Good morning,

In keeping with my longstanding policy of using this blog to update my readers on new material in my Kindle books and new developments concerning the Kindle itself, I am writing this morning with exciting news.

None of us — customers, authors, bloggers, pundits, or market analysts — can ever be certain about exactly what Amazon will do with the Kindle or any other business venture until the company actually does it. But my expectations about the company’s long-awaited roll-out of the Kindle 2.0 have been firming up with the company’s recent moves, and it is time to share them with you.

Based on these developments and on conversations that — for obvious reasons — I cannot source here, I am confident that Amazon will begin shipping the Kindle 2.0 in February. As you may already be aware, Amazon has been building up a huge backlog of Kindle orders over the past three months. The company’s plan, it says here, is to contact these back-ordered customers in the next few weeks to offer them the chance to upgrade their order to a Kindle 2.0, at relatively small additional cost (about 10% of the existing Kindle price).

Naturally, interest in the Kindle 2.0 is going to spiral upward over the next few weeks. If you want to be one of the first in line for a new Kindle 2.0 when the units begin to ship, the best thing to do today is to order a new Kindle from Amazon’s main Kindle buying page, if you have not done so already.

One thing that Amazon knows is that one of the biggest sources for Kindle 2.0 orders will be previous Kindle 1.0 buyers. That’s the main reason the company is presently in the middle of a firmware upgrade (1.2) to streamline synchronicity between multiple Kindles assigned to a single customer account. It is also the reason the company recently opened its own Marketplace features to allow easy after-market sales of Kindle 1.0 units by Kindle owners. (Just in case you would like to sell your KIndle 1.0 to help finance your Kindle 2.0, it’s just as easy as selling a used book on Amazon Marketplace, and you may even turn a profit!)

I hope this information, which is based entirely upon my personal knowledge, opinions, and expertise rather than any information provided directly to me by Amazon insiders, will be helpful to you. This is also a good place for me to mention a a couple of things about my own books about the Kindle:

* First, yes, I do have a new book forthcoming about the Kindle 2.0. Although it is necessary for me to bring it out as a separate title involving a separate transaction, I will make a point of letting you know about a special 72-hour window when the Kindle edition of the new book will be available at a low introductory, promotional price of less than $2. Naturally, the contents of the Kindle 2.0 book are embargoed until the device is released.

* During this transitional period, beginning later today, I am also temporarily reducing the price of the paperback version of The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle by about half, to $7.95, if you wish to pick up a copy on the cheap. This, of course, is the guide to the Kindle 1.0.

This is already longer than I had intended, so I will close with a sincere thank you for your having walked this interesting Kindle path with me over the past year.

Happy Kindling!
Stephen Windwalker

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http://tinyurl.com/Gen2Kindle
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/WindwalkerFB

… so it is not included in either the Kindle edition or the paperback edition of The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle.

And I cannot promise that you will be able to replicate it in the privacy of your own home, but it may be worth a try.

It’s coming on a year now that I’ve had my first Kindle, and it had gotten a lot of wear — there have even been a few planned and unplanned “drop tests” along the way. With each passing month, I have to admit that its battery life between charges has grown more disappointing, and there have also been some (perhaps related) screen or keyboard freeze issues recently.

This weekend, on a whim, I swapped Kindle batteries between mine and my 10-year-old son Danny’s Kindle, which I purchased for him last May in appreciation for the fact that he came up with the idea for the lovely Northumberland tree photograph that I licensed and that has become the visual brand for my Kindle books.

Immediately following the battery swap, my Kindle began to work perfectly and its battery life seems to be living up to original product claims again! That’s not the surprising part. The surprising part is that Danny’s Kindle (with what I would heretofore have described as my old worn-out battery) is working perfectly too! I have no way of explaining this, but, for instance, I have left both Kindles powered up with the wireless switch “on” for over 24 hours, and both are showing over 50% power remaining on the battery indicator.

So, I realize, we do not all have 2 Kindles in our homes. And Amazon is out of Kindle batteries (yes, my theory is that it is the battery backlog that is causing the Kindle backlog), so it’s not like you can just order another Amazon Kindle Replacement Battery and get one this week.

But if your Kindle is being to perform in a slightly tired fashion and you have access to another Kindle, even a friend’s, it may be worth experimenting with a battery swap.

Meanwhile, I hope that some Kindle engineer from Area 126 or Area 51 or somewhere will comment or email me and shed light on this phenomenon, or suggest Kindle counseling for me.

… but don’t doubt that Amazon will catch up soon with the production capacity necessary to get hundreds of thousands of new Kindles into the hands of eager readers this holiday season.

If you or your friends, colleagues, or loved ones are on the fence about whether to get a Kindle or to give one as a gift, one of the best ways to find out just about everything you’ll be able to do with a Kindle is to pick up the paperback edition of my book The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle. The Kindle edition has been downloaded by 36,000 happy Kindle owners, and now the new paperback has become one of the top titles in Amazon’s main bookstore.

From now through Nov. 1, you can take an additional $50 off the $359 price of a brand new Amazon Kindle! Here’s how.

Just click on the picture of the Kindle in the carousel above and, when you are delivered to Amazon, hit the “Add to the Shopping Cart” button at the right of your screen. Then, at checkout, enter the promotional code OPRAHWINFREY in the appropriate field on the right of your screen and click “Apply.” $50 will automatically be removed from your purchase price, for this limited time only.

The first book-length critical assessment of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin by Sue Katz, is now the #1 bestseller in the Amazon Kindle store, just days after its launch.

Signed copies of the paperback edition of Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin are being offered at a 20% discount on Amazon, and the book is also available in other electronic reading formats including the iPhone and the Blackberry through Mobipocket. Just days after its launch the new Palin book is one of the topselling current affairs titles at Amazon, and will be available in better bookstores nationally next week.

Already emerging as one of the important political books of the general election season, Sue Katz’ book has received praise from several distinguished authors, including bestsellers Harriet Lerner and Susie Bright:

‘Sue Katz’s meticulously researched book cuts through the media fog and political doublespeak, bringing the facts about Sarah Palin into sharp resolve.’ –Harriet Lerner, author of The Dance of Anger

‘Sue Katz is just the she-bear to wrestle Sarah Palin’s image back down to earth. Forget the myth about the GOP’s latest superstar–Katz will show the real motivations behind Palin and where she comes from.’ –Susie Bright

Who is Sarah Palin and what does she believe in? People around the country — and indeed the world — had more questions than answers when John McCain announced her selection as his running mate on August 29, 2008. Has any national political candidate ever emerged on the American political scene with less scrutiny than Alaska Governor Sarah Palin received prior to her selection?

Whether you believe Palin was nominated because of years of hard work in Alaska, as a result of a reckless decision by her “maverick” running mate, or because of the influence of the religious right, you probably want to know more about this remarkable political phenom.

Hours after John McCain shocked the nation by selecting Palin as his surprise Republican running mate, journalists, activists, and ordinary concerned citizens began to research and write about Palin’s biography, public statements, and political background. The flood of information and commentary has been torrential.

For those who would like some help sorting through all the hype about Sarah Palin, Sue Katz’s Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin is the perfect solution. Katz distills the overwhelming glut of information about Palin into a highly readable and fast-paced voter’s guide about the woman who may be elected vice-president in 2008 and who could well serve as president one day. From Palin’s days in Wasilla to her leap into Republican super-stardom, Katz helps you to better understand this intriguing candidate.

While remaining true to her own strong point of view, Sue Katz looks beyond the lipstick and the sound bites. Thanks But No Thanks synthesizes information and commentary from a wide range of sources so that readers of any political persuasion will find help in educating themselves about just who Sarah Palin is and what her election might mean for the country and the world.

This book is for voters who want to go beyond the usual campaign “puff piece” biographies and learn about Palin’s known views on everything from community organizers to women’s issues to the relationship of faith and politics. Thanks But No Thanks provides the reader with access to interesting voices from around America and the world, and they all have something insightful to say about Sarah Palin.

In addition, the publisher has included several valuable appendices that will serve as handy references for voters and debate-watchers: a year-by-year chronology of key events in Palin’s life, a detailed history of Palin’s performance in past elections, and the full text of her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

About the Author

Author and teacher Sue Katz has published journalism and political commentary for many years and is the creator of the popular blog, Sue Katz: Consenting Adult. Her passport shows more wear than Palin’s–she has lived and worked on three continents, teaching martial arts in her institutes in Israel, promoting global volunteerism while living in Europe, and writing, editing and teaching (from salsa to senior fitness) in the United States. A rebel with a newfound interest in electoral politics, Sue continues her lifelong commitment to social justice activism from her home outside Boston. She attended Boston University as an undergraduate and earned her master’s degree from Tel Aviv University. Her second book, an edgy and unabashed look at the private behavior of boomers, is due in 2009.

About the Cover

The unique collage portrait of Sarah Palin was created expressly for the Thanks But No Thanks cover by artist Sandy Oppenheimer. Her well-deserved international reputation reflects this distinctive style, and her creations are as affordable as they are exceptional. Contact Sandy at sandyoppenheimer@hotmail.com or view her work at http://sandyoppenheimerportraits.blogspot.com.

One measure of the usefulness of any book lies in its power to provoke a reader to mindfulness of alarming conditions in one’s community, one’s universe, or one’s own spirit. As I read and pondered Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama, I became increasingly mindful of certain alarming paradoxes in American political life in 2008:

* How bizarre it is that personal character is usually kept off the table in political discourse while a candidate’s religion is now considered fair game. When a scandal occurs, as it so often does nowadays with Democrats, Republicans, and preachers, it is always a scandal of character, not of one’s stated religion.

* The central organizing principle that underlies the uses of religion and spirituality in American political life is bold hypocrisy and outright deceit. This has been true for decades, or perhaps as long as religion has been so used, but it seems especially clear today.

* Despite abundant evidence – not least in Obama’s presence itself – that we live in a post-homogeneous America, our politics are relentlessly constrained by homogenizing talking heads who are always willing to stoop low to achieve the populist posture of a “gotcha” moment in which they use association or innuendo to say, of Obama or anyone else, “See, he’s not like us!”

The aforementioned condition of rampant hypocrisy is not limited to one political party or one religious denomination. It is widespread. It is not my intention to cast stones here, but simply to state what should be obvious.

Religious self-presentation has become a routine element of political campaigns, often with no more rigor than might be involved in a candidate’s assertion, for instance, that she had “always been a Yankees fan.” No wonder, then, how often such calculations backfire with the drawing back of the curtains and the attendant protestations that we should “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

I recall a long period in my own adult life when I might have argued that Stephen Mansfield’s inquiry into the spiritual journey of Barack Obama, however elegant in its composition and thorough in its supporting research, was insignificant almost by definition. Like millions of others who were inspired by John F. Kennedy’s public persona, I grew up believing that religion should have no role in politics. Even if America’s mid-century notions of pluralism and tolerance operated within the boundaries of a seemingly homogeneous culture, they appealed both to our basic sense of decency and to our fuzzy notions of a living constitution that worked.

Those notions have come under relentless attack for decades, so that we are less likely to recoil reflexively from the very idea of a book such as Mansfield’s, as I and many others once did at titles such as Senator Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative or William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale.

I wonder if Mansfield’s book would have the same bookshelf appeal that it has today if it had been published under the title The Character of Barack Obama. That seems a bland alternative. But when I finished reading Mansfield’s book and put it down, what impressed me most was that I felt that I had just read a book of considerable rigor and thoughtfulness about Obama’s character and its origins, rather than anything so specific as a book about his religious faith.

I cannot fault Obama for fronting his “faith” as he has done, or Mansfield for writing about it. Without falling into a potentially dull recitation of second-hand news, Mansfield’s narrative manages to do justice to the extremely damaging – and, of course, deceitful — smear campaigns of guilt-by-innuendo and guilt-by-association that have tarred Obama as a Muslim extremist and, by selective use of the quotations of former Pastor Jeremiah Wright, as a bitter and unpatriotic black man. Under such stress, I don’t know if there is any other way for Obama to fight back, and I appreciate Mansfield’s chronicle.

But I admit that I will be somewhat more interested, if Obama is elected (as I hope that he will be), in an updated chronicle of the testing of his faith during his tenure as president. Whatever the ability of any campaigner to dance righteously across the religious dance floor of contemporary presidential politics, it is when a candidate becomes president that he (or, in the event of two very plausible circumstances, she) embarks upon a season of relentless preaching from America’s most powerful pulpit.

Should such a book become appropriate, I hope that Stephen Mansfield will write it.