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Wow Factor:

Amazon’s New Instant Video Finder

Could Change the Way You Find Free and Bargain Movies and TV!

 

Amazon’s going Hollywood,

and we’re glad they are taking us with them.

Screen Shot 2013-01-08 at 9.52.35 AM
The latest tool that they have introduced didn’t even rate one of their thrill-a-minute press releases. Here’s what the company tweeted Sunday with a link to the new Video Finder.

There are more categories and subcategories than any 10 ovie buffs could possible dream up, all very well organized, and wherever your browsing takes you, it’s a snap to drill down so that you only see titles in one of these four categories:

  • Prime Instant Videos (Yes, those are the ones that are free for Amazon Prime members)
  • Rated G or PG
  • TV Shows
  • Movies

We’re having so much fun checking out the search infrastructure and finding videos that we may never get around to watching. Although we do like to watch.

But just to give you an idea — sure, the darker souls in their midst will enjoy the fact that the Video Finder allows us to browse “Dystopian” titles. But this tool then allows you to select from a dozen different Dystopian subcategories! Because even those dark souls occasionally enjoy a dystopian comedy, right?

It’s still in Beta — no puns, we’re not going there — but check it out and let us know what you think!

Bargain Alert:

How to Set Up Our Kindle Nation Daily

eBookTracker Tool

to Give You a Heads Up When There’s a Price Reduction on a Book That You Want

We’ve been getting great feedback from our readers for a while now about how you use our website to find category-sorted listings of free, quality 99-cent, and Kindle Owners Lending Library-eligible books in the Kindle Store:

Today we’d like to take things one step further with a very cool, totally revolutionary new way for Kindle Nation readers to get a heads up whenever a price is reduced on a book that you’d like to add to your Kindle library!

You may or may not have noticed a link, in the white-on-black menu ribbon near the top of our website pages, to a feature that we call eBookTracker. Our amazing web development team built eBookTracker to help us — and our sponsoring authors and publishers — keep track of how their Kindle books are doing in the Kindle Store sales rankings. And it works great for that — here’s a link if you’d like to bookmark it for that reason alone: http://bit.ly/eBookTracker

But then we asked ourselves an important question:

How can we use eBookTracker to create additional value for our readers?

And we’re happy to say that we came up with a great idea.

As you know, prices change every day in the Kindle Store, and authors and publishers — from the largest to the smallest — do a lot of experimenting with different price points. That’s all well and good, but it’s important to us that the best readers in the world — Kindle Nation readers — get the best reading possible at the best prices possible.

Now, whenever you decide not to purchase a particular Kindle book because the price is too high, our eBookTracker service allows you to flag that book so that you’ll receive an email alert if the price drops below a certain point! There are hundreds of thousands of reasonably priced books in the Kindle Store, but there are great books whose sales — and authors — are being suppressed because they are being priced, by publishers, to fail. Our new eBookTracker book price alert tool gives you one more arrow in your quiver, as a reader or a book shopper, to stand up to silly prices from silly publishers.

Just follow these easy steps to make it work for you whenever you please – they may seem complicated the first time, but once you have done it two or three times it should only take you about 10 seconds to add a book:

1. Go to our eBookTracker site.

 

2. Click on the appropriate link, in the white-on-black menu ribbon near the top of the page, to Register (if you have not done so before) or Log In.

3. Click on Tracked Books, in the white-on-black menu ribbon near the top of the page.

4. Select the blue Add/Search button, to add a title to your personal
list of tracked books. (You can also select Manage Groups to organize
your list into groups.)

5. The easiest way to identify and add a specific book to your list of Tracked Books is to copy and paste in the 10-digit ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which you can find on any book’s Kindle Store page, either in the URL/web address or in any Kindle book’s Product Details section. For instance, if you are trying to add a listing for our recently published book The Complete 2013 User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle, you’ll find the ASIN either in the URL field at the top of your screen like this

5a. or in the Product Details section of the book’s Kindle page here:

5b. The ASIN will always be a 10-digit “number” that begins with “B00,” and be careful not to confuse 0s with capital Os — they’re not the same, so we find it’s always easier to copy and paste rather than to rely on our typing skills.

6. Once you have copied, highlighted, or captured that 10-digit ASIN, just paste it into the pop-up search field like this

6b. and click the blue Search button to display a new screen like this on which you will want to click on the brown and white Add button, which is denoted with a “+” sign:

6c. Once you have added a book, you may need to refresh the screen to see it on your list of Tracked Books:

7. Finally, from the six colorful icons to the right of any title, choose the purple “View/Change Notifications” icon to create a notification alert for that title using the dialogue box that appears on your screen:

In this example, I’ve instructed eBookTracker to send me an email alert whenever the price of  The Complete 2013 User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle drops below $1. If I were setting up a notification for some new release best-seller that was currently priced at too rich a level for my blood, I might set up a notification so that would alert me whenever the price was reduced below $10.

That’s it in a nutshell — we hope you’ll give it a try and give us your feedback!

No Need to Play Hide ‘n’ Seek to Find Text-to-Speech on the New 8.9-Inch Kindle Fire HD – Here’s the Scoop

Some Kindle owners will go through their entire lives without ever using the Kindle’s Text-to-Speech feature, but if you’re like me and you enjoy using it, you’d be disappointed if you couldn’t find it on a new 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD, right?

Well, not to worry. I was a little concerned when I unboxed the latest model this week, but once I had done a little rooting around I found the text-to-speech feature and unleashed it for good for (almost) all my Kindle books and personal docs. It’s hidden from view at first, but here’s how you can set it up on yours. You can use any TTS-enabled book to unleash your TTS functionality, of course, but in the screen shots below I am using the excellent memoir Playing Bigger Than You Are by my old friend and colleague Stewart Acuff.

Here’s how to access Text-to-Speech on the new 8.9-Inch Kindle Fire HD in four easy steps:

FIG. 1. First, from any page in a TTS-enabled book like this one, tap the bottom of the screen and you will see a progress bar showing where you are in the book. If TTS is not turned on, it will look like the progress bar in Fig. 1 above.
FIG. 2. Select the Aa font button in the upper left corner of the display and you’ll see a pop-up screen like that shown in the upper left corner of Fig. 2 above. Text-to-Speech still does not appear as an option, so on this pop-up, select “More Options.”
FIG. 3. From the “More Options” pop-up that appears in the upper left corner of the display, select the “On” button to the right of “Text-to-Speech.”
FIG. 4. Tap anywhere on the rest of the page to bring the book back “to the front” of your display, then tap again at the bottom of the display. In Fig. 4, for example, tap just below the words “The next morning I told Holt” and the Text-to-Speech control line will come up with a “Play” icon at the left.

Hope that helps!

And my apologies for the fact that I used the same page in all four screen shots here. I didn’t want to infringe on my old pal Stewart’s copyright. So if you want to find out what he told Holt the next morning, you’ll just have to ante up $2.99 to buy the book. Which I hope you do, because it is a pretty inspiring piece of work. Like Stewart.

Video Post: Movie X-Ray On The Kindle Fire HD

We’re happy to share this post from another in the family of Kindle Nation Daily sites, Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily, where you can find all things Kindle Fire, every day!


One of the terrific new features of the Kindle Fire HD is Movie X-Ray, which puts Internet Movie Database actor biographies, photos and filmographies at your fingertips when you’re watching Amazon Instant Videos on your KFHD.

In the video post below, Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily Editor in Chief April Hamilton demonstrates Movie X-Ray, using the Instant Video of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as an example. If you have any difficulty viewing the video embedded in this post, you can view it on YouTube by clicking here.

 

 

For Men Only…. (NOT!) But … Husbands, Sons, and Baby Daddies, Don’t Forget Mother’s Day for the Kindle -Loving Mom in Your Family!

For Men Only…. (NOT!) But … Husbands, Sons, and Baby Daddies, Don’t Forget Mother’s Day for the Kindle -Loving Mom in Your Family!

Have you heard? Sunday is Mother’s Day, and it’s a great time to give her a Kindle, a Kindle Fire, or some incredibly stylish Kindle accessories — if you place an overnight order, like, five minutes ago.

But if you’ve already done that, or it’s too late to do that, or you otherwise want to add some nice little extras to the flowers, the chocolates, and the very classy Sunday brunch that you have planned, here are a few inexpensive Kindle books that we’ve carefully chosen because we believe they will bring a smile to her face and many satisfying hours of reading to her Kindle. This is not a sponsored post — just a chance to share a few thoughts about books that have been very popular with our readers. Titles here, details to follow:

<%title%>
by Patricia Sands
4.2 stars – 35 Reviews
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:

How far would you go to help a close friend? Is there a place where you might draw the line and simply have to say no?Eight women. Four decades of friendship. One unimaginable request.Where can you find a story about friendship, laughter and the good things in life that also touches on alcoholism, infidelity, porn addiction, illness and grief? For many women, it’s often within their own circle of friends. Whether your BFFs are in their twenties or are seniors, everyone has a story.The Bridge Club reminds us of the complexities of women’s friendships through an entertaining and often moving tale of eight women whose lives intersect once a month initially to play the game of bridge. What began as one night turns into four decades that span the segments of a woman’s journey from youthful optimism to embracing the challenges and opportunities presented in life’s later years.Based loosely on the author’s own bridge club, the story weaves the reader through a maze of life’s inevitable scenarios.

This is a novel for anyone who values friendship. Not simply the “Hi, how are you?” type of friendship but rather the kind that weathers all sorts of storms, unselfishly celebrates triumphs, and hums along year after year with never an unkind word. It does exist.

If you have such a friendship in your life you will relate to the women in The Bridge Club. If you don’t, perhaps the story will inspire you to search for it.

Throughout the story each of the characters faces challenges and change in her life. The Bridge Club emphasizes how honest and loyal friendship helped to enable these changes and how these women empowered and learned from each other in the process.

Through laughter, tears, and everything in between the story meets life head on and affirms that building a strong foundation of friendship is a priceless asset. :

 

<%title%>
by Fiona Robyn
4.8 stars – 18 Reviews
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:
Meet Joe. 14 years old, obsessed with birds & the weather, and perplexed by humans. Spend the Summer in Amsterdam with his chaotic artist aunt Nel. Come back fifteen years later, witness a tragedy, and discover a secret which will change everything…

 

<%title%>
by Kaira Rouda
4.4 stars – 14 Reviews
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:

From the bestselling author of HERE, HOME, HOPE, comes a novel of suspense and choices, with a nod to the best of Susan Isaacs’s tales of suburban murder.Once again, everything isn’t what it seems in the wonderful suburb of Grandville. ALL THE DIFFERENCE is the story of three women whose lives become entangled by the choices they make and how, ultimately, one of them turns to murder to achieve her goals.Roommates Laura and Angie couldn’t be more different. Laura is a local celebrity, the television anchor who is motivated to move out of small-time media markets and on to the big time, no matter the cost. Meanwhile, Angie, a luckless waitress, spends her time waiting for Mr. Right to save her from temporary jobs and a life spent making bad choices.On the other side of town, Ellen abandons her life as a successful fundraiser for that of an isolated housewife in the country estate she shares with her husband, whose affairs become increasingly hard to ignore. When the city’s gossip columnist, Maddie, and restaurant reviewer, Dixon, become involved in the mystery, the unlikely duo stir up more than they intended. But will anyone be able to stop the next murder?With her signature compassion and wit, Kaira Rouda once again takes readers on an entertaining journey into the heart of women’s lives in suburbia – this time with adultery and murder in the mix.

A Few Tips for How to Find Some of Kindle Nation Daily’s Most Helpful Features – Part 2

Thanks for your great feedback on Monday’s post, which drilled down on how to find category-sorted listings of free, quality 99-cent, and KLL-eligible books in the Kindle Store:

Today, we’ll focus on a few important navigational items to help you get the most out of the information we share with you each day, in a way that fits most efficiently with your daily routines.

Kindle Nation Daily Digests. We’re pretty excited about the response we have gotten since we began, just a few weeks ago, the regular practice of sending out a brief email digest each afternoon to make sure that our readers don’t miss that day’s free books, Kindle Daily Deals, and other bargains and news. While it’s true that we share a lot via Facebook, the Daily Digests summarizes all of that information in one shot so that you aren’t tethered to your newsfeed. Just use the link below to sign up, and make sure you check your inbox around 6 pm EST each day, because many of the best deals turn into pumpkins at midnight!

Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon
Sign up for our free Kindle Nation Email Newsletter
For Email Marketing you can trust

By the way, we’re constantly working to make sure that our newsletters only go out to folks who want to receive them, and we just sent out a message yesterday asking all our subscribers to confirm their interest. So, please, if you were already a subscriber and you received an email from kindlenation@gmail.com on April 10 with the subject line “Requesting Your Permission,” please confirm that you’d like to remain a subscriber by finding that April 10 email in your inbox (or, alas, your spam filter!) and clicking on the Confirm Subscription link in the body of the email. Thanks for working with us on this – it saves time for all concerned in the long run, and a few bucks for us as well!

As always, you can unsubscribe at any time, and rest assured that we will never share your email address with another company.

Facebook. If you stay connected via Facebook on your computer, tablet, or phone, you’ll probably benefit from “liking” our Facebook page. While you’re there, we hope you will enter each week’s Kindle Fire giveaway sweepstakes, check out features like our Free Book alerts and highlighters, and join the conversation each night when we open up the “Night Shift” so that you can recommend great reading for our other readers.

Our Sister Sites. Do you own a Kindle Fire or plan on getting one soon? Do you have Kindle Kids in your life? Do you like to keep up with book business news? Whatever your reading interests, there’s a good chance you will find value in the content at one or more of these KND sister sites:

  • Kindle Fire at Kindle Nation Daily – WebFacebook
  • Kids Corner at Kindle Nation Daily – WebFacebook
  • BookGorilla.com Book Biz Newsroom – WebFacebook
  • Author’s Corner at Kindle Nation Daily – WebFacebook

That’s enough for today, but we’ll be back in a day or two with more.

Wow! Your Kindle Fire Just Became Twice as Valuable with Our Magical New Tools for Finding All the Content You Want, at the Prices You Want!

It was just a few days ago that we announced the launch of our exciting new site for Kindle Fire owners, Kindle Fire at Kindle Nation Daily. The new subdomain attracted over 5,000 page views in the first week of its launch, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg now that editor April Hamilton and developer Mark White have conspired  to bring us a truly magical new array of tools for finding great Kindle Fire content at great prices including Apps, Free Apps, Audiobooks, Games and Free Games.

Click on this graphic, then check out the links in fire engine red!

You can start using these tools right away by going to our Fire page and checking out the links in fire engine red just below the main black-and-white navigation bar, or, if you’d like to know more about what to expect, here’s April’s introductory post:

Now You Can Find Apps, Free Apps, Audiobooks, Games and Free Games For Your Fire In A Snap, Thanks To Our New, Categorized Lists!

FINDING EXACTLY THE CONTENT YOU WANT FOR YOUR FIRE, WHETHER PAID OR FREE, HAS JUST GOTTEN A WHOLE LOT EASIER!

No matter how much you love your Fire, you’ve probably noticed that the sites you use to shop for content aren’t always organized in quite the way you’d like. It’s easy enough to find bestseller lists, but they’re limited to a certain number of titles. It’s easy enough to find lists of content filtered by genre or category, but the lists can’t always be sorted in the ways you’d like. You can find the top 100 free apps or games easily enough, but what about the 101st free app and game, and beyond?

Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily’s got you covered!

We’ve been very busy working behind the scenes to bring you categorized, sortable lists that make finding the content you want an easy, hassle-free, and maybe even enjoyable experience. Take a look at our menu ribbon up there, and you’ll see it now sports three new categories of content: Apps, Audible Audiobooks and Games.

These lists reflect currently-available content from the Audible and Amazon sites, and are updated throughout the day. Each list opens with a default sort order, but each also offers you at least one other sort option.

List Details

For each item shown on all of the lists you’ll find an icon, title, average review rating, date added or released and a Get It Now/Buy Now button. You can mouse over the icon to display a brief description excerpt in a popup. Click on the Get It Now/Buy Now button or ‘read more’ link in the brief description popup to open the item’s product page on the Audible or Amazon site in a new window.

Don’t worry, clicking on these buttons or links does not immediately initiate a purchase, it just opens the product page in a new window so you can read more about it and decide whether or not to make the purchase.

Audible Audiobooks

Mouse over this menu item to open up a whole list of Audible Audiobook genres. Click on the genre you’re interested in to view a current list of available titles in that genre. When your desired list is displayed, it will be sorted by Date Added (most recent first) by default. But you can also re-sort the list by Review Rating, if that’s your preferred filter.

In addition to the detail items already listed above for all our lists, audiobook lists include the author name.

Apps

Under the Apps heading, you’ll find a subheading for All Apps and another subheading for Free Apps. The All Apps lists contain both paid and free apps, but the Free Apps lists contain only free apps.

Mouse over the subheading you’re interested in to view a list of app categories available for that subheading. Click on the category you’re interested in to view a list of apps or free apps in that category that are currently available in Amazon’s App Store. When your list is displayed, it will be sorted by Release Date (most recent first) by default. But you can also re-sort the list by Bestselling or Review Rating.

Games

The Games lists are just like the Apps lists.

Under the Games heading, you’ll find a subheading for All Games and another subheading for Free Games. The All Games lists contain both paid and free games, but the Free Games lists contain only free games.

Mouse over the subheading you’re interested in to view a list of game categories available for that subheading. Click on the category you’re interested in to view a list of games or free games in that category that are currently available in Amazon’s App Store. When your list is displayed, it will be sorted by Release Date (most recent first) by default. But you can also re-sort the list by Bestselling or Review Rating.

Make Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily your first stop when you’re looking for Fire content.

You’ll find it saves you a lot of time and frustration, and since our lists are being updated all around the clock, you can come back each day to look for new entries!

Still in the works: categorized, sortable lists of Amazon Instant Videos and Amazon Prime Instant Videos! Stay tuned!