Kindle Nation Daily Readers’ Alert for Tuesday, May 18: Martin Amis, Laura and Lisa Ling, Chuck Palahniuk, Isabel Allende, Damon Wayans and Other Books in the Media

May 18, 2010 by KND

Today’s edition of our fun new Readers’ Alert series features Kindle titles that have received recent attention in the media:

Heidi Durrow appeared on The Leonard Lopate Show to dish her debut novel The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (Algonquin, 978-1565126800, $22.95, hardcover discounted at Amazon to $15.61; Kindle edition $13.77). PW wrote “Taut prose, a controversial conclusion and the thoughtful reflection on racism and racial identity resonate without treading into political or even overtly specific agenda waters, as the story succeeds as both a modern coming-of-age and relevant social commentary.”
Ian Bremmer’s The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? got a Daily Show visit and a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition. Not available in Kindle format due to Penguin’s Agency 5 posture; hardcover discounted to $11.69 at Amazon. $12.99 in Apple’s iBooks Store.
Laura and Lisa Ling’s Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home (William Morrow, 978-0062000675, $26.99) was featured on Oprah yesterday. Hardcover discounted to $16.19 at Amazon; Kindle edition $12.99. $12.99 in Apple’s iBooks Store.
Martin Amis’ new novel The Pregnant Widow topped the NPR “What We’re Reading” list for last week and was tantalizing described as “part Decameron, part Big Chill, as twenty-somethings in an Italian castle navigate the sexual revolution.” Hardcover discounted to $17.79 at Amazon; Kindle edition $14.82. Unavailable in Apple’s iBooks Store.
The Early Show yesterday featured Amy Wilson’s When Did I Get Like This? The Screamer, the Worrier, the Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, and Other Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be (William Morrow, 978-0061956959, $23.99). Hardcover discounted to $16.31 at Amazon; Kindle edition $10.99. $10.99 in Apple’s iBooks Store.

Other Kindle titles in the media in the past few days:

Avis Cardella, Spent: Memoirs of a Shopping Addict
Beth Ostrosky Stern, Oh My Dog: How to Choose, Train, Groom, Nurture, Feed, and Care for Your New Best Friend
Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
James Van Praagh, Unfinished Business: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Life
Brad Meltzer, Heroes for My Son
Chuck Palahniuk, Tell-All
Damon Wayans, Red Hats: A Novel
Jane Buckingham, The Modern Girl’s Guide to Sticky Situations
Paul Bloom, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Gail Sheehy, Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence
Pam Grier, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts
Randy Frost, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert for Tuesday, May 18: Soul Catcher, a new urban fantasy by Leigh Bridger, and dozens more!

May 18, 2010 by KND

A couple of new additions lead the list on Tuesday morning:

Soul Catcher, an urban fantasy by Leigh Bridger

The Shadow and Night (The Lamb Among the Stars, Book 1) by Chris Walley

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, Updated and Expanded Edition by Jerry Weissman

The Art of Asking: Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers by Terry J. Fadem

The Truth About Negotiations by Leigh L. Thompson

Every Thought Captive: Battling the Toxic Beliefs That Separate Us from the Life We Crave

by Jerusha Clark

Private Justice by Terri Blackstock

A Vote of Confidence by Robin Lee Hatcher

“Free” in the Kindle Store refers, for now, to the price for download to US-based Kindles. Amazon adds charges for Kindles based beyond US borders.
Originally posted to Kindle Nation Daily 5.18.2010.
Click here (or type “kindle nation daily” in your Kindle’s Kindle Store search field) to have Free Book Alerts pushed directly to your Kindle 24/7 with a 14-day free trial to the Kindle edition of Kindle Nation Daily, the #1 bestselling blog in the Kindle Store.
Click here to see RECENT KINDLE NATION DAILY FREE BOOK ALERTS

The best way to find out about these free listings right away, when they occur, is to subscribe to the Kindle edition of Kindle Nation Daily, which pushes Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alerts directly to your Kindle Home screen 24/7. And in the case of many free listings that disappear within a matter of hours or days, “right away” is often just in time.

No Kindle Required: Whether you are a long-time Kindle owner or you’ve just acquired an iPad and are filling it with ebooks for the first time or you are reading Kindle books on a PC, Mac, BlackBerry, iPhone or iPad Touch, you can get any and all of these titles absolutely free on your Kindle-compatible device of choice! Click here to download a free Kindle App for your device.

Click here for Kindle Nation’s archive page with links for over 2 million free books!

Check out our new listing of the first 30 months of month-by-month Kindle Store bestsellers here: Kindle Store Bestsellers, Month-by-Month for the First 30 Months

Here are our other updated free promotional listings in the Kindle Store as of May 18:

Heat of Passion: An Out of Uniform story by Elle Kennedy

Product Description

On the road to forever, anything goes-

An Out of Uniform story.

Carson Scott is the king of one-night stands, so a naughty encounter with a sexy brunette in a nightclub supply closet is right up his alley. When his mysterious seductress disappears, he-s blindsided by an unfamiliar emotion-disappointment. One thing-s for sure-if he ever encounters his lady of the evening again, he won-t let her slip away so easily.

Between her catering business, family issues, and her broken heart, Holly Lawson has too much on her plate to think about committing to a serious relationship. Hot, sweaty, anonymous sex with a Navy SEAL-now that sounds like the perfect appetizer to take the edge off. With no plans to ever see him again, she indulges in a fling. Only to come face to face with him weeks later while working a wedding.

Worse, Carson is hell-bent on the one thing she doesn-t want. The R word. She has no intention of falling for him, but in the face of his seductive, mind-changing methods, her resistance is crumbling-

Warning: This title contains a ridiculously hot Navy SEAL, a sassy heroine, and sex in a supply closet. Read only if you have time to take a cold shower afterwards. Graphic sex, explicit language.

Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help

Proper Pursuit, A

Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage

Tender Graces

The Minister’s Wooing

Colters’ Wife

Swashbuckling Fantasy: 10 Thrilling Tales of Magical Adventure

Forbidden: The Sacrifice (Book 1)

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #4: Savior

Breach of Trust

Snow Melts in Spring

Unlock the Hidden Job Market: 6 Steps to a Successful Job Search When Times Are Tough

The First Drop of Rain

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project

The Joy of Pregnancy: The Complete, Candid, and Reassuring Companion for Parents-to-Be

The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project

New Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Area and “Worked Examples” as One Way Forwar…

Economic Report of the President

Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011

The Civic Potential of Video Games

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #1: Precipice

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #3: Paragon

The Wild’s Call

The Hunters

The Reincarnationist Series

The Devil’s Rooming House: The True Story of America’s Deadliest Female Serial Killer – Fr…

A Very Special Delivery

Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform

Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #2: Skyborn

Hide in Plain Sight

Slow Hands

Irresistible Forces

Dancing in the Moonlight

Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch

More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea

Stopping Time, Part 1

Stopping Time, Part 2

Update: And here’s one we featured a week ago but inadvertently let drop off the list! Thanks to Rachel for the heads up:

Steve Martini’s Shadow of Power Free with Bonus Material

by Steve Martini – Pre-order for May 25, 2010 Release

Kindle Price:	$0.00 & includes wireless delivery via *Amazon Whispernet*
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishers
	This price was set by the publisher

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 655 KB
Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books (May 25, 2010)
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers

Behind the Headlines: Amazon Announces Kindle for Android App for Release Summer 2010

May 18, 2010 by KND

Amazon announced overnight that it will release a Kindle for Android App this summer to allow Kindle content to be purchased, read, and synched on the Droid Incredible, Google Nexus One, HTC MyTouch, Motorola CLIQ, Motorola Droid, and other devices that have an SD card and run Android OS 1.6 or greater. Importantly, Amazon appears to be readying the Kindle for Android App for international roll-out.

No Kindle Required, and no surprise here, but kudos to Amazon for continuing its relentless march to make the Kindle platform available for free download on the widest possible array of popular mobile devices. The relatively new Android platform is capturing impressive early market share, despite the notion that one might get from the gadget and mainstream media that every family in the world will own 5 iPhones, 3 iPads, and an iPod Touch by Labor Day.

Amazon’s release and placeholder page don’t give away much information about the finer points of the Kindle for Android App feature set, but include a line that promises users will be able to “[a]djust the text size, add bookmarks, and view the annotations you created on your Kindle, computer, or other Kindle-compatible device.”

But I find it mildly intriguing that another line notes that “Kindle newspapers, magazines and blogs are currently not available on Kindle for Android.” Call me greedy, but when I see the juxtaposition of the words “currently” and “not available” in Amazon metadata or news releases, I take it to mean “We’re working on that and we will let you know when it is ready.”

Speaking of what the Kindle team may be working on, will a Kindle for Palm app be next up, or is it way too 2001 of me to suggest such a thing? A decade ago when I was at Inc. Magazine one of my responsibilities was to provide our magazine and book content digitally to Palm and Pocket PC owners through Peanut Press and netLibrary, and there were plenty of orders for those early days. Getting Kindle on those devices would, in my perhaps nostalgic view, kind of complete the circle so that some of Kindle’s device-apps team could spring to the next level and begin investing serious energy in important projects such as:

bringing all of the world’s languages and alphabets, if not to the Kindle device itself, at least to the Kindle for iPad and other devices;
making “plays-well-with-others” deals with some competitors’ dedicated ereaders; and
renewing its subsidiary Stanza platform as the app of choice to read free content from sites like the Internet Archive on the iPad, iPhone, and other devices.

The availability of the Kindle for Android, which is a Google-developed platform for mobile devices, could be one more ingredient to make things interesting as Google, fresh off recent failures as a mobile phone retailer with the Nexus One and a social network developer with Buzz, moves to try to find work as an online book retailer.

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

Introducing Kindle for Android

Free Android app for reading allows customers to enjoy over 540,000 Kindle books on Android phones; Amazon offers Kindle apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Mac, PC, BlackBerry and, soon, Android

SEATTLE, May 18, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) –Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that Kindle for Android, the free application that lets readers around the world enjoy Kindle books on their Android phones, is coming this summer. Kindle for Android enables customers to 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 Android will include Amazon’s Whispersync technology, which saves and synchronizes a customer’s bookmarks across their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and, soon, Android, so customers always have their reading material with them and never lose their place. Kindle is the most wished for, most gifted and #1 bestselling product on Amazon.com.

“Kindle for Android is the perfect companion application for Kindle and Kindle DX owners, and is also a great way for customers to enjoy over 540,000 books in the Kindle Store even if they don’t yet have a Kindle,” said Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle. “We think customers are going to love the convenience and simplicity of having instant access to a massive selection of books from Amazon on their Droid, Nexus, Incredible and many more Android devices.”

Android owners can take advantage of the features that customers love about Kindle and Kindle app experience, including:

Search 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 Android device. 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

Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books storedon Amazon’s servers for free

Synchronize last page read between their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and, soon, Android

Choose from five different font sizes

Read the beginning of books for free before they decide to buy

Read in portrait or landscape mode, tap on either side of the screen or flick to turn pages

Customers can see a sneak peak and sign up to receive an e-mail when Kindle for Android is available at http://www.amazon.com/kindleforandroid.

Guest Post: Kindle Sales Raised The Ark From Abyss; What’s Next?

May 10, 2010 by KND

Guest Post by Tom Dulaney

Without the Kindle and Amazon digital text publishing, Boyd Morrison‘s The Ark would lie unnoticed under an ocean of publishing house rejection slips.

Instead, The Ark arrives in Kindle and hardcover as well as audiobook format with a fanfare of publicity from Simon & Schuster on May 11. Tradition says an author hits the big time when his book debuts as a hardcover. However, that tradition is under challenge, and The Ark stands as a prime example of the emerging power of ebooks and Kindle Nation.

The Ark is sailing through a hurricane of a battle in the book industry over book prices, ebook prices, author’s royalties, control of who sets prices….and so on in a massive complexity the average reader may not care a whit about. Amazon has discounted the hardcover pre-orders 34% from $24.99 to $16.49, but under the agency model Simon & Schuster has set the ebook price at $11.99, considerably higher than the original ebook price at which The Ark’s sales first caught the publisher’s attention.

Nor may they care about Boyd’s financial fate, beyond hoping he earns enough from The Ark to keep him at the keyboard. If, that is, readers take to this swashbuckling new author who dared scale the heights of publishing.

Boyd, his book, and his experience in the last year of winning the attention of the publishing industry with methods both tried and true as well as iconoclastic and new, may make for an interesting case study on the explosively changing world of books.

The voyage of this Ark reads like a thriller. The handsome protagonist dreams of being a bestselling thriller book writer. He doggedly pursues his goal, meantime building an amazing career as a Ph. D. in Industrial Engineering. To pay the bills, he holds great jobs at NASA, Microsoft and RCA. Ten US Patents bear his name. Plus, he’s a professional actor with credits in commercials, movies and stage plays.

Then his wife announces her dream: to be a doctor. They make a plan. Boyd sets aside his dream for nearly a decade.

She becomes a doctor 9 years later. Boyd quits a stellar job at Microsoft’s X-Box Games Group to write once more. At a writer’s conference, he’s late for a meeting and sits at the last open table. Agent Irene Goodman hears about The Ark. She takes him on as a client. Two hope-filled, rejection-filled years follow.

“By 2009 we were finished,” Morrison says.

“At about that time I saw that anyone could self-publish in the Kindle store,” he said. “It was really an afterthought to publish a Kindle version, just something else to do to try to find readers. I did no promotion—just put the books up to see what would happen.”

As Morrison tells it, the books landed in the Kindle store on March 13, 2009. By mid-June, he says, some 7,500 had sold on Amazon, and another 7,500 or so had been downloaded from his web site.

“They were selling at a rate of about 3,500 to 4,000 a month by June,” Morrison said.

Meantime, the American Booksellers of America has selected The Ark as an Indie Next Great Read book for May.

Setting all the backstory and hype aside, how good is the book? Instant review by this reporter: can’t-miss page turner that’ll rob you of at least one night’s sleep. Every bit the equal of top-of-the list authors’ novels.

Finely tuned, lovingly crafted, relentlessly exciting vessels, Boyd sails his novels into the winds of Fate on May 11, with The Ark as flagship.

A second thriller, Rogue Wave (retitled from The Palmyra Impact), is available for pre-order now, and releases October 11, 2010.

A third, The Adamas Blueprint, releases in December 2011.

Will the hero of this real-life thriller tale overcome all odds?

Well, I’m the last person to play the spoiler.

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert for Tuesday, April 13, 2010: "Wicked Lovely" Free with Bonus Material, and Dozens More

April 13, 2010 by KND

By Tom Dulaney, Contributing Editor, Kindle Nation Daily

Wicked Lovely, Free with Bonus Material is the first in Marr’s series of the same name, and may not be free for long. Amazon and HarperCollins offer this edition, with bonus material and an intro to upcoming Radiant Shadows. But Wicked Lovely also shows up elsewhere in the Kindle Bookstore, without the bonus, with a price tag of $7.99.

Of Marr’s latest, priced at $9.99, Booklist says: “The fourth in Marr’s Wicked Lovely series focuses loosely on Devlin, the High Queen of Faerie’s advisor-assassin, and Ani, the half-mortal daughter of Gabriel, leader of the Wild Hunt. Characters from other books play roles of varying importance as Devlin and Ani meet, fall in lust/love, and foil another attempt to create unrest in both worlds.”

The Washington Post said of Wicked Lovely: ” Melissa Marr adds elegantly to the sub-genre of Urban Faery with this enticing, well-researched fantasy for teens. Wicked Lovely takes place in modern-day Huntsdale, a small city south of Pittsburgh whose name evokes the Wild Hunt of mythology. High school junior Aislinn and her grandmother have followed strict rules all their lives to hide their ability to see faeries because faeries don’t like it when mortals can see them, and faeries can be very cruel.”

The best way to find out about these free listings right away, when they occur, is to subscribe to the Kindle edition of Kindle Nation Daily, which pushes Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alerts directly to your Kindle Home screen 24/7. And in the case of many free listings that disappear within a matter of hours or days, “right away” is often just in time.

No Kindle Required: Whether you are a long-time Kindle owner or you’ve just acquired an iPad and are filling it with ebooks for the first time or you are reading Kindle books on a PC, Mac, BlackBerry, iPhone or iPad Touch, you can get any and all of these titles absolutely free on your Kindle-compatible device of choice! Click here to download a free Kindle App for your device.