited, thousands of content titles automatically appear in FreeTime, sorted by their kids’ age and gender, alongside the titles parents have already approved from their own collection of content. Kids can follow their own imaginations across books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows without being dependent on help from mom and dad. Parents can feel comfortable handing off their Kindle Fire to their kids, knowing that all of the content is age-appropriate. Kids will recognize many of their favorite characters like Elmo, Dora, Thomas & Friends, Cinderella, Buzz Lightyear, Lightning McQueen and Curious George—all available with Kindle FreeTime Unlimited.

“With games like Where’s My Water? and Where’s My Perry? Disney is bringing hours of entertainment to Kindle users in any age group,” said Tim O’Brien, VP of Business Development, Disney Games. “Amazon’s Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is a great way to introduce some of Disney’s most popular apps to an even larger audience.”

“Nickelodeon has been serving kids for more than 33 years – providing them with fun and enjoyable experiences on multiple platforms,” said Steve Youngwood, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Digital Nickelodeon. “We are thrilled to offer our content as part of Amazon’s innovative new service for kids.”

“We are thrilled that HIT Entertainment’s trusted content portfolio is part of the launch of Kindle FreeTime Unlimited,” said Natasha Fishman, Senior Director, Digital Media & Marketing, HIT Entertainment. “Our beloved brands, including Thomas & Friends©, Bob the Builder©, Fireman Sam©, Barney©, Angelina Ballerina©, and Pingu© encourage discovery and inspire imagination in kids and are a perfect complement to FreeTime Unlimited’s carefully curated mix. Whether it’s playing with apps, reading e-books, or watching movies, fans will have plenty of their favorite HIT characters from which to choose.”

“PBS KIDS is dedicated to providing educational and engaging content that opens up worlds of possibilities for kids,” said Lesli Rotenberg, Senior Vice President, Children’s Media, PBS. “We are excited to work with Amazon on Kindle FreeTime Unlimited to offer a new opportunity for today’s on-the-go kids to play and explore with their favorite PBS KIDS characters in an age-appropriate way.”

“I am excited that Reading Rainbow has been chosen by Amazon to be a key representative of quality children’s programming in their new FreeTime Unlimited offering,” said LeVar Burton, Host and Producer of the iconic television show. “In making these 25 episodes of Reading Rainbow available for children, I hope that they and their parents can enjoy watching the series together, and remind themselves that through the pages of a good book, they can go anywhere.”

“We are thrilled to work with Amazon’s newest service to deliver some of the most engaging educational content we’ve created for children and their families,” said Scott Chambers, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Media Distribution, Sesame Workshop. “From Sesame Street episodes, eBooks, and apps to episodes of our other award-winning series The Electric Company and Pinky Dinky Doo, our offering encourages children to learn while having fun with some of their favorite characters.”

The Best Games and Learning Apps for Kids

FreeTime Unlimited offers many of the most popular children’s games, with all in-app ads and in-app purchasing removed. Games include Disney’s bestselling Where’s My Water? and Where’s My Perry?, as well as Fruit Ninja Puss N’ Boots, Cut The Rope, Peekaboo Barn, Counting with the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Magic Piano and popular early development games like Kids Learn to Read, My First Puzzles Dinosaurs and SUPER WHY!

Favorite Children’s Books

Kindle FreeTime Unlimited features beautiful children’s picture books, including new and classic favorites like Big Nate, Ivy and Bean, Phineas & Ferb, Shrek, and Kung Fu Panda as well as books by Caldecott-honored authors such as Chris Van Allsburg’s “Jumanji” and Barbara Lehman’s “The Red Book.”

FreeTime Unlimited also includes hundreds of eBook apps with Read-to-Me functionality and in-book games from characters such as Thomas & Friends, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Arthur, Duck and Goose, Caillou and Superman, and from award-winning children’s author Sandra Boynton (“Moo, Baa, La La La!”).

Popular Kids Movies and TV Shows

FreeTime Unlimited includes movies from Barney, Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam and Angelina Ballerina, as well as TV shows like Sesame Street, Spongebob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, Blue’s Clues, Diego, Yo Gabba Gabba, The Backyardigans, Rugrats, Arthur, Reading Rainbow, Caillou, and Garfield.

Amazon is also working with Common Sense Media, the non-profit organization that provides independent ratings of books, movies, television, apps, games, websites, and music, and many of their top-rated media choices for children are included in Kindle FreeTime Unlimited.

“Millions of parents trust Common Sense Media’s ratings and reviews to find quality media for their kids, and we’re excited to work with Amazon to inform a great deal of the selections available in Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, making this a great choice for parents,” said Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, President and COO of Common Sense Media. “We also endorse FreeTime Unlimited’s ad-free environment and blocking of in-app purchases for kids as we know from experience that these features will make parents more comfortable.”

FreeTime Unlimited will be available on the all-new Kindle Fire family as part of a free, over-the-air software update that will be automatically delivered in the coming weeks. After receiving the software update, customers can sign up for FreeTime Unlimited from within the Kindle FreeTime app on their $159 Kindle Fire, $199 Kindle Fire HD, and $299 Kindle Fire HD 8.9”. Customers can learn more at www.amazon.com/freetimeunlimited.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle Paperwhite is the most-advanced e-reader ever constructed with 62% more pixels and 25% increased contrast, a patented built-in front light for reading in all lighting conditions, extra-long battery life, and a thin and light design. The new latest generation Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle, now features new, improved fonts and faster page turns. Kindle Fire HD features a stunning custom high-definition display, exclusive Dolby audio with dual stereo speakers, high-end, laptop-grade Wi-Fi with dual-band support, dual-antennas and MIMO for faster streaming and downloads, enough storage for HD content, and the latest generation processor and graphics engine—and it is available in two display sizes—7” and 8.9”. The large-screen Kindle Fire HD is also available with 4G wireless, and comes with a groundbreaking $49.99 introductory 4G LTE data package. The all-new Kindle Fire features a 20% faster processor, 40% faster performance, twice the memory, and longer battery life.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, and www.amazon.es. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

The Barnes and Noble transition of Fictionwise and eReader to NOOK has been steadily going from bad to worse. First, they had difficulties moving books to the NOOK platform. Then, a huge swath of customers (including both Judie and I) received an error message that our email addresses were not recognized. The Thanksgiving holiday intervened, but it doesn’t look like anyone has even attempted to fix these errors since last week!

I emailed Barnes and Noble last week, and was told “We’re working on it.” Yesterday, my curiosity got the better of me and I tried my initial email and link again. This is the message I received in return:

Thank you for choosing to transfer your library to NOOK.

You will receive an email the week of November 19, 2012 with your access code and further instructions.

Um. Ok. So now I don’t have a way to transfer my books, and I need a time machine. Just when I ran out of plutonium, and my DeLorean needs an oil change.

But then today, ANOTHER email arrived from B&N:

Dear Fictionwise or eReader Customer –

You may have already received a communication that Fictionwise is winding down its operations and that you can transfer your titles from Fictionwise.com or eReader.com to BN.com. The URL that you received may be returning an error message so we would like to provide you with an updated link. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Click here: [REDACTED]

to go to the opt-in page, where you’ll be instructed to confirm that you would like your eBooks in your Fictionwise or eReader Bookshelf transferred to a NOOK Library. Please opt-in by December 21, 2012. Once you opt-in, you will receive more information about transferring your eBooks and this ongoing process.

For more information about how you can transfer your Fictionwise or eReader Bookshelf to a NOOK Library, including additional details on how the transition will apply to current eMagazine subscriptions, Rewards and more, please visit our FAQ web page: http://www.fictionwise.com/BN-Transition-FAQ.htm

Thank you.

The Fictionwise and eReader Team

Of course, guess what happens when I click the link in the above email? If you guessed “We could not recognize your email address” you win a prize. The prize of the same frustration I have right now, as does Judie (she received the same email today and got the same results when she tried again). So a week went by, Barnes and Noble promised a solution, we briefly had the promise of an awesome time-travel solution, but as of today we’re still back with a broken link and a broken promise.

Technology fails, and rollouts get botched; it happens. But it is how a company handles it after the fact that reflects more on them than the failure itself. And watching B&N fail, apologize, and fail again, all while leaving users less than a month to get this resolved? Well, it shakes my faith in them. As a consumer, I have choices, and I can’t see myself choosing B&N after how they’ve handled this situation!

I am insanely disappointed in Barnes and Noble. Earlier this week, news broke that they were shutting down the long-running eReader.com and Fictionwise.com sites they purchased three years ago, and offering to transition as many books as eligible to matching NOOK accounts. So far, so good. Then, the day after it became big news, they sent out emails with instructions on the transition. Also good. Unfortunately, if you were to follow the instructions in these emails, you would likely see one of two outcomes: a failure to link your email to your eReader/Fictionwise account, or B&N would find your account but only transfer a small handful of eligible titles. Either way, this is a very painful and embarrassing failure for Barnes and Noble.

Both Judie and I have had the “we can’t find your email” error. Here’s the message we got when we clicked the link sent to our email addresses:

Sorry, your email address doesn’t match our records.

If you received a shut-down announcement email from Fictionwise.com or eReader.com, it included an opt-in link to migrate your purchased titles from your Bookshelf to a NOOK Library. This opt-in link will only work for the Fictionwise or eReader.com customer it was sent to.

If you did not receive a shut-down announcement email, please contact Fictionwise or eReader.com support

to get your opt-in link.

Please note that your Bookshelf must have at least one purchased title to migrate to a NOOK Library.

My theory is that Barnes and Noble didn’t properly differentiate Fictionwise and eReader customers. Neither Judie nor I ever had a Fictionwise account, but each of us did have one at eReader. B&N’s links and landing page all refer to Fictionwise (in fact, the header says “Welcome, Fictionwise customer”.) Judie and I both had legacy eReader accounts, and we both had errors…and from purely anecdotal experience around the web, it seems like other eReader customers had the same error. Someone at B&N screwed up, and it’s alienating everyone whose eBook path took them through eReader.com at some point.

Of course, even if you were a Fictionwise customer, it isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Over at Mobileread, it looks like almost everyone who tried to download their Fictionwise titles had the vast majority of their titles go missing. Most seem to be reporting somewhere around 10 moving over, and the rest just…didn’t.

Barnes and Noble has a list of titles that can’t be moved, but people are reporting books not on that list are also not being transferred. Be sure to check the full list, as it is pretty substantial. Also, it is odd that some books can’t transfer while others can. As a random test, I searched “Rabbit Run” by John Updike; it’s listed as a non-transferrable book, but B&N carries it as a NOOK title, so what’s the problem?

When I first heard there were immovable titles I assumed these were books that were in limbo for some reason; rights holders who couldn’t be reached to agree to sell through B&N, books that had fallen somewhere between out of print and out of copyright, etc. However, it looks really awful that someone could have purchased a legitimate ebook from Fictionwise, only to be told that for some mysterious reason they have to repurchase it if they want it in NOOK form!

This whole thing is a huge mess. Barnes and Noble had three years to plan for the eventual orderly demise of eReader and Fictionwise. This didn’t sneak up on them, this isn’t a fire sale, and there’s no excuse for the horrible failure of their transfer process. This is an embarrassment to Barnes and Noble and Fictionwise, and this is a slap in the face to legions of early adopters of eBooks, who built libraries in these early stores and are now discovering a promised upgrade path is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

This has been a long time coming, but Barnes and Noble is finally putting Fictionwise and eReader out to pasture. They purchased the sites three years ago, and from that purchase the NOOK was born. But now that the NOOK clearly outshines its older siblings, Barnes and Noble apparently feels there isn’t a benefit to maintaining the prior brands. Even though I’ve said for years this makes more sense, it’s still sad to see Fictionwise and eReader disappear. They go back to the days of Palm OS and Peanut Press, and they were truly pioneers of eBook reading.

The first thing I did when I bought my Palm Zire 71 back in the day was install eReader and buy a book. For the record, all my friends thought it was completely insane that I would want to read a book in electronic form! Today, most of those skeptics own Kindles.

And that outcome (where most people have Kindles or NOOKs) is what has been slowly killing eReader and Fictionwise for years. Barnes and Noble’s NOOK store had a deeper catalog, more actively developed applications, and it was a one stop shop with the NOOK. New customers weren’t bothering with Fictionwise because it didn’t offer much of an incentive, and even existing customers were no doubt being drawn into the NOOK fold. Once you took your eReader or Fictionwise library and loaded up on your NOOK via your computer, you had two choices: keep side loading, or take advantage of the fast, easy, integrated NOOKstore over WiFi. I can’t imagine anyone besides the most devoted loyalists choosing Fictionwise over the much more convenient NOOKstore.

According to the letter to authors that Telereadfound, there will be a migration plan for anyone who has a library at Fictionwise:

This letter is to notify you that Fictionwise will wind down its operations on December 4, 2012. The Fictionwise sites (including Fictionwise.com, eReader.com and eBookwise.com) will end sales on December 4, 2012 and U.S. Fictionwise customers will cease to have access to their Fictionwise Bookshelf through the site after December 21, 2012. Customers outside the U.S. will cease to have access to their Fictionwise Bookshelf through the site after January 31, 2013. Fictionwise customers will be notified of this and U.S. and U.K. customers will be given an opportunity to move their customer accounts, including their eBooks purchased at the Fictionwise websites, to a Barnes & Noble NOOK Library.

Fictionwise’s website isn’t reflecting anything yet, but just in case-if you have any Fictionwise Buywise program credits or other outstanding credits, use them before December 4th! Presumably an email will go out to anyone registered in the eReader/Fictionwise system with instructions on how to migrate your library. In addition, this might be a good time to back up your whole library on a hard drive or flash drive, just to be on the safe side.

We haven’t really seen a major eBook retailer disappear completely yet, and while this is close, even here it’s an orderly transition to an existing market player. But this transition is worth watching even if you don’t have any ebooks through these stores; if, someday, the ebookstore of your choice gets absorbed by another company, knowing how that handoff was executed, and how to protect your content, is going to be extremely valuable.

Will you miss Fictionwise and eReader? Let us know in the comments!

It’s the holiday season, and that means you’re on the hunt for the perfect gift for a loved one. If your giftee is a big reader, maybe you plan to get them a dedicated eBook reader or tablet this year. After all, prices have dropped and specifications have gotten better and better. But which one do you choose? And what kind of accessories should you stuff in that stocking? Read on for the Gear Diary eReader Gift Guide!

Barnes and Noble:

NOOK Simple Touch With Glowlight: Barnes and Noble’s premier traditional ebook reader. It has a backlight screen, so you can read in the dark without holding a flashlight in your teeth, plus WiFi so you can find books on the go. And for only $119, it leaves room in your pocket for some accessories or a gift card as well!

NOOK Simple Touch: If battery life and a slightly cheaper price are more your style, and you don’t need the backlight, Barnes and Noble still offers the plain NOOK Simple Touch (without glow light). It’s a simple, solid ebook reader, and for $99 you can’t go wrong giving this as a gift!

NOOK HD/NOOK HD+: Barnes and Noble started the media tablet trend with the NOOK Color, and by the third generation they’ve really created a polished product. Read books, play games, and even download videos (NOOK Video coming soon). The HD is only $199 for 8GB ($229 for 16GB) and the HD+ brings a bigger screen for only $269 for 16GB ($299 for 32GB).

NOOK Tablet: Again, if you’re looking to stick to a budget, Barnes and Noble still offers the second generation NOOK Tablet for $159 for 8GB or $179 for 16GB. You’re giving up NOOK Video and a higher resolution screen, but the NOOK Tablet is still an excellent media tablet. Stay away from the NOOK Color unless you’re looking for the absolute cheapest option available. Even though B&N is still offering it, the Tablet or HD are significant enough jumps forwards to warrant picking up one of those instead.

Kobo:

Kobo Glo: Our friends in Canada aren’t far behind B&N on the backlight ebook reader train, and their offering comes in at a competitive $129.99. Kobo has a much wider international distribution net than B&N, and they also partnered with the American Booksellers Association, so don’t be surprised if you see their devices popping up in your local small bookstores soon.

Kobo Touch: Much like B&N, Kobo has a non-light up eReader that clocks in at a cheaper $99.99. Perfect for someone who just needs to read!

Kobo Mini: Want something small, budget friendly, and pocket-sized? Kobo has the perfect device in the Mini, the world’s “smallest and lightest full featured ebook reader”. And at only $79, it leaves plenty of extra cash for the most important part: buying books!

Kobo Arc: Unlike the NOOK HD and the Kindle Fire, the Kobo Arc is much more open with its Android underpinnings. This is a reading focused tablet running Android Ice Cream, so your app options are broad when you need a break from finally trying to finish “War and Peace”. Only $199!

Amazon:

Kindle Paperwhite: It took Amazon a while to respond to the trend of backlit ebook readers, but when they did they really came out swinging with the Kindle Paperwhite. It comes in multiple versions, both 3G (for $179), and WiFi (starting at $119). Note that all Kindle models have special offers sponsorship automatically included, and if you want a non-special offers Kindle, it costs an additional $30.

Kindle Keyboard: Some people just can’t get into the new touchscreen craze for ebook readers. For those readers, there’s the Kindle Keyboard. It has physical page turn keys as well as a physical keyboard to make searching for books and making notes easier. Plus, it has free 3G for only $139 ($159 without the special offers).

Kindle: Bringing up the rear in the Kindle reading lineup is the plain “Kindle”. No touchscreen, no keyboard, just a simple, basic ebook reader. It’s small but effective, and at only $69 with special offers, extremely budget friendly!

Kindle Fire HD 7″: The original Kindle Fire was a success, but despite being a big seller it was a bit undercooked at first. The new HD has supposedly ironed out all the kinks, and provides a full-fledged media platform for books, music, movies, and games. Add an Amazon Prime membership ($79/year) and thousands of free movies and television shows are yours for the streaming. Fire HD starts at $199, and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ is a larger screened version for $299.

Kindle Fire 7: This is becoming a theme, but the patriarch of the Fire family is still available at a reduced price, $159. It may not be HD like the new Fire, but it’s still a capable media tablet, now at a lower price.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless: Looking for the most tricked out Kindle Fire you can find? That would be the Kindle Fire HD+ 4G LTE, though it’s ok to shorten it to Kindle Fire 4G (otherwise you’ll spend all day just saying the name). The benefits take a bit of explaining: you can pay $49.99 once, and get 250MB of LTE per month. If you need more, Amazon offers other data plans as well. The price is a bit steeper, at $499 for 32GB, but it does clock in as cheaper than competitors (like the iPad…)

Accessories:

Sleeve style cases: If you like the feel of your naked eReader, and just want a simple case to hold it, there’s a plethora of simple slip cases. I am a big fan of Timbuk2′s cases, Incipio protects your gear with the Sportzip, and those with finer tastes you can’t go wrong with Oberon Designs.

Play-through cases: Speck makes a plethora of play-through cases, from the FitFolio to the Wanderlust and BookShield, so they have you covered with whichever style you like. If you’re looking for something fancy, Sena makes two leather folios, and if you want to get really minimal, then you can protect your device with a simple skin from Bodyguardz.

Gift Cards: The only thing better than getting a new ebook reader for the holidays is a gift card to buy a bunch of books for it! Amazon, Kobo, and B&N all offer gift certificates in varying denominations, and these make a great stocking stuffer to go with that shiny new device!

Our picks:

We tried to present each of the dedicated eReader device and tablet options today, but we’re an opinionated bunch here at Gear Diary. So what devices do we reach for when it’s time to unwind with a good book? Judie, Dan, and I are all avowed Amazon Kindle users (both on Kindle devices and using Kindle software on our iPads or iPad minis), but Mike breaks the pattern and uses a Barnes and Noble NOOK. In the end, any of the stores might fit your needs well, as it comes down to what works best for each person. If you’ve been researching gift ideas for family and friends, and came to a clear preference on the device, let us know which one you decided and why!

If you ever find yourself in Portland, Oregon, you must visit Powell's Books. Several years ago, my wife Sarah and I were out that way, and we visited Powell's. Two hours and a huge stack of books later, we finally left. It was just that awesome of a bookstore. Unfortunately, the book industry is moving swiftly towards an ebook future, and Powell's needed a reliable way to hitch on for the ride. They were dumped by Google when Google Books dropped outside vendors, but luckily for Powell's they have a new dance partner: Kobo books!

According to Powell's website:

At Powell's, the only thing we enjoy more than reading books is talking about books. That's why we — along with independent booksellers across the country — are partnering with Kobo to bring passionate readers together.Kobo has over three million titles in its world class catalog, and its powerful array of social tools has integrated readers around the globe into one vast, dynamic network of book lovers.Sounds like our kind of community.

It's a good fit for both sides. In many ways they are facing different facets of common enemies: Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Powell's is facing the same crunch as many independent bookstores, where there are limited buyers of paper books, and convincing those buyers to shop in their store over a mass retailer or convenient mail order can be tough. They do have a leg up being an iconic store in Portland, but that only gets them so far.

Kobo, meanwhile, needs a good foothold in America. They had a partner in Borders, but that disappeared with the Borders bankruptcy. In their native Canada they have a strong partner in parent company Indigo, and overseas they mainly compete against Amazon, since Barnes and Noble has been slow to expand internationally. Despite any advantages, Kobo is a very distant third. So partnering with the American Booksellers Association, and especially adding Powell's, gives them a stronger retail presence and more brand expansion.

eBooks are still such a growing industry that there is a great deal of opportunity. And while Amazon and Barnes and Noble certainly dominate, there's plenty of room for Kobo (and their bookstore partners) to carve out some marketshare for themselves!

Update: Nate at The Digital Reader gave me a heads up that Powell's is selling the Kobo Glo and Kobo Mini. For right now they only show up if you search on the Powell's site, but it's worth checking out!

Via The Digital Reader

Looking for a really cheap ebook reader, but hate eInk screens? You’re in luck! Barnes and Noble is selling the NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color at rock bottom prices, $159 and $139, respectively. The downsides are that you won’t get NOOK Video and the other bells and whistles of the NOOK HD … but you will have a pretty darn functional media tablet for well under $200!

Of these two, I would only suggest the NOOK Tablet. It’s a few dollars more than the NOOK Color, but the NOOK Color is two years old, while the NOOK Tablet is just about a year old. For an extra $20, you can pick up a device that is not nearly as outdated, and in a world where technology cycles get measured in months, not years, that makes a huge difference for compatibility and support.

Of course, if you are willing to spend $200, the NOOK HD is probably the best choice. Everything from the screen to the software is updated, and the reviews have been uniformly positive. Whatever your budget, Barnes and Noble has a device for it!

Barnes & Noble Announces Lowest Prices Ever on Award-Winning NOOK Tablet™ and NOOK Color™ Starting Sunday

Amazing Products at Best Value: NOOK Tablet As Low As $159 and NOOK Color Just $139

New York, New York – November 3, 2012 – NOOK Media LLC, a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced amazing new, lowest-ever pricing on its award-winning NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color devices in time for the holidays. Beginning tomorrow, November 4, 2012, customers can purchase the highly acclaimed NOOK Tablet starting at just $159 and NOOK Color for $139 at nearly 700 Barnes & Noble stores and hundreds of Barnes & Noble College Bookstores, online at NOOK.com and through other leading retailers offering NOOK® products.

Customers seeking a fast, lightweight tablet with an incredible 7-inch VividView™ display and long-lasting battery life will love the popular NOOK Tablet, now available at $159 for the 8GB model and $179 for the 16GB version. NOOK Tablet offers access to the world’s largest digital library of more than 3 million books, magazines, newspapers, children’s books, popular movies, TV shows, music and more, plus thousands of high-quality NOOK Apps™, fast Web browsing, e-mail and expandable memory. NOOK Color provides tablet essentials at a great value for only $139. The 7-inch device is ideal for reading and exploring a variety of great content including books, magazines, interactive children’s books, apps, access to top video and music services, e-mail and Web browsing.

“Just in time for the holidays, these new lower prices make NOOK a great gift for anyone in the family,” said Jamie Iannone, President of Digital Products at Barnes & Noble. “With everything from interactive children’s books to the best collection of top 100 magazines in rich color, NOOK is perfect for anyone who likes to read.”

All NOOK customers can shop Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOK Store™ of more than 3 million digital titles, and have the ability to enjoy their NOOK content across a wide array of popular devices. Barnes & Noble offers Always Free NOOK Support in all of its neighborhood bookstores, with more than 40,000 NOOKsellers across the country ready to assist customers with setting up their NOOK devices or choosing their next great read.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) is a Fortune 500 company and the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. The company operates 689 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, BN.com (www.bn.com). Its NOOK Media LLC subsidiary is a leader in the emerging digital reading and digital education markets. The NOOK digital business offers award-winning NOOK® products and an expansive collection of digital reading and entertainment content through the NOOK Store™ (www.nook.com), while Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC operates 667 bookstores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble is proud to be named a J.D. Power and Associated 2012 Customer Service Champion and is one of only 50 U.S. companies so named. Barnes & Noble.com is ranked the number one online retailer in customer satisfaction in the book, music and video category and a Top 10 online retailer overall in customer satisfaction according to ForeSee E-Retail Satisfaction Index (Spring Top 100 Edition).

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

NOOK®, NOOK Tablet™, NOOK Color™, NOOK Store™, NOOK Book™, NOOK Video™, NOOK Newspaper™, NOOK Reading Apps™, and Read What You Love. Anywhere You Like™ are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc. Other trademarks referenced in this release are the property of their respective owners.

Follow Barnes & Noble on Twitter (www.bn.com/twitter), Facebook (www.facebook.com/barnesandnoble) and YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/bnstudio).

About NOOK Media LLC

NOOK reading and entertainment products make it easy to read what you love, anywhere you like™ with a fun, easy-to-use and immersive digital reading experience. With NOOK, customers gain access to the expansive NOOK Store™ of more than 3 million digital books, plus periodicals, comics, apps, movies and TV shows, and the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices through free NOOK Reading Apps™ and NOOK Video apps, available at www.nook.com/freenookapps. NOOK owners receive Always Free NOOK Support in any of Barnes & Noble’s nearly 700 bookstores. Find NOOK devices in Barnes & Noble stores and online at www.nook.com, as well as leading retailers including Best Buy, Walmart, Target and many others. NOOK products will also soon be available in the United Kingdom through www.nook.co.uk and leading retailers.

For more information on NOOK, follow us on www.twitter.com/nookBN or www.twitter.com/nook_UK and www.facebook.com/nook.

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Now that the Agency Model has been rendered toothless as a way to keep publishers afloat, we’re seeing the next phase in book publishing evolution: mergers! Random House, which was already the biggest publisher in the USA, is buying a controlling stake in Penguin, forming a super-publisher!

According to the New York Times:

PARIS — Two European media companies, Bertelsmann and Pearson, confirmed Monday that they planned to combine their book publishing divisions, Random House and Penguin.

Under the agreement, Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, would control 53 percent of the merged publishers. Bertelsmann and Pearson would share executive oversight, with Markus Dohle of Random House serving as chief executive and John Makinson of Penguin becoming the chairman.

The deal would consolidate Random House’s position as the largest consumer book publisher in the English-language world, giving the combined companies greater scale to deal with the challenges arising from the growth of e-books and the rise of Internet retailers like Amazon.

“Together, the two publishers will be able to share a large part of their costs, to invest more for their author and reader constituencies and to be more adventurous in trying new models in this exciting, fast-moving world of digital books and digital readers,” said Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson, which is based in London.

It’s a bit early to say if this is a good or bad development for readers, but I do think it was inevitable. Publishing has become a tight business in the last few years, and dying bookstores, rising self-publishing, and cheaper ebooks have all been taking their turns drawing blood. It makes sense that the big publishers would begin to merge and pool their resources as a way to stay relevant against self publishing and Amazon.

The cynical side of me says this is a bad sign. One less publisher means one less outlet for an author to get their book published the traditional way. It also means less competition in the mainstream space, which is going to tighten the flexibility that many retailers have as well. On the other hand, if they streamline their operations and inventory, it could mean that margins get slightly looser, and maybe that means we see some of that savings passed along to readers to encourage more book buying.

I also think this is a huge opportunity for Amazon, Smashwords, and Fastpencil. All three run successful self-publishing businesses, and with big publishers consolidating, it means there’s going to be more authors looking to circumvent the traditional routes, or simply being rejected or lost in large slush piles building up at Random Penguin (Penguin House?). Amazon and Fastpencil also run full publishing arms, with access to editors and promotional resources, so it will be interesting to see if they snap up books at a faster rate in the future.

At this point, it’s way too early to see what will happen with this consolidation. Overall, it probably won’t be a net benefit to consumers, at least not at first, and whether this is a benefit to the two publishers remains to be seen as well. I do find it fitting that they announced this today, October 29th, though-New York City is about to face a Frankenstorm, and now they have to face a Frankenpublisher too!

We all know how much the digital change has impacted books, newspapers, and periodicals, but the latest canary in the printing press is a bit of a surprise. Newsweek, yes, the magazine you find in your doctor’s office waiting room, or grab on your way to boarding a plane, is going all digital. This is going to be a huge problem…for doctor’s offices everywhere. Seriously, though, this is big. Newsweek is a major print magazine, so for them to make the jump to a purely digital format that says a lot about the risk in remaining a traditional print publication.

The positives for Newsweek in this are pretty obvious. They’re cutting their costs immensely, and becoming more nimble in how they can report on the news. Magazines are a tough, tight business. Print too few and you leave money on the table, print too many and you’re burning money. Unlike books, you can’t print extra and gamble on selling any unsold copies as remainders. Overprinted magazines make bad-smelling kindling, and that’s about it. More importantly, they’re no longer bound to a printing deadline. In an age when the news moves as fast as your smartphone can receive it, Newsweek can have an updated article or news analysis pushed to your device immediately, as opposed to waiting a week for the next magazine edition.

Now, in the official letter announcing this change, Newsweek mentioned that their digital distribution has been strong, and that base is what’s encouraged them to make this change. I don’t doubt that they’ve seen a great deal of demand for digital magazines, but the real question is whether the readers who haven’t yet gone digital are going to follow. Hopefully they will, but it will be a tough transition for many people. I know my own parents have been receiving Newsweek since I was a kid, and while they have iPads and iPhones, I don’t know that their dedication to Newsweek is so great that it will get them reading digital magazines. It’s just as likely that they’ll cancel their subscription and only read TIME magazine. It will be interesting to see if the brand power of Newsweek is strong enough to bring over previously paper-focused readers.

The biggest benefit and potential upside for Newsweek is the timing. The Kindle Fire HD is out, the NOOK HD is out, and the iPad Mini is (possibly) coming this week. So throughout the holiday season, there will be plenty of opportunity for future buyers of digital magazines to end up with the perfect device to read Newsweek in January 2013. Hopefully the right mix of new content and new hardware will provide the tipping point Newsweek will need! And if Newsweek succeeds in this venture…who will be next?

If you purchased any eBooks published by a major publishing house in the last few years, you probably received an email from Amazon, or will receive one from your bookstore of choice shortly. As a result of the Department of Justice ruling on Agency Pricing, the publishers who agreed to the settlement owe us all some money. The exact formula isn’t clear, but according to the email from Amazon it’s safe to expect $0.30-$1.32 per book:

We have good news. You are entitled to a credit for some of your past e-book purchases as a result of legal settlements between several major e-book publishers and the Attorneys General of most U.S. states and territories, including yours. You do not need to do anything to receive this credit. We will contact you when the credit is applied to your Amazon.com account if the Court approves the settlements in February 2013.

Hachette, Harper Collins, and Simon & Schuster have settled an antitrust lawsuit about e-book prices. Under the proposed settlements, the publishers will provide funds for a credit that will be applied directly to your Amazon.com account. If the Court approves the settlements, the account credit will appear automatically and can be used to purchase Kindle books or print books. While we will not know the amount of your credit until the Court approves the settlements, the Attorneys General estimate that it will range from $0.30 to $1.32 for every eligible Kindle book that you purchased between April 2010 and May 2012. Alternatively, you may request a check in the amount of your credit by following the instructions included in the formal notice of the settlements, set forth below. You can learn more about the settlements here:

www.amazon.com/help/agencyebooksettlements

In addition to the account credit, the settlements impose limitations on the publishers’ ability to set e-book prices. We think these settlements are a big win for customers and look forward to lowering prices on more Kindle books in the future.

This was mandated by the terms of the settlement, so it isn’t that Amazon is doing anything special. While they were the first, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, and any other stores who sold Agency Titles will have to contact customers as well. But Amazon was smart about how they approached this.

By being the first company to reach out, they set the tone for everyone. The email could have sounded like every class action email that gets sent out: “Pursuant to settlement 1234, Department of Justice vs [participating publishers] you have been identified as having purchased ebooks between April 2010 and May 2012 and may be eligible for a credit”. Chances are your eyes would glaze over before you even got to the part about the credit. Instead, Amazon opened with a positive-Good news, you’re getting a credit!, which is guaranteed to catch someone’s attention. Then the little dig at the end about how this is good news for consumers just cements the positive sentiment of the email.

Basically, Amazon fulfilled their legal obligation to notify customers, and they did it while not so subtle-y pushing their beliefs that the agency model was an anti-consumer mistake. When the remaining bookstores send out notifications, even if they do it in a dry fashion, the news has already spread: Good news for readers! When the publishers not involved in the settlement try to fight back, consumer sentiment is not going to be in their favor: Why aren’t these guys giving credits for the same issue the other ones did? Basically, by making this crystal clear for consumers-you’re getting Amazon credit or cold hard cash-it makes it really hard to oppose a settlement. Who wants to tell their customers no, when someone else said yes?

Edit: Looks like I was right on-check out the dry, legal, boring version Kobo just sent me:

This notice is to inform you of a recent settlement by the State Attorneys General related to a lawsuit brought against publishers regarding eBook pricing. We are providing notice to our customers about your ability to receive a credit as a service to our customers.

As a result of this settlement you are eligible for a partial credit based on select purchases from eBook publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin, MacMillan and Simon & Schuster that were purchased through Kobo.

You do not need to do anything to receive your credit. It will be applied to your Kobo account automatically and you’ll receive another email letting you know when it’s available.

If you prefer to receive your credit via a check please record your settlement ID: [redacted] and click here to learn more.

To read about your rights under the settlements or if you’d like more information on this settlement, click here or contact us.

Thank you for being a Kobo customer.

The Kobo Team

The really hard part here, of course, is waiting until February to get any credits!

;

Which came first, the ecosystem or the hardware? When it comes to ebooks, it’s a tough call. There were eBookstores going back to the original Palm Pilot, and there were hardware ebook readers like the Franklin eBookman long before the Kindle was even a beginning prototype for Amazon. Then you had devices like the Sony Reader, which cobbled together the two, ebookstore and hardware. Of course, the real victors there were Amazon with the Kindle and Barnes and Noble with the NOOK, because they came in with a polished end to end solution. Still, there’s a niche market for straight ebook hardware, and for that reason alone Bookeen is releasing a new device, the Cybook Odyssey HD.

From the press release:

Bookeen is announcing today the launch of the new Cybook Odyssey HD FrontLight, the 6th generation and most advanced Cybook with an inbuilt FrontLight solution and with the most advanced E Ink® HD display. Since 1998, Bookeen has been the European champion in digital reading years before Amazon entered the market.

The new Cybook Odyssey HD FrontLight which will be launched first in Europe starting from November 2012 marks a revolution in the e-reader market. It is embedded with an HD display, innovative and low power consumption FrontLight technology and an enhanced user interface. It is also ergonomically designed, made with Bookeen’s HSIS technology (High Speed Ink System) as well as smart connectivity technology. Bookeen disrupts digital reading with this high quality e-reader incorporating brand new technology.

Michael Dahan, Bookeen CEO: “In 2007 with the launch of the first reader with E Ink® display technology, we participated in making digital reading a success. We did this by offering a new comfort and demonstrating how the competition between e-readers and paper books is changing our lives. Now with the new Cybook Odyssey HD FrontLight we are making a huge step forward, demonstrating that we are the only independent solution to partner with booksellers against Amazon or Kobo”.

So, hardware-wise this isn’t a bad device. I think the majority of ebook shoppers aren’t looking for an ecosystem-agnostic device, but if you are, the Cybook sounds on paper like a great choice. A few years ago I reviewed the Cybook Gen 3, and I found it to be a great bit of hardware. I am sure the Odyssey HD will continue in that tradition.

Cybook has more of a following in Europe, where Amazon and B&N have expanded a bit slowly. It’s a good time to be shopping for an ebook reader-between the Kindle Paperwhite, the NOOK Glow light, the Kobo Glo, and now the Cybook Odyssey, there’s many choices for eInk devices with screen lights. The only bad news is if you’re a Sony fan…apparently Sony is the only ebook company not to get the front light/back light memo!

If you pick up a Cybook Odyssey HD, or see one in store, let us know in the comments what it’s like!

Here’s a question: when’s the last time you went to your local library? Maybe you dropped by and saw they had a promotion about ebooks. Or you stop by once in a while for audiobooks. The last few years, it seems like libraries have been playing catch up as books, movies, and media in general have gone digital. However, a new partnership with Fastpencil and Auto-Graphics is bringing a whole new option to libraries: self-publishing resources and content!

I had the chance to talk today with Steve Wilson of Fastpencil and Robert Brown of Auto-Graphics. Fastpencil is a huge self publishing company, and Auto-Graphics runs the technology tools for libraries all over the country. So together they become a formidable team to give libraries an edge in attracting consumers! As Robert kept emphasizing on our call, libraries have all the ingredients to make this a perfect ecosystem: they have access to incredible amounts of research, patrons who need and use library tools, including self publishing resources, and more patrons who can check out finished books after they are written and self published. And remember, we aren’t just talking about your local municipal library. This partnership is a way for schools and corporate libraries to leverage internal publications, syllabi, etc.

What really came through in the conversation is how excited both companies are to be creating this new business for libraries. It’s truly an untapped market, and one that fits perfectly for everyone. Libraries have an uphill battle in the ebook world, where publishers keep restricting the number of loans available and increasing purchase costs. For consumers, this doesn’t just toss them into the self publishing world on their own. Libraries will be offering Fastpencil’s impressive array of tools, both online and on location. One of the tidbits Robert tossed out in our conversation is that 87% of people surveyed believe they have an idea for a book. Imagine coming up with an idea, and instead of trying to do it on your own, you can hit up a workshop, or a monthly meeting at your local library. And the library gives you tools to self publish. Finally, you finish the book, and it can even be carried at, you guessed it, the local library, in both print and ebook form. It’s an excellent way to flow cleanly from creativity to finished product!

Personally, I think this entire idea is brilliant. This is combining an established and well known brand like Fastpencil with a community, resources, and potential writers. It offers an opportunity to give libraries and future authors the chance to shake up the status quo in publishing, and change the conversation from the red tape of publishing a book to the real story-the content. Whether it’s an educational or internal resource manual, or the next great American novel, thanks to Fastpencil and Auto-Graphics, it just might be brewing at your local library!

For those who want more information, check out the full press release below:

Auto-Graphics Partners with FastPencil to Power Libraries with Book Publishing Capabilities

Authors Can Now Design, Publish and Distribute Books in Print and Digital Formats Through Libraries for the First Time

POMONA, Calif. — October 3, 2012 – Auto-Graphics, Inc., a leading provider of tools, technologies and services that enable libraries to create, manage and provide personalized access to print and digital collections, and FastPencil today announced a partnership that provides library patrons with access to FastPencil’s book publishing engine through its Library Management Platform™. Library members will have the ability to use FastPencil’s next-generation publishing platform to write, design, publish and sell books in print and digital formats directly through their local libraries.

“We are excited about the prospect of changing the way people view the role of their libraries and we believe that self publishing presents just that opportunity,” said Robert Brown, EVP of Auto-Graphics. “Libraries can now provide this resource to any would-be author, allowing them to create, publish and distribute their musings along-side the world’s finest authors in either a traditional or ebook format. Participating libraries now have the opportunity to redefine their role as true purveyors of content by delivering new avenues to educate and advance the greater community through the writings of anyone, regardless of their social or economic status.”

“FastPencil is thrilled to partner with Auto-Graphics, a highly-respected company with six decades of service, to provide library members across North America with our book publishing engine,” said Steve Wilson, FastPencil CEO and co-founder. “Eighty percent of people aspire to write a book in this country, and we are excited to have the opportunity to offer library members all the tools necessary to publish their story, no matter what it is.”

FastPencil’s platform provides aspiring and experienced authors with the technology to publish any quantity of books with ease, have control over their content, and enjoy higher margins for revenue and increased speed to market. To start, a select group of Auto-Graphics’ customers will have access to the publishing engine and over time, patrons of the 5,500 libraries working with Auto-Graphics will have the freedom and power to publish quality books. The service is available as a standalone product or seamlessly integrated into Auto-Graphics’ VERSO® ILS, SHAREit™ interlibrary loan solution or SEARCHit™ federated search product.

Through an easy-to-use interface, libraries will offer patrons five powerful features including:

• Connect: Collaborate easily and securely within the content management system and directly connect to publishing and retail industry leaders as well as social networking platforms.

• Write: Write, edit and manage projects on the web or from any device. Track revisions and version history and work with multiple editors and contributors.

• Convert: Using the Publishing Setup wizard, convert files into multiple formats for both print books and e-books to prepare for distribution into a variety of channels.

• Publish: Through the publishing module, directly upload files as a new project or write, convert and publish directly through the content management system. This module provides a unique ISBN number and distributes to hundreds of book retailers.

• Sell: Access an independent e-commerce and order fulfillment system through FastPencil’s Marketplace. Custom URLs and BookBuy widgets are automatically generated upon publishing to assist with marketing campaigns. Royalty reporting is captured and displayed on a dashboard.

Auto-Graphics’ solutions help public and private organizations manage their data so users can find and use the most relevant content available. Auto-Graphics partners with public and academic libraries as well as several types of special libraries, including legal, medical, research, government, museum and corporate libraries.

For more information visit – http://www4.auto-graphics.com/web_newsevents/fastpencil.asp.

Barnes and Noble have been busy this week. First they quietly announce NOOK Video, surprising everyone, and then quietly, in the dead of night, they announced the NOOK HD and NOOK HD+, two extremely well specc’d competitors to the Kindle Fire HD and Fire HD 8.9″. In fact, the hands on reports of the hardware and software indicate both devices are just as good, if not better than, the Fire HD and Nexus 7. So why bury the announcement in the middle of the night, with no fanfare?

The only explanation I can think of is NewCo (the NOOK/B&N college/Microsoft venture). So far, aside from the perfunctory regulatory announcement, we don’t know anything about this new Microsoft/B&N mash up. What we do know is that the current slate of releases were probably in the pipeline long before this partnership was born. And everyone speculated that Microsoft’s involvement meant NOOKs running Windows 8 in the future. It doesn’t take a great deal of advanced symbolic logic to see the equation here: Microsoft + Barnes & Noble= Burn off the non-NewCo NOOKs ahead of the finalized partnership.

This is the only logical explanation. The alternative is that someone at Barnes and Noble forgot they are in the midst of a competitive tablet season, and just decided to phone in their marketing strategy. Since Barnes and Noble doesn’t seem like they want to just give up and pull a Borders, there has to be some larger plan behind it. Even if there is no iPad mini, the NOOK HD is about to face off against a new Fire and the Nexus 7, both of which have been talked up heavily by the tech press. A big splashy press announcement is basically the first commercial for a new device. There are liveblogs, headlines in major newspapers, and a general sense of excitement. Then there’s another round when the reviews come out later. Why pass this up, unless they really don’t want anyone to care that deeply about the current iteration of NOOKs.

Even the announcement of NOOK Video ties into this…NOOK Video is designed to work on multiple devices and platforms, so it will be smooth and easy to tie it into a new flagship device later. The real wrinkle is the NOOK apps, but given the small number of apps and the controlled nature of the store, it might be possible to swap many of the Android versions for Windows ones without many issues. NOOK Books, of course, already work across multiple operating systems, so that’s a simple one.

What do you think? Is my theory totally crazy? Has Barnes and Noble just given up at trying to compete? Let us know in the comments!

Type of app: Interactive Story Book
Platform/where to buy: iPad (Universal); available in the App Store
Developer: Oleksandr Pogrebniak
Description:

A miniature red-headed girl has suddenly appeared from a flower. Her enchanting beauty sways many hearts along her travels. She took a trip on a leaf of a water lily, flew on the back of a swallow, and made friends with the tiniest beings. Colorful montages reflect both joy and sadness within these interactive pages of this app. Thumbelina joins an unusual music performance, singing songs of joy to sunshine and summer flowers. A new friend’s charm vanishes, and is taken over by bitter disappointment. Cheerful chatter of birds with the rise of dawn and boundless freedom is replaced by boredom of reclusion. It’s also a possibility the days will seem endless in this silent custody. Despite whatever happens, brave Thumbelina is faithful to the voice of her heart, this voice guides her through all the miseries straight to the carefree kingdom of new friends.

Features:
- Wander through 24 interactive pages
- 17 exquisite author illustrations will indulge your senses
- 9 original tracks accentuate the beauty of the fairy tale
- More than 30 hidden surprises
- Easy navigation through the table of contents
- Pages are easy to turn with a swipe
- Evoke your childhood memories!

Major features: Thumbelina is a classic fairy tale from Hans Christian Andersen, which has been reimagined as an interactive and ‘living’ ebook for the iPad. As you turn from page to page the story comes alive with sounds and motion and music. All of the technical aspects from the hand-drawn pages to the music to the animated sprites and scenes are very well done and look great on the Retina iPad display.

I remember first hearing about interactive books and thinking they would detract from the core story by taking elements away from your imagination. And I have seen some that do exactly that and diminish the book. But Thumbelina is an example of the RIGHT way to do things – rather than detract, the audio and visual flourishes enhance the experience. It takes the normal illustrated children’s book style and elevates it to a new level; hidden items and surprises invite you to interact with the book; and you will enjoy the experience no matter your age.

Ease of use/Overall performance: If you can read a book on the iPad, you can use Thumbelina. All of the usual flipping gestures are preserved, and touching objects on-screen where it makes sense has an immediate response.

Would use again/recommend?: Absolutely! Even though it has been many years since I read books aloud to my kids, this immediately took me back to those days, and makes me think how reading would have been different with books like these.

Suggested changes/wish list for updates: Nothing

Price: $2.99 (Free ‘Lite’ version also available)

Here is the trailer:

Barnes and Noble needed something big to compete against the Kindle Fire, and today they announced one part of what that might be: NOOK Video. Details are light, but it sounds like this will be a streaming and pay for download service. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like Amazon Prime Streaming…

The big question here is software and price. B&N says they plan to offer NOOK Video to PCs, smartphones and tablets, so this sounds more like a whole new spinoff of NOOK offerings than a one-off designed to add value to the NOOK Tablet lines. Amazon Prime costs $79/year, and includes perks like free shipping. What will NOOK Video cost? B&N already had a paid membership program, and a deal that rolled the 10% discount on regular books into a streaming service for the same price as Amazon Prime would be a huge game changer for Barnes and Noble.

Then, of course, there’s content. The press release lists all sorts of great stuff, but the question remains as to how much is streaming versus download. HBO is listed as a partner, but is it HBO GO without the cable subscription or is it just another outlet to download shows already on DVD? We will find out this fall…probably along with a refreshed NOOK Tablet.

Suddenly the holiday season is getting awfully competitive. The Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD, and NOOK Tablet all want your business…who will you choose?

For reference, Barnes and Noble’s full press release (heavy on press fluff, light on details) is below:

NOOK Video™ to Premiere This Fall

Coming Soon: Shop Popular Digital Movies & TV Shows Available for Streaming and Download

Content Licensed From Major Studios Including HBO®, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, STARZ, The Walt Disney Studios, Viacom and Warner Bros. Entertainment to Bring Customers Entertainment Anywhere

New York, New York – September 25, 2012 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced its new NOOK Video offering will premiere this fall with blockbuster movies, classic films and original TV shows from major studios including HBO, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, STARZ, Viacom and Warner Bros. Entertainment, plus favorite movies from The Walt Disney Studios. Barnes & Noble, which is one of the country’s leading DVD and Blu-ray Disc™ retailers, will now offer an expansive digital collection of popular films and television shows to be enjoyed anywhere on NOOKs, TVs, tablets and smartphones. Barnes & Noble is also planning to make available content from other leading studios to be announced.

Beginning this fall in the US and coming this holiday season to the UK, NOOK Video will offer customers the opportunity to shop an extensive and diverse digital collection of standard and high-definition movies and TV shows available for streaming and download. Through deals with these and other major studios, the NOOK Video catalog will offer something for everyone in the family to enjoy, including Disney-Pixar’s Brave and Toy Story 3, Marvel’s The Avengers, 21 Jump Street, Awkward, The Artist, Breaking Bad, Dora the Explorer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Spartacus, Magic City, The Walking Dead, True Blood®, Game of Thrones®, Harry Potter movies, The Dark Knight, The Hangover and many more.

Videos that are streamed and downloaded from the NOOK Store will be stored safely and securely in the NOOK Cloud™, so NOOK Video content can be enjoyed on NOOKs and other devices via soon-to-launch free NOOK Video apps. As with the NOOK Reading apps, NOOK Video apps will seamlessly work together so customers can pick up watching right where they left off on any of their connected devices.

NOOK Video will also integrate a customer’s compatible physical DVD and Blu-ray Disc purchases and digital video collection across their devices through UltraViolet™. Customers will soon be able to easily link their UltraViolet accounts to the NOOK Cloud allowing them to view their previously and newly purchased UltraViolet-enabled movies and TV shows across NOOK devices and NOOK Video apps, as well as through third party applications. In addition to purchasing a digital version via NOOK Video, customers can shop for DVDs and Blu-ray discs with the UltraViolet logo in Barnes & Noble and other retail stores, add them to their digital collection, and instantly watch compatible titles from the NOOK Cloud to enjoy wherever they go and however they choose.

“As one of the world’s largest retailers of physical video discs and digital copyrighted content, our new NOOK Video service will give our customers another way to be entertained with a vast and growing digital video collection, as part of our expansive NOOK Store,” said William J. Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble. “The launch of our new digital video service with our long-time studio partners allows us to bring award-winning current and classic movies, TV shows, documentaries and more to millions of customers’ screens, coming soon.”

“With the great success of the NOOK tablet and Barnes & Noble’s in-store promotional efforts, we are very excited to bring our acclaimed programming to the NOOK Store,” said Henry McGee, President, HBO Home Entertainment. “NOOK Video offers a customized and convenient way for entertainment enthusiasts to own award-winning shows such as Game of Thrones®, Boardwalk Empire®, GirlsSM, and True Blood® and enjoy them across a multitude of devices.”

“The NOOK is a dynamic tablet with a beautiful display and we are excited to provide content from Viacom’s media networks on this enhanced portable, platform” said Denise Denson, Executive Vice President of Content Distribution and Marketing at Viacom. “This is another opportunity for our audiences to enjoy their favorite shows from across MTV, VH1, CMT, Logo, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike and BET wherever they go.”

“NOOK Video provides customers a simple way to buy movies digitally and UltraViolet brings unmatched convenience and portability to those purchases, allowing consumers to access their digital collection from almost anywhere,” said Thomas Gewecke, President, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. “With Barnes & Noble’s in-store, online and digital promotions many consumers will learn how to maximize their entertainment using all the benefits UltraViolet provides.”

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, operates 689 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 667 college bookstores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through BN.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than 2.5 million titles in its NOOK Bookstore™ (www.bn.com/ebooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK® eReading product offering, customers can buy and read digital books and content on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK devices, partner company products, and the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK software. Barnes & Noble is proud to be named a J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion and is only one of 50 U.S. companies so named. Barnes & Noble.com is ranked the number one online retailer in customer satisfaction in the book, music and video category and a Top 10 online retailer overall in customer satisfaction according to ForeSee E-Retail Satisfaction Index (Spring Top 100 Edition).

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

NOOK®, NOOK Tablet™, NOOK Simple Touch™ with GlowLight™, NOOK Simple Touch™, NOOK Color™, Reader’s Tablet™, Best-Text™ Technology, VividView™, PagePerfect™, NOOK Store™, NOOK Bookstore™, NOOK Book™, NOOK Newsstand™, NOOK Magazine™, NOOK Newspaper™, NOOK Video™, NOOK Apps™, FREE NOOK Reading Apps™, NOOK Kids™, NOOK Digital Shop™, NOOK Cloud™, NOOK® for Web, Read In Store™, More In Store™, LendMe®, NOOK Books en español™, NOOK Study™, NOOK Library™, Lifetime Library™ and Read What You Love. Anywhere You Like™ are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc. Other trademarks referenced in this release are the property of their respective owners.

Follow Barnes & Noble on Twitter (www.bn.com/twitter), Facebook (www.facebook.com/barnesandnoble) and YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/bnstudio).

About NOOK® from Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble’s NOOK reading and entertainment products make it easy to read what you love, anywhere you like™ with a fun, easy-to-use and immersive digital reading experience. With NOOK, customers gain access to Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOK Store™ of millions of digital titles, and the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices through free NOOK Reading Apps™ and NOOK Video apps, available at www.nook.com/freenookapps. Barnes & Noble offers NOOK owners Always Free NOOK Support in any of its nearly 700 bookstores. Find NOOK devices in Barnes & Noble stores and online at www.nook.com, as well as leading retailers including Best Buy, Walmart, Target and many others. NOOK products will also soon be available in the United Kingdom through www.nook.co.uk and leading retailers.

For more information on NOOK, follow us on www.twitter.com/nookBN or www.twitter.com/nook_UK and www.facebook.com/nook.

# # #

My wife Sarah and I are likely moving in a few months. As a result, we are in a hardcore “kick out the junk” phase, and that means finally dealing with the sheer number of books in our attic. So. Many. Books. My back is less than happy about all the carrying and sorting we did today!

The thing about books is that they are really hard to give up. Not just emotionally, but literally. No one wants our books. I called three libraries, and the best answer I received was that the library could take books written less than two years ago, but they capped it at two garbage bags full. The Vietnam Veterans will take books, but only at specific drop offs-they won’t pick them up from us. Finally, Goodwill and Salvation Army will accept books, but not textbooks.

I have a carful of books, and between Goodwill and the Vietnam Vets I should be able to insure they hopefully find their way to good homes. What I can’t decide is whether this means anything for the future of paper books. There’s only one national bookstore chain left, libraries are losing funding left and right, and people are upgrading to eBooks … and there’s apparently low enough demand for used books that no one will take them. Oh, and two lifelong book hoarders cut 100+ titles down to four “must keeps”…I think this means the eBooks have won!

Now that Amazon’s new Kindle announcements have had a few days to settle in, there’s a lot to consider for the future. Will the Kindle go from cheaper and cheaper to free? Will the iPad mini exist and unseat the Kindle Fire? And how will Barnes and Noble respond?

Dan and I had a long chat today, and we covered all of the above and more! Check it out below, and then let us know in the comments if you agree, disagree, or if you have your own predictions for the future of eBook readers!

Amazon may only release Kindles once a year, but when they do, it is worth noting. Last year, they rolled out the Kindle Fire, and this year they not only upgraded the Fire line, they also answered the NOOK with Glowlight, addressed head-on their hardware and software priorities, and basically nailed every expectation out there. So what does it all mean?

What I found most interesting about yesterday’s announcements were Jeff Bezos’ remarks about hardware. Basically, he said that Amazon isn’t interested in making money on hardware; they want to sell us goods and services. Every device they sell is designed to sell you more Amazon products. This has been obvious for quite a while, but I think this might be one of the first times Amazon flat-out stated this as their strategy — especially during a hardware launch!

Their ecosystem really is their main weapon, and the Fire ecosystem really highlights this. B&N can throw all matter of hardware goodies at the NOOK tablet, but the Fire offers more bang for the buyer’s buck. Between Prime streaming, Whispersync, the Amazon AppStore, and yes, the Kindle Store, it is hard to compete. Amazon is stacking the deck so that you don’t just want the device, you want the experience. It may be a bit more disjointed than iTunes, but it is the same strategy: control the content, and the hardware sales will follow.

The Fire line really highlights this plan, especially “immersion reading” and x-ray for movies. Here Amazon is leveraging their ownership of Audible.com and IMDB.com to bring a deeper experience to the content. But how do you get this amazing new way to watch a movie or read a book? Only on a Kindle Fire. Slowly but surely, they are stacking their devices with services that require a piece of the Amazon portfolio, plus the hardware to access it.

Maybe, like me, your weakness is reading. The Kindle Lending Library, available to Prime members, is an attractive way to pick up an extra free book a month to read. Or you are like Sarah, and you like watching movies and television shows before bed. Who needs Netflix when you have free Prime streaming movies and shows? Now even audiobooks have worked their way into this set of incentives. So when you look at a competitor, say, Barnes and Noble, you aren’t looking at whether the NOOK Tablet is better hardware, you are looking directly at the ecosystems. B&N has done a lot to improve their offerings, but Amazon pushes the limits even further.

Amazon doesn’t just want to sell you books, they want to sell you everything. They are working hard to cement their place in the tablet and ebook markets, so what’s next? Given their admission about wanting to sell services, I could easily see an Apple TV competitor down the road. If selling a set top box for $50 would move more Prime memberships, it would make sense. Heck, they could even offer up books on it; imagine an interactive kids “book” on a TV screen, or an instructional book with a mix of video and text. I have a hard time imagining how Amazon would successfully sell a phone, but who knows…maybe the LTE Kindle Fire is a test run for something more!

One related coincidence that Amazon couldn’t have planned better if they tried, by the way-today a judge upheld the Department of Justice’s settlement with the publishing companies. So not only is Amazon riding high on hardware success, they are about to lose many, many pricing restrictions too. It is a very good time to be an Amazon customer, and a very bad time to be their competitor!

Are you excited for the new Kindles, or do you prefer to keep Amazon at arm’s length? Let us know in the comments!

For more coverage of Amazon’s announcements, check out our live discussion as well as a preview of Amazon’s new commercials!

Will Amazon take on the iPad market by announcing a new 10″ Kindle Fire? Or will they simply introduce an ad-supported 7″ Kindle Fire and a second updated 7″ Kindle Fire with a faster processor, increased resolution, a camera, Paperwhite display, HDMI port, volume controls. and a new interface? Will there be an Amazon Phone? Will Amazon introduce their own video box, perhaps Amazon TV? Rumors abound, but there is only one thing we know; the truth will be revealed this afternoon at 1:30ET.

Possible new Kindle Fire shown during a Monday Night Football commercial last night; courtesy of CNET

Join us right here to see what’s next from Amazon!

Update: The press releases are out now, and they have a lot of details! For that reason I am posting them in their entirety. Enjoy!

Amazon Takes on the High-End—Introducing the New Kindle Fire HD Family

$199 now gets you the world’s most-advanced 7” tablet, with a stunning custom HD display, the fastest Wi-Fi, exclusive Dolby audio, powerful processor and graphics engine, and 16 GB of storage—all backed by the world’s best content ecosystem, the best cross-platform interoperability, and the best customer service$299 now gets you all the same advanced technology on a stunning 8.9” large-screen 1920×1200 HD display with 254 ppi and a powerful OMAP4 4470 processor and graphics engine$499 now gets you the same high-end large-screen HD tablet, 32 GB of storage, plus ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless powered by the latest generation 4G chipset, and Amazon’s groundbreaking $49.99 one year 4G LTE data package—customers save hundreds of dollars in the first year compared to other 4G tabletsNew inventions exclusively on the new family of Kindle Fire devices—X-Ray for Movies, X-Ray for Textbooks, Immersion Reading, Whispersync for Voice, Whispersync for Games, and Kindle FreeTime

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sep. 6, 2012– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Less than one year ago, Amazon introduced Kindle Fire—combining 15 years of innovation into a fully-integrated, end-to-end service for customers. Kindle Fire quickly became the most successful product launch in the history of Amazon.com, earning over 10,000 5-star customer reviews, remaining the #1 best-selling product across the millions of items available on Amazon since its introduction, and capturing 22% of U.S. tablet sales in just nine months. Today, Amazon is excited to announce that it’s taking on the high-end with Kindle Fire HD—the next generation of Kindle Fire.

Kindle Fire HD (Photo: Business Wire)

The Kindle Fire HD family—the most-advanced tablets:

• Ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless, powered by the latest generation 4G chipset, support for all 10 4G bands, and Amazon’s breakthrough 4G LTE data package—customers save hundreds of dollars in the first year compared to other 4G tablets.

• Stunning custom HD display with in-plane switching, Advanced True Wide polarizing filter and custom laminated touch sensor for 25% less glare with rich color and deep contrast from any viewing angle.
• Fastest Wi-Fi of any tablet—dual antenna, dual-band, and MIMO—40% faster downloads and streaming compared to the next fastest tablet.
• High-performance processor and graphics engine for snappy and smooth performance.
• Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio—the standard in high-end audio—available for the first time on a tablet.
• Kindle Fire HD starts with 16 GB of local storage, enough to accommodate the larger file sizes of HD content.
• Exceptional battery life—7” Kindle Fire HD gets 11 hours of battery life.
• Front-facing HD camera with custom Skype application for video calling from anywhere in the world.
• New Amazon-exclusive features like X-Ray for Movies, X-Ray for Textbooks, Immersion Reading, Whispersync for Voice, Whispersync for Games, and Kindle FreeTime.
• World’s best content ecosystem—over 22 million movies, TV shows, songs, apps, games, books, audiobooks and magazines.
• Best cross-platform interoperability, with Amazon apps available on the largest number of devices and platforms so customers can access content anytime, anywhere.
• Amazon’s top-rated, world-class customer service.

Amazon is also introducing an all-new upgraded version of the best-selling standard definition Kindle Fire with a faster processor, twice the memory and longer battery life—all for an even lower breakthrough price—only $159. Meet the all-new Kindle Fire family atwww.amazon.com/kindlefirehd.

“We’re taking on the most popular price point for a tablet, $499, but doubling the storage and incredibly, adding ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “Kindle Fire HD is not only the most-advanced hardware, it’s also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best high-end tablet anywhere, at any price.”

The Best Hardware

Stunning Custom HD Display

The 8.9” display on Kindle Fire HD features an incredible 254 pixels per inch with a resolution of 1920×1200, with pixels that are indistinguishable to the human eye. The 7” Kindle Fire HD features a stunning HD display with 1280×800 resolution that delivers deep, detailed contrast and rich, natural color. Kindle Fire HD also uses Gorilla Glass to provide superior strength and reliability. Kindle Fire HD starts with excellent resolution, but that is only the beginning—Amazon also added custom features that reduce glare and improve color saturation at any viewing angle.

Most tablet displays are made up of two pieces of glass—an LCD on the bottom and a touch sensor on the top, separated by an air gap. This air gap allows light to come through the touch sensor and reflect off the LCD, which causes added glare for the user. Fire HD solves this air gap problem by laminating the touch sensor and the LCD together into a single layer of glass, creating a display that is easy to view even in overhead light, and reducing glare by 25% relative to the latest generation iPad.

Like many tablets, Kindle Fire HD uses in-plane switching (IPS) to improve color reproduction. But displays that only use IPS still appear washed out at various angles, such as laid sideways in bed, flat on a table, or propped up in a case. Fire HD features an Advanced True Wide polarizing filter that is applied directly to the LCD panel. This results in a display that shows the same deep contrast and rich, detailed color from any angle.

High-End Laptop-Quality Wi-Fi—40% Faster Downloads and High-Speed Streaming

HD content has much larger file sizes than standard definition content—for example, Marvel’s The Avengers in standard definition is 785 MB, but in HD, TheAvengers is 2.97 GB. Files of this size require the very latest in Wi-Fi technology to download or stream the HD content quickly and reliably—anything else results in buffering, slow downloads and dropped connections. Many Wi-Fi enabled devices only use the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency. This frequency is crowded since it is used by everything from other tablets to microwave ovens, baby monitors, Bluetooth devices, not to mention the neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks. Kindle Fire HD circumvents this congestion with state-of-the-art dual-band Wi-Fi. Kindle Fire HD can automatically switch between the 2.4 GHz network and the newer, less crowded 5 GHz network, resulting in better range and less interference. In addition, dual antennas and Multiple In/Multiple Out (MIMO) allow for higher bandwidth and longer range. The new Kindle Fire HD is the first tablet to market with all three of these latest generation Wi-Fi technologies—dual-band support, dual antennas, and MIMO. This is the first time this state-of-the-art Wi-Fi technology has been offered in a tablet, resulting in 40% faster throughput compared to the latest generation iPad.

Latest Generation 4G LTE Wireless

The large-screen Kindle Fire HD is also available with ultra-fast 4G LTE, with download speeds as fast as Wi-Fi. To keep the 4G Kindle Fire HD just 8.8 mm thin, Amazon custom-designed its 4G wireless modem to be just 2.2 mm. Some 4G devices don’t support all of the non-4G bands—Kindle Fire HD includes support for 10-bands, so even if a customer doesn’t have perfect 4G coverage, the Kindle will fall back to the fastest available 3G speeds.

Amazon’s Breakthrough 4G LTE Data Package

The 4G Kindle Fire HD comes with the most affordable 4G tablet data package. Customers will have access to a 12-month data plan with 250MB per month, 20GB of Amazon Cloud storage, and a $10 credit in the Amazon Appstore for a one-time cost of $49.99. In fact, when you combine the cost of the device and the data plan, customers who purchase the Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE will pay over $400 less than latest generation iPad owners in the first year of ownership. Customers can also choose to upgrade to 3 GB or 5 GB data plans fromAT&T directly from the device.

8 GB of Storage is Not Enough for an HD Tablet

Customers want to enjoy HD content if they have an HD tablet—and 8 GB of on-device storage isn’t enough for the larger HD file sizes. The 7” Kindle Fire HD is available with 16 GB or 32 GB of on-device storage, and the large screen Kindle Fire is available with 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB of on-device storage. This large on-device storage capacity is in addition to the free storage Amazon provides for Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud. Amazon digital content is automatically backed up for free in the Amazon Cloud’s Worry-Free Archive where it’s available anytime.

Powerful World-Class Processor—Snappy and Smooth

An HD display and HD content must be driven by a powerful processor and optimized software. The Kindle Fire HD family features world-class processors and the new Imagination Technologies graphics engine for lightning-fast HD graphics and excellent fluidity. The 8.9” Kindle Fire HD is powered by the latest generation OMAP4 4470 processor and Imagination SGX544 graphics engine capable of over 12 billion floating point operations per second—50 percent more than Tegra 3, and both Kindle Fire HD 7” and 8.9” come with higher memory bandwidth than Tegra 3. Combining the latest generation processors with significant customization of the Kindle Fire software by Amazon engineers results in a snappy and smooth experience for the user.

Dual Stereo Speakers and Exclusive Dolby Audio—The New Standard for Tablet Audio

Customers shouldn’t need to wear headphones while watching a movie on a tablet to get excellent sound. Kindle Fire HD solves this by combining dual stereo speakers with the next generation Dolby Digital Plus audio platform—the standard in high performance audio—to offer a world-class audio experience. Dolby’s audio suite for Kindle Fire HD includes technology used to adjust volume and deliver easier-to-understand dialogue in movies and TV shows. Kindle Fire HD automatically optimizes the audio profile based on what a customer is doing, such as watching a movie, listening to music, using third party apps like Pandora and Netflix, and also optimizes for headphones versus speakers. All of these pieces combine to create an exceptional audio experience that results in clearer, crisper and balanced sound quality.

11 Hours of Battery Life

The 7” Kindle Fire HD is optimized to deliver high performance without sacrificing battery life, delivering over 11 hours of battery life.

Thin and Light

Even with a custom display, a powerful processor, extra speakers and dual-band/dual-antenna Wi-Fi, the new Kindle Fire HD is extremely light and thin. In fact, Kindle Fire HD 8.9” weighs only 20 ounces and is just 8.8 mm thin. Kindle Fire HD 7” is small enough to take everywhere and light enough to hold easily and comfortably in one hand.

Connect with Bluetooth and HDMI

Kindle Fire HD supports Bluetooth, enabling customers to connect their wireless Bluetooth headphones or Bluetooth speakers to listen to songs, videos or audiobooks. With Bluetooth connectivity, customers can also easily connect to a wide range of Bluetooth-enabled keyboards. HDMI out makes it easy for customers to connect the Kindle Fire HD to their big-screen TV to enjoy their favorite HD videos and photos.

Stay in Touch with Front-Facing HD Camera

The new Kindle Fire HD features a front-facing HD camera. Skype created a customized app tailored for Kindle Fire HD that is ready to use out of the box for free HD video calls at home and abroad. Kindle Fire HD makes it easy for the over 500 million customers already using Skype to get in touch with friends and family.

Beautiful Leather Covers

Covers for Kindle Fire HD feature a premium textured leather exterior in a variety of colors and a subtle woven nylon interior to provide the lightest and thinnest form of protection. The integrated magnetic clasp ensures the cover remains securely closed while in a backpack, purse, or briefcase. The cover automatically wakes Kindle Fire HD upon opening and puts it to sleep when closed, making it easy to dive right back into whatever content a customer is enjoying.

All-New Features Only Amazon Can Offer

X-Ray for Books

One year ago, Amazon introduced X-Ray on Kindle Touch, and customers loved it. Amazon is extending X-Ray to books on Kindle Fire, making it easier than ever for customers to learn more about the content they love by exploring the “bones of the book.” With a single tap, readers can see all the passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places or topics that interest them, as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia and Shelfari, Amazon’s community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers.

X-Ray for Movies

“X-Ray for Movies” is a new feature that revolutionizes the movie experience by bringing the power of IMDb directly to movies on Kindle Fire HD, accessible with a simple tap. Without ever leaving the movie, customers can look up any actor in the scene or movie, see what other movies they have been in, and view photos, biographies and more. X-Ray is offered only by Amazon and is exclusive to the Amazon ecosystem. IMDb, an Amazon company for 14 years, is the #1 movie website in the world with more than 160 million monthly unique visitors worldwide.

X-Ray for Textbooks

Glossaries in print textbooks contain the most important information for students, but they’re placed inconveniently in the back of the book. And glossaries don’t always contain enough information for students working to understand new concepts. X-Ray for Textbooks solves these problems by integrating the glossary directly into each textbook page and by algorithmically assembling related data from Wikipedia and YouTube.

Immersion Reading

Research supports that readers can benefit from listening while reading. Together, Amazon and Audible invented “Immersion Reading,” allowing customers to fuse together printed text and professionally-narrated audiobooks, giving readers the ability to experience their reading with two senses—sight and sound. As the reader views the text of their book on Kindle Fire, text is highlighted as it is professionally-narrated, creating a more immersive experience, as well as deeper learning and comprehension.

Whispersync for Voice

Whispersync for Voice allows customers to synchronize their Kindle books with professionally-narrated audiobooks—customers can start reading a book on Kindle Fire and seamlessly switch to listening to the companion audiobook, picking up exactly where they left off. With Whispersync for Voice, customers can continue enjoying books during commutes or any other time their eyes are busy. When they get in the car, customers can effortlessly pick up the story right where they left off reading by listening to the professionally-narrated audiobook using Bluetooth on Kindle Fire HD or with any Audible app on their smartphone.

Ideal for Gaming

Amazon has worked with leading developers to offer new Android games exclusively on Kindle Fire HD, including Activision’s popular Skylanders Cloud Patrol franchise and Crytek’s Fibble. In Skylanders Cloud Patrol, gamers will discover a new feature—the ability to purchase physical toys from within a game. Customers will be able to purchase a unique Skylanders character with a single click, andAmazon.com will deliver it to their doorstep. In addition to hardware that’s perfect for gaming like stunning custom HD displays, fast Wi-Fi and large on-device storage, the Kindle Fire HD family also offers HD Games, gyroscope and accelerometer for full tilt and turn controls, as well as social gaming features including group leaderboards and achievements.

Whispersync for Games

One of the biggest frustrations of mobile gaming is that when customers switch devices or delete and re-install the game on the same device, they have to start a level over or go back to the beginning of the game. To solve this problem, Amazon extended its Whispersync technology to gaming with Whispersync for Games. Whispersync for Games syncs a customer’s place in the game and saves unlocked levels, so even if they get a new device, the progress is backed up in the cloud.

Kindle FreeTime

Amazon today reinvented parental controls with Kindle FreeTime. FreeTime gives parents easy-to-use tools to personalize their children’s digital media experience. With FreeTime, parents never have to worry what content their kids will access—parents select all of the content their kids can see and kids can’t exit FreeTime without a password. FreeTime also lets parents limit their kids’ screen time by content type—they may choose to limit videos and games, for example, but make reading time unlimited. Kindle FreeTime will be available for free on all of the new Kindle Fire devices starting in the coming weeks.

Cloud-Accelerated Silk Browser

The new Kindle Fire family uses a new version of Amazon Silk with the unique “split browser” architecture that leverages the computing speed and power of Amazon Web Services to deliver content faster. The new Amazon Silk browser features an updated core rendering engine and a reengineered transport layer that contribute to faster page loads. Customers can experience full-screen browsing, reading view, and improved browsing with most-visited, trending and recommended sites all available from a single screen.

All-New Email and Calendar

The new Kindle Fire family features world-class Microsoft Exchange integration, with fine-tuned performance on many of the most critical e-mail functions. For example, typical Exchange accounts sync with the oldest emails first, ending with the most recent emails—Kindle Fire instead syncs with newer emails first, then with older emails, getting customers faster access to the most recent emails they are looking for. Kindle Fire also features a new calendar app, making it easy for customers to stay connected and keep track of their schedules. The new e-mail client offers support for the world’s most popular email providers—including Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Hotmail and more.

Photos Brought to Life

Photos come alive in stunning high-resolution on Kindle Fire HD. Fire’s mosaic view arranges personal photos beautifully, and customers will be delighted to see their best shots on their TV with HDMI out. Kindle Fire lets customers easily import their photos fromFacebook and because their photos are securely stored in Amazon Cloud Drive, they never have to worry about losing their favorite pictures.

New Latest Generation Kindle Fire—Only $159

Kindle Fire, the #1 best-selling product on Amazon for the past year, is now even better, with all the features customers love about the original Kindle Fire—all the content, seamless integration with the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, and a brilliant 7” touchscreen—now with a faster processor for 40% faster performance, twice the memory and longer battery life. The new Kindle Fire also offers all of the new features that are exclusive to the Kindle Fire family—including X-Ray for Movies, X-Ray for Books, Immersion Reading, Whispersync for Voice, Kindle FreeTime and more.

Backed by the World’s Best Content Ecosystem, Cross-Platform Interoperability and Customer Service

All the Content—Over 22 Million Movies, TV Shows, Songs, Apps, Games, Books, Audiobooks and Magazines

Kindle Fire offers customers the largest selection of digital content, including thousands of exclusives:

• Over 120,000 movies and TV episodes, including the most popular titles and the biggest new releases. Customers can stream or download, purchase or rent. Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 25,000 popular movies and TV episodes at no additional cost with Prime Instant Video. Customers who are new to Prime get one free month of Amazon Prime when they purchase Kindle Fire.
• Instant access to the most popular apps and games, including Where’s My Perry?, Pinterest, NBA JAM, HBO GO, Hulu Plus and Asphalt 7—each one optimized for Kindle Fire HD.
• Millions of songs from over 3 million artists. Customers can stream purchases from the cloud, download playlists for offline listening, and store their personal collection in the cloud for access anytime, anywhere.
• Millions of books, including over 180,000 titles that are exclusive to the Kindle Store. Over 650,000 books are priced at $4.99 or less; over 1.2 million are $9.99 or less. Amazon Prime members can choose from over 180,000 titles, including all 7 Harry Potter books and over 100 current and former New York Times best sellers, to borrow for free as part of Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, as frequently as a book a month with no waiting and no due dates.
• Hundreds of magazines and newspapers—including Vogue, Esquire, National Geographic and Better Homes and Gardens—with glossy full-color layouts, HD photography, and beautifully detailed illustrations. Customers can try more than 50 free single issues available in the Kindle Newsstand, including Cosmopolitan, Maxim, O, TheOprah Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Elleand Martha Stewart Living.
• Over 100,000 professionally-narrated audiobook titles available, with free samples to listen to before buying.

Best Cross-Platform Interoperability with “Buy Once, Enjoy Everywhere”

With apps available on the largest number of devices and platforms, Kindle makes it easier than ever to access content anytime, anywhere. Customers can read and sync their Kindle books across iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac, Android phones and tablets, BlackBerry, Windows Phones and in their web browsers with Kindle Cloud Reader. Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video are available to watch on iPad, PC, Mac, Xbox, Playstation 3, Blue-Ray, Roku and hundreds of compatible TVs, and because of Amazon’s Whispersync technology, customers never have to worry about losing their place in a movie or TV show. Amazon MP3s are available on iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, Sonos and web browsers with Cloud Player. Apps from the Amazon Appstore for Android are available on all Android phones and tablets. No other company offers customers this level of flexibility with their content.

Free Month of Amazon Prime

Amazon continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to bring Prime members new movies, TV shows and books to enjoy at no additional cost. Amazon customers enjoy unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of over 25,000 movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video; over 180,000 books from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to borrow for free, as frequently as a book a month, with no waiting and no due dates; and receive the convenience of Free Two-Day Shipping on over 15 million items from Amazon.com. Even with all this investment and continually growing selection, Prime remains at the same low price it launched with seven years ago—just$79. Customers who are new to Prime get one free month of Amazon Prime when they purchase Kindle Fire.

Arrives Pre-Registered

Kindle Fire comes automatically pre-registered so customers can immediately start enjoying their digital content purchased from Amazon or shop for new content.

Top-Rated, World-Class Customer Service

When a customer shops on Amazon.com, buys a Kindle Fire, or buys Kindle content, they know that with that they are also getting Amazon’s world-class customer service. Amazon scored 86—the top score—on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and 89 on the ForeSee customer satisfaction survey—the highest ever attained by a retailer. Amazon has been rated #1 in the National Retail Federation Customers’ Choice Awards, has been awarded the top spot in the MSN Money Customer Service Hall of Fame three years in a row, and is a JD Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion. Customers have been shopping on Amazon for over 15 years, and they continue to do so because of the unparalleled end-to-end customer experience.

Special Offers

The new Kindle Fire family comes with special offers that appear on the lock screen. Examples of special money-saving offers that customers will enjoy include a $5 credit in the Amazon MP3 Store and a $5 credit for select titles in the Amazon Instant Video Store. Customers will also receive special offers and screensavers from brands like AT&T, Discover and Intel, such as a special offer of a $10Amazon.com Gift Card when a customer uses their Discover card to purchase a digital product on Amazon.

Best Tablets at Any Price

The all-new Kindle Fire HD 7”—with a stunning HD display, the fastest Wi-Fi, exclusive HD audio with two stereo speakers and DolbyDigital Plus, 16 or 32 GB of storage and a powerful world-class processor—all backed by the world’s best content ecosystem, best cross-platform interoperability and best customer service is $199. Kindle Fire HD 7” is available for preorder starting today atwww.amazon.com/kindlefirehd7 and will begin shipping on September 14.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9”, with all of these features plus an ultra-high definition 8.9” screen, and 16 or 32 GB of storage, starts at $299 and is available for preorder starting today at www.amazon.com/kindlefirehd, and will begin shipping on November 20.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9” 4G, with the most affordable 4G data plan in the world, and 32 or 64 GB of storage, starts at $499 and is available for preorder starting today at www.amazon.com/kindlefirehd4G, and will begin shipping on November 20.

The new latest generation Kindle Fire with a faster processor for 40% faster performance, twice the memory and all the new features is only $159, and pre-order to reserve their page in line at www.amazon.com/kindlefire and will begin shipping on September 14.

*****

Introducing the New Kindle Paperwhite, the Most Advanced E-Reader Ever Constructed

Higher resolution, 62% more pixels, 25% higher-contrast, patented built-in front light, 8 weeks of battery life and an even slimmer and sleeker design — only $119New Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G — the top-of-the-line Kindle with free 3G wireless — only $179New latest generation Kindle — small, light and even faster — now only $69

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sep. 6, 2012– (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Kindle is the world’s #1 best-selling e-reader for five years running, and tens of millions of readers are already reading on Kindle. Today, Amazon is excited to introduce the fifth generation Kindle e-readers: Kindle Paperwhite is the most advanced e-reader ever constructed with 62% more pixels and 25% increased contrast, a patented built-in front light for reading in all lighting conditions, up to 8 weeks of battery life, and a thin and light design for just $119; Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G — never pay for or hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot with the all-new top-of-the-line Kindle e-reader with free 3G wireless for just $179; and the new latest generation Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle, now with new, improved fonts, faster page turns and an even more unbelievable price: $69. Meet the all-new Kindle e-reader family at www.amazon.com/kindlepaperwhite.

Kindle Paperwhite (Photo: Business Wire)

“Paperwhite is the Kindle we’ve always wanted to build — the technology didn’t exist to build a display with this level of contrast, resolution, brightness and battery life, so our engineers invented it,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “62% more pixels, 25% higher contrast, built-in front light, perfect for bed, perfect for beach, even thinner, 8 weeks of battery life — this is a quantum leap forward and the best Kindle we’ve ever built by far.”

All-New Kindle Paperwhite — The World’s Most Advanced E-Reader

Most Advanced E-Reader Display, 62% More Pixels, 25% More Contrast

Kindle Paperwhite’s display is the most advanced e-reader display ever constructed. Featuring a 212 ppi display, Kindle Paperwhite has 62% more pixels, making text in books and periodicals crisp and clear at any size. Images are sharper, richer and show even more detail. Kindle Paperwhite’s screen has 25% higher contrast — the blacks are blacker, and the whites are whiter.

Innovative Built-In Light

Backlit LCD displays direct light up through the display into the user’s eyes. Kindle Paperwhite’s patented front-lit display guides light underneath an anti-glare layer and down toward the display, away from the reader’s eyes. This means a reader can read for hours without eye fatigue or strain. The screen brightness is easily adjusted for reading in any light. The Paperwhite display provides an unparalleled experience in the dark and in direct sunlight.

Breakthrough Battery Life

Kindle Paperwhite’s built-in front light is designed to be used at all times — both in daylight and in a dark room — for the clearest, crispest reading experience. In order to use the light at all times, Kindle Paperwhite requires exceptional power management to maintain the battery life that customers love about Kindle. Amazon’s light guide technology precisely diffuses the light across the screen and only requires four LEDs to light the entire screen (unlike LCD screens which can use up to 50 LEDs). The light guide is so efficient that Kindle Paperwhite has a remarkable 8 weeks of battery life, even with the light on at all times.

Free 3G

Kindle’s free 3G connection means customers never have to hunt for or pay for a Wi-Fi hotspot — they simply download and read books anytime, anywhere in over 100 countries around the world. Amazon pays for the 3G connection on Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G, so customers pay no monthly fees and sign no annual contracts.

Built-In Wi-Fi

Kindle Paperwhite comes with built-in Wi-Fi, letting readers discover new content at home or on the road. Kindle owners also enjoy free Wi-Fi access at AT&T hotspots across the US.

New Touch Technology

Kindle Paperwhite’s new capacitive touch technology is uniquely integrated into the Paperwhite display, allowing for a thinner form factor for Kindle Paperwhite and even better touch accuracy.

Slim and Sleek Design

At just over a third of an inch thin and weighing 7.5 ounces, Kindle Paperwhite is thinner than a magazine and weighs less than a typical paperback. The bezel height between the side of the device and the display itself is 77% thinner.

Hand-Tuned Fonts

Every font on Kindle Paperwhite is hand-tuned for maximum readability. The Amazon typography team worked at the pixel level to ensure consistency of stroke thickness and shape profiles across all individual glyphs, aligning each size to the specific grid of the new Paperwhite display. This allows for unprecedented sharpness of fonts. Kindle Paperwhite’s higher resolution display also allows for new elegant typeface options, such as Baskerville and Palatino, which use thin stems that would not render well on any lower resolution display.

Time to Read

Time to Read is a new feature for Kindle Paperwhite that helps readers know the amount of time it will take them to finish a chapter or a book. This feature is smart — it personalizes the time for each customer based on their reading speed and is constantly updated as the reader’s speed and habits change. With Time to Read, it’s never been easier to decide when to start a new chapter or finish the chapter you’re reading.

Explore the “Bones of a Book” with X-Ray

With a single tap, readers can see all passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places or topics that interest them, as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia and Shelfari, Amazon’s community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers. Amazon built X-Ray using its expertise in language processing and machine learning, access to significant storage and computing resources with Amazon S3 and EC2, and a deep library of book and character information.

Whispersync for Voice

All Kindles use Amazon’s popular Whispersync technology to automatically synchronize a customer’s Kindle library, including last page read, bookmarks, notes and highlights, across the widest range of devices and platforms. Now, Amazon is extending Whispersync to professionally narrated audiobooks — customers can start reading a book on their Kindle, and seamlessly switch to listening to their corresponding Whispersync for Voice-enabled audiobook from Audible on their phone or tablet, picking up exactly where they left off. With Whispersync for Voice, customers can continue enjoying books during commutes or any other time their eyes are busy. Whispersync for Voice is a solution for the millions of Amazon customers who want to spend more time with their favorite books. Customers can listen to their Audible audiobooks on Kindle Fire, iPhone, Android phones and Windows Phones.

Beautiful Leather Covers with Auto Wake and Sleep

Covers for Kindle Paperwhite feature a premium textured leather exterior and a subtle woven nylon interior to provide the lightest and thinnest form of protection. The integrated magnetic clasp ensures the cover remains securely closed while in a backpack, purse, or briefcase. The cover automatically wakes Kindle Paperwhite upon opening and puts it to sleep when closed, making it easy to dive right back into the book.

Latest Generation Kindle — Small, Light and Now Even Faster — only $69

Introducing the new, latest generation Kindle — the smallest, lightest and most affordable Kindle ever is now even better, with new improved fonts, 15% faster page turns and a new, unbelievably low price: just $69. In addition, the new Kindle now supports children’s books and comics, and includes new parental controls. Weighing just 5.98 ounces, Kindle is small and light enough to fit easily in a pocket and take everywhere, and still features the same 6-inch electronic ink display that reads like real paper. At just $69, the new Kindle is the perfect entry Kindle for young and adult readers alike.

Plus All the Features Customers Love About Kindle

All of the new Kindle e-readers come with instant access to the features that have made Kindle the #1 best-selling e-reader in the world for five years running:

Top-Rated, World-Class Customer Service

When a customer shops on Amazon.com, buys a Kindle, or buys Kindle content, they know that they are also getting Amazon’s world-class customer service. Amazon scored 86 — the top score — on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and 89 on the ForeSee customer satisfaction survey — the highest ever attained by a retailer. Amazon has been rated #1 in the National Retail Federation Customers’ Choice Awards, has been awarded the top spot in the MSN Money Customer Service Hall of Fame three years in a row, and is a JD Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion. Customers have been shopping on Amazon for over 15 years, and they continue to do so because of the unparalleled end-to-end customer experience. So far in 2012, Kindle customer service has received a 97.1% satisfaction rate from customers.

Read for Free with Kindle Owners’ Lending Library

With Prime, Kindle owners can read for free — choose from over 180,000 books in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, including all 7 Harry Potter books in 5 languages and over 100 current and former New York Times bestsellers, to borrow for free — as frequently as a book a month, with no waiting and no due dates.

Unparalleled Interoperability — “Buy Once, Read Everywhere”

Customers can read their Kindle books on the largest number of devices and platforms, including any Kindle as well as on iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, Windows Phone or in their web browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.

Whispersync

Amazon’s Whispersync technology synchronizes a customer’s last page read, bookmarks and annotations across all of their devices, so they can always pick up where they left off.

Features Built Just for Readers

Each Kindle offers a variety of font styles and sizes, so customers can easily customize their reading experience. Kindle also comes with a built-in dictionary, instant lookup and translation of words, Real Page Numbers, support for bookmarks and annotations, and more.

Sharing

Customers can share highlighted sections, notes and meaningful quotes on Facebook and Twitter directly from Kindle without leaving the book. Customers can also view the passages frequently highlighted by other Kindle readers to discover interesting and meaningful passages in books using Popular Highlights.

Massive Selection, Lowest Prices

Every Kindle has instant access to millions of books at the best prices, including over 180,000 exclusive titles. Over 650,000 books are priced at $4.99 or less; over 1.2 million are $9.99 or less. Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle, and Kindle customers can borrow Kindle books from their public library and have them delivered to their Kindle via Wi-Fi.

No Setup Required, Simple and Easy-to-Use

Kindle comes automatically pre-registered so customers can immediately start enjoying their existing Kindle library or shop for new content, with no set-up required.

Parental Controls

Parental Controls allow parents to restrict access to the Kindle Store, Cloud Archive and the Experimental Web Browser so they can give their Kindle to a child worry-free.

Worry-Free Cloud Storage

Customers’ Kindle books are automatically backed up in the cloud, so they never need to worry about losing their books. Customers can re-download their books wirelessly anytime for free.

Pricing and Availability

The new Kindle Paperwhite is only $119. Kindle Paperwhite is available for pre-order starting today atwww.amazon.com/kindlepaperwhite and ships October 1.

The new top-of-the-line Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G is only $179. Kindle Paperwhite Wi-Fi + 3G is available for pre-order starting today at www.amazon.com/kindlepaperwhite3G and ships October 1.

The new $69 Kindle is available to customers around the world at www.amazon.com/kindle and begins shipping today.

So, to summarize:

Kindle Paperwhite WiFi is $139, ships Oct. 1
Kindle Paperwhite WiFi with offers is $119, ships Oct. 1
Kindle Paperwhite 3G is $199, ships Oct.1
Kindle Paperwhite 3G with offers is $179, ships Oct.1
Plain Kindle is $69, ships today
Upgraded Kindle Fire is $159, ships Sept. 14
Kindle Fire HD 7″ with 16GB is $199 with Sept. 14 ship date
Kindle Fire HD 7″ with 16GB is $249 with Sept. 14 ship date
Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ with 16GB is $299 with Nov. 20 ship date
Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ with 32GB is $299 with Nov. 20 ship date
Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless with 32GB is $499 with Nov. 20 ship date
Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless with 64GB is $599 with Nov. 20 ship date

You can find all of the new Kindles by clicking, here. [affiliate link]

I think  that I’ll be getting the 3G Paperwhite with offers; which one will you buy? =)

My mom is a high school history teacher. Her students start this week, just in time for the Democratic National Convention, and right on the heels of the Republican National Convention this past week. As has been her custom in past elections, her students can earn extra credits by watching and writing about the conventions and the upcoming debates.

She went through her lesson plans from four years ago, and realized she needed to change a few things. See, four years ago she told students they could catch speeches and debates live, on their DVR, by taping, or through the newspaper. Today, that lesson plan reads “live, DVR, or online sources like YouTube and news sites.” She realized that asking students in 2012 to pick up a physical paper or use a VCR would be met with blank stares. Students who miss a campaign event will just google for the speech, or catch debate highlights on YouTube. In just four years, two sources that many of her students would have used are just completely archaic!

In many ways this is a good thing. No one is dependent on getting a physical newspaper or remembering to set the VCR in order to get extra credit. At the same time, teachers like my mom have to be increasingly vigilant. They need to monitor the sources that students use online, making sure that a student doesn’t just lazily cite Wikipedia and call it a day. They need to be aware of what’s available for free online, and what might end up behind a pay wall. They need to be sure that students don’t copy or plagiarize, and they need to be sure students understand the difference between an opinion site and a news one.

There is so much information out there, and so many new ways to learn. Technology tends to creep up on us, but when you look back at what life was like even just four short years ago, you realize how fast our digital world is truly moving! Maybe someday that old chestnut about walking uphill both ways in the snow will be replaced with stories about the 50lbs of textbooks we used to carry, and the grimy, inky newspapers we needed to read to earn extra credit!