• Check on this book at amazon.co.jp

By Stephen Windwalker, Editor of Kindle Nation – © Kindle Nation Daily 2010

File this one under “Go figure.”

This is a story about a traditional paperback version of a book about an ebook reader … translated into a language that does not even render on the ebook reader … by an author with zero name recognition in the country where the translated book is to be sold … at a time when the company that manufactures and sells the ebook reader has not even committed publicly to a Japanese version of the ebook reader. 

I’m no Joe Konrath, but it is a story that is turning out well in its own way.

One Friday morning in December I awoke and checked my email inbox to find an unsolicited message from Kaori Shibayama, a literary agent with The English Agency (Japan) Ltd. in Tokyo. He was contacting me on behalf of Nikkei Business Publications to offer me a nice advance for the paperback rights to a Japanese translation of my book, The Complete User’s Guide To the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2.

Or, to put it another away, it was as if I had been walking down the street and Michael Anthony had stepped out from behind a building to offer me, not a million dollars to be sure, but a perfectly nice advance for a project that (1) I had never thought about, and (2) would require no effort on my part beyond sending digital and print copies of the book and signing my name a few times. After all, I had already written the book in English and my sales had already topped 100,000 copies in various formats and editions.

Suffice it to say that Mr. Shibayama is now my Japanese agent, and Nikkei Business Publications is my Japanese publisher. Over the course of several months of very pleasant communications between Mr. Shibayama and his colleagues and myself and my excellent Japanese translator Dr. Akira Kurahone, I have been paid the advance and the project has come to fruition. The book is available for pre-orders at the Nikkei Business Publications website and on Amazon’s website in Japan, and is supposed to be released next Monday, May 24 (although the Amazon.co.jp website says May 20, which is tomorrow).

I first noticed the pre-order sites four days ago, on Sunday. By Monday, the book’s sales ranking was in the top 2,000 in Amazon’s Japanese sales rankings, and today it has mostly been in the top 1,000.

Somewhat more astonishingly, if I may hazard to rely on Google Translate, the Nikkei BP website now says that the book has sold out of its first printing “because of the flood of orders,” and will be back in stock on June 1.

I don’t wish to overstate the significance of any of this; after all, Nikkei BP’s print run was modest, only about 4,000 copies to start with. A good chunk of those copies have presumably been ordered by Japanese retailers who have full return rights, so we won’t count our chickens here.

But as I said: This is a story about a traditional paperback version of a book about an ebook reader … translated into a language that does not even render on the ebook reader … by an author with zero name recognition in the country where the translated book is to be sold … at a time when the company that manufactures and sells the ebook reader has not even committed publicly to a Japanese version of the ebook reader.

It’s nice news for me and my publisher, but even better news for Amazon and its Kindle team, if they are listening.

Whether you are trying to decide on your book group’s next selection or looking for good discussion questions to stimulate your strictly personal reading interest, you may find value in the Reading Group Guides, Free Excerpt Downloads, and other supplements that Amazon provides with many Kindle books.

Guides and excerpts are  generally provided as PDF files that can be read directly on some Kindles or converted to flowable Kindle-compatible text if you email the file to your you@kindle.com or you@free.kindle.com email address with “convert” in the subject line of the email. You can also download a free sample from any Kindle book at its Kindle Store product page.

Here are some recent selections with Kindle and other reading options for your fellow book group members:

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale
$10.88 in paperback; $9.99 in Kindle Store; unavailable at iBooks Store

• Reading group guide
• Download an excerpt

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
$7.16 in paperback; $5.50 in Kindle Store; unavailable at iBooks Store

• Reading group guide
• Download a free sample 
• Watch a trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
$21.98 in hardcover; $10.20 in paperback pre-orders for June 1 release; $14.27 in Kindle Store; unavailable at iBooks Store

• Reading group guide
• Download a free sample 

American Wife: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld
$10.20 in paperback; $9.75 in Kindle Store; unavailable at iBooks Store

• Reading group guide
• Download an excerpt
• Download a free sample 

Crazy Love by Leslie Morgan Steiner
$9.98 in remaindered hardcover; $10.79 in paperback; $9.99 in Kindle Store; $9.99 in iBooks Store

• Reading group guide
• Download a free sample

There are over a billion PCs in the world, and millions of the tablet computers that will be launched in the next few years will run on a PC platform. One other thing that they all have in common is that they will all run the Kindle for PC app with a free download and no Kindle required, which is why it is important for Amazon to keep improving the Kindle for PC app.

That’s what Amazon has done today with an announcement that Kindle for PC now includes the following features:

• Choose from three different color modes: read in white, sepia, or black color modes and adjust the brightness of the display from within the app
• View and edit notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX
• Read books using full-screen mode of their PC

Meanwhile, the Kindle catalog continues to grow at an astonishing rate, and numbers 566,397 book titles as I type this. How fast is it growing? Since we don’t have a radar gun, we’ll rely on these two more interesting measures of the velocity of the Kindle Store’s growth:

• It’s growing so fast that the number of new titles added to the Kindle Store since the launch of the iPad April 3 is greater than the total number of titles reported to be in Apple’s iBooks Store.
• It’s growing so fast that Amazon’s own press office falls woefully behind in reporting on the size of the catalog. Today’s release claims that there are over 540,000 books in the Kindle Store, which is like, so May 5th.

Nothing in today’s release, however, about when Kindle customers will be able to subscribe to Kindle newspapers, magazines, and blogs through the Kindle for PC app or other Kindle apps.

Here’s the guts of this morning’s news release from Amazon:

Amazon Adds New Features to Kindle for PC Application

Customers using Kindle for PC can now edit notes and marks, experience full-screen reading mode, change the background color, and control the brightness of the screen
SEATTLE, May 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) –Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced new features for “Kindle for PC,” the free application that lets readers around the world enjoy Kindle books on their personal computers. Kindle for PC now enables customers to edit notes and marks, experience full-screen reading mode, change the background color, and control the brightness of the screen. With Kindle for PC, readers can discover and read from over 540,000 books in the Kindle Store — the largest selection of the most popular books that people want to read — including New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases from $9.99. Like all Kindle apps, Kindle for PC includes Amazon’s Whispersync technology, which saves and synchronizes a customer’s notes, highlights, bookmarks and last page read across their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and, soon, Android phones, so customers always have their reading material with them and never lose their place.

“We have been working hard to enhance our Kindle application experiences and are thrilled to be adding new features to Kindle for PC,” said Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle. “Kindle for PC lets customers enjoy more than 540,000 books in the Kindle Store even if they don’t yet have a Kindle, and its the perfect companion application for the millions of Kindle and Kindle DX owners.”

Now Kindle for PC has even more features to enhance the Kindle book reading experience on a PC, including:

• Purchase, download and read more than 540,000 books, including 96 of 110 New York Times Bestsellers, plus tens of thousands of the most popular classics for free directly from their PC. Bestsellers such as “Backlash” by Aaron Allston, “Big Girl” by Danielle Steel, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot and “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown, and hundreds of thousands of other popular books are $9.99 or less in the Kindle Store
• Browse by genre or author, and take advantage of all the features that customers enjoy in the Kindle Store, including Amazon.com customer reviews, personalized recommendations and editorial reviews
• Read the beginning of books for free before they decide to buy
• Synchronize last page read between their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and, soon, Android phone
• Access their entire library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
• Choose from three different color modes: read in white, sepia, or black color modes and adjust the brightness of the display from within the app
• Choose from more than 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
• View and edit notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX
• Read books using full-screen mode of their PC
• Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)

Kindle for PC is available for download at http://www.amazon.com/KindleforPC.

For those who like to keep up with everything that is going on in the ebook revolution, a subscription to Kindle Nation Daily and a regular perusal of Teleread editor Paul Biba’s “Editor’s Pick of the Week” is a great start. We’ll try to make a regular point of sharing Paul’s picks here, but as of this morning we’re playing catch up with his picks from May 7 and May 15:

• 60,000 eBooks in the iBooks Store? 46,000? Imprecise O’Reilly Radar Post Could Brew a Tempest by Stephen Windwalker
• Amazon now tracking highlighted passages from Kindle users by Brad Vertrees
• A great little free dictionary to use with Kindle for PC app (Windows) by Andrys Basten
• Kobo Reader is here! by Joanna
• Feedbooks outstrips Apple in ebook downloads
• Murder, Mayhem and the Space Rocket: Pulp Adventures to Go! by Tony Bandy
• Amazon “collections” feature is detailed
• Are Agency Model Publishers Hanging Together or Playing for Their Own Edges? Latest Kindle Nation Price Survey Shows Decline in Titles Priced Over $9.99!
• Don’t diss Stanza and people who love e-books, Jeff—including us iPad owners by David Rothman
• Review – Camangi WebStation as an ebook reader
• Where to download free textbooks
• Parent vs. Reader, Round 3: Mom vs. ‘Thingie’ by Joanna
• iPad/iPhone e-book app review: Comic Zeal 4
• Flash rehash: The Drummer Boy Flash Mob at Amazon by Scott Nicholson
• Waves of Change in the Kindlesphere: How the Kindle Store is Evolving by Stephen Windwalker
• Radio Shack’s 1986 ‘Electronic Book’

News flash for professional translators!

If you’re up to the job of translating serious literature from original languages into English, you should waste no time in getting in touch with Amazon. As we noted in a post moments ago, the company has just announced the launch of AmazonCrossing, a new publishing initiative aimed initially at bringing English-language translations of “exceptional” foreign-language books to readers in the U.S. and abroad with both print and Kindle editions. 


It’s a no-brainer, then, the Amazon will employ a growing group of professional translators over the next few years to render these books into English. Indeed, the AmazonCrossing’s opening web page includes an email form for translators, authors, agents, publishers, and readers to contact the company, and translators top the list.

• Click here to view the AmazonCrossing web page and the email form for translators, authors, agents, publishers, and readers to contact the company
• Click here to read an interview with Nicholas Elliott, translator for the first book to be published by AmazonCrossing
• Click here to see the initial Kindle Nation post on AmazonCrossing
• Click here to view Nicholas Elliott’s page at Amazon

“The first title being published by AmazonCrossing is Tierno Monénembo’s award-winning novel, The King of Kahel, which will be released for the first time in English for readers around the world on Nov. 2, 2010,” Amazon said in a statement today. This debut title is already available for pre-order in the Kindle Store at a price of $7.99, with a paperback price of $15.95 currently discounted, for pre-orders, to $10.85.  

• Click here to pre-order the Kindle edition of The King of Kahel
• Click here to pre-order the paperback edition of The King of Kahel
• Click here to visit Tierno Monénembo’s Amazon Author Central page 

Amazon’s news release is adorned with a pretty classy blurb from Per Wästberg, President of the Nobel Committee for Literature, which makes a strong claim for the literary significance of a move that underlines the companies commitment to proceed full-steam ahead as a publisher of print and digital books: “As president of the Nobel Committee for Literature, I have seen how recent laureates–Elfriede Jelinek, Imre Kertesz, JMG Le Clézio, Herta Müller–were virtually unknown and unprinted in England and U.S. and only after the Nobel Prize were they able to find readers in English, yet they are in my view equal to anyone writing in English,” said Wästberg. “AmazonCrossing deserves praise and support. Such translation and distribution of good literature from so-called minor languages can only stimulate our cultures and inspire writers to widen their horizons.”  

We should expect, in the next few months, to see Amazon take equally significant steps focused on expanding its ebook catalog, platform, and alphabets to include hundreds of thousands of new titles in the same languages from which AmazonCrossing books will be translated. It might be interesting to learn whether AmazonCrossing, in some cases, will be sweetening the company’s overall relationships with some foreign publishers by paying original language publishers for translation rights. 

Here’s the guts of this afternoon’s news release from Amazon:

Introducing AmazonCrossing–Bringing Exceptional International Books to English-Language Readers

 Amazon Announces a Second Publishing Imprint Focused on Translating Foreign-Language Books into English
SEATTLE, May 18, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) –Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced a new publishing imprint, AmazonCrossing, which will introduce readers to voices of the world through English-language translations of foreign-language books. The first title being published by AmazonCrossing is Tierno Monénembo’s award-winning novel, “The King of Kahel,” which will be released for the first time in English for readers around the world on Nov. 2, 2010. English-language editions of “The King of Kahel” will be available in print format at www.amazon.com and globally as a wireless digital download from the Kindle Store in less than 60 seconds.

“The goal of our publishing programs is to introduce readers to terrific authors they might not otherwise have the chance to know,” said Jeff Belle, Vice President of Books. “Our international customers have made us aware of exciting established and emerging voices from other cultures and countries that have not been translated for English-language readers. These great voices and great books deserve a wider audience, and that’s why we created AmazonCrossing.”

Similar to AmazonEncore (www.amazon.com/amazonencore), Amazon’s first publishing imprint, AmazonCrossing uses customer feedback and other data from Amazon sites around the world to identify exceptional books deserving of a wider, global audience. AmazonCrossing will acquire the rights and translate the books and then introduce them to the English-speaking market through multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, and national and independent booksellers via third-party wholesalers.

“As president of the Nobel Committee for Literature, I have seen how recent laureates–Elfriede Jelinek, Imre Kertesz, JMG Le Clézio, Herta Müller–were virtually unknown and unprinted in England and U.S. and only after the Nobel Prize were they able to find readers in English, yet they are in my view equal to anyone writing in English,” said Per Wästberg, President of the Nobel Committee for Literature. “AmazonCrossing deserves praise and support. Such translation and distribution of good literature from so-called minor languages can only stimulate our cultures and inspire writers to widen their horizons.”

“There are many thousands of books out there worthy of being translated and published in English, but that are currently unavailable to us monolingual readers,” said Chad Post, Publisher at Open Letter Books. “The more international books that are available in English, the better. It’s exciting to see a company like Amazon investing in such a worthy cause like AmazonCrossing, and in a way that will definitely help expand the audience for literature in translation.”

Tierno Monénembo’s “The King of Kahel” was originally published in France in 2008 and was the winner of the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot, which is awarded to the author of an outstanding original novel published during the current year. Based on the life of Olivier de Sanderval, a man who journeyed to Guinea to build an empire by conquering the hostile region of Fouta Djallon, the book explores how Sanderval braves all dangers to build a railway that will bring modern civilization to Africa. Born in 1947 in Guinea, Monénembo was exiled to Senegal and the Ivory Coast before moving to France to pursue a doctorate in biochemistry. He is the author of nine books and one stage play.
“I’m thrilled to inaugurate Amazon’s new series of translations. American publishers lag far behind their international counterparts when it comes to publishing foreign books in translation,” said Nicholas Elliott, translator of “The King of Kahel.” “That Amazon should devote such a major effort to trying to reverse this trend–particularly one launched with a novel of the quality of ‘The King of Kahel’–is great news not only for translators but for readers and writers hungry to discover what’s going on in Norway, Argentina, Kazakhstan…and Fouta Djallon.”

For more information on AmazonCrossing and upcoming titles, visit http://www.amazon.com/amazoncrossing. AmazonCrossing is a brand used by Amazon Content Services, LLC.