The ebook elves in the Kindle Store have been working overtime for months to make this holiday season a terrific one for Kindle Nation citizens. For ebook lovers, there are lots of presents.
Just yesterday, Amazon added to the big pile of ebook reading treats. It is showering the world with such a wealth of goodies its nearly too much to absorb. All you need to claim the bounty is an email address and an account at Amazon.
Of course, Kindle Nation now includes many who don’t even own a Kindle. The apps to “buy once, read anywhere” grant citizenship to anyone with a PC, iPhone, iPad, Android smart phone, or Blackberry. For those of us who are ardent fans of the Kindle Reading Device (it’s formal name at Amazon), the apps open our ebook world to millions, and we benefit. We can now give (and receive!) ebooks as gifts and “No Kindle Required” lets us broadly share the bounty. Plus, we ourselves can read our books across all the gadgets we may own, with the Kindle our home base.
But first let’s get the grinchy part of this holiday season out of the way. Amazon is blazing with Black Friday Deals in all its departments–with one conspicuous absence, unless we are missing something.
Black Friday Deals: Deals of the Day on Amazon, including massive discounts, doorbuster-style “lightning deals,” are running through Cyber Monday (Nov. 29) on books and other products. But there seems not a whisper of Black Friday deals for Kindle ebooks. So far. Check the image at the right, listing departments for Black Friday Deals. The alphabetical list jumps from “jewelry” to “magazines,” leaping right over the spot we’d love to see the words “Kindle Store.”
Price Check: If you venture into a non-virtual book store and pack an iPhone, you can price check books right in the aisles. Use Amazon’s new Price Check app. It’s limited to the iPhone for now, but maybe they’ll make it iPad and Android friendly in the future. What it does: Say you’re in a book store deciding whether to download a title from the Kindle Store later, or buy a physical book now. Tell the app which book you are checking out. Do that by scanning the book’s bar code, taking a photo of it, speaking the book’s name, or typing in the name. Amazon tells you their prices for the book in various formats, shows you reviews, lets you share it on Twitter, Facebook or via text message or email. Or you can order it from Amazon on the spot. Sharing your book selection is a great way to let people off the hook if they’ve been begging to know what you would like as a gift. The next new feature from Amazon makes it easy for them to give the book to you as an ebook. And vice versa.
Gift an eBook: For the first time, Amazon lets you buy and give an eBook to anyone with an email address—whether they have a Kindle or an iPad or and Android phone or any of the “Kindle for” apps. “No Kindle Required” is Amazon’s big slogan this year. Every Kindle Book Store book now has a gift link, with exceptions. The exceptions: free books in the Kindle Store. Do that yourself by emailing the link for the free book to their person, tell them “I am a cheapskate, gifting you with an ebook that was free,” and smile. To gift a paid ebook, click the link, type in the recipient’s email address, click and send. Done! right from your iPad!
More Great Books: Amazon’s recent announcements today quietly inserted a new number: 750,000. That’s now the official count of ebooks available in the Kindle Store, up from 720,000 a few weeks ago. Joining the ebook lists:
The bestselling Rainbow Magic series of children’s books by Daisy Meadows and from RosettaBooks and HIT Entertainment in conjunction with Amazon. Some 73 titles are already available in the Kindle Store
and they are EXCLUSIVE AS EBOOKS IN THE AMAZON STORE.
And Amazon is adding 121 titles and 61 of the finest authors from abroad to the Kindle Store, with an acquisition from The Toby Press. Between the AmazonEncore program, which brings back previously published books, and AmazonCrossing, which published translations of foreign-language books into English, The Toby Press acquisition is just one more way in which Amazon is enriching the ebook world in America.
Best Books of 2010: Need an idea for that gift book? Amazon.com’s Editorial Team shares their picks with the Best Books of 2010. Go here for their “list of lists,” including the Editor’s choices, the Top 100 Customer Favorites, and breakouts of the Top 10s by genre and category.
Facebook Gift Card Giving: Let’s you tap into your Facebook account, choose a friend, select a gift card design, pick a date for delivery of the card, and insert the amount of the gift card. It’s another way to give an ebook but still have something to wrap and put under the tree. Santa never had it so easy.
And welcome Italy to the fold: The Amazon stores, including the Kindle Store, set up shop from Sicily all the way up the boot through Rome, Florence, Venice and to the Alps by opening their Amazon.it operation.
