 |
|
Karen Cantwell
|
Okay, we’ve got good news and bad news. And then we’ve got some more good news.
For the past week, suspense novelist Karen Cantwell — author of the hilariously twisted Barbara Marr mysteries TAKE THE MONKEYS AND RUN and CITIZEN INSANE — has been helping us all out by sponsoring our first-ever weekly Kindle Nation KINDLE FIRE Sweepstakes.
We had 1,491 entries, and we had hundreds of winners.
Well, of course we had one big GRAND PRIZE winner. Kindle Nation citizen Mitzi Trout of Wichita, KS was randomly selected from all the entries to win a KINDLE FIRE tablet. We spoke to her on the phone this morning and although she was pretty excited, she was able to give us her shipping address so that we could place an order for her Kindle Fire. The Fire is slated to ship on November 15, and Amazon has confirmed for us that Mitzi’s will arrive at her home on November 16!
But hundreds of other participants are big winners, too, because they have had a chance to discover author Karen Cantwell. After all, it’s all about the reading here at Kindle Nation. (And just in case you are wondering, Karen paid the full cost of Mitzi’s new Kindle Fire. Every penny. What’s that? Did you ask me to repeat the links to Karen’s Barbara Marr mysteries TAKE THE MONKEYS AND RUN and CITIZEN INSANE? Okay then. Thanks for asking!)
Those who haven’t won a Kindle Fire yet — yep, there’s that bad news we mentioned — will not have to wallow in despair for long. Why? Because we have already opened up our Kindle Nation Week #2 KINDLE FIRE Giveaway Sweepstakes. The Week #2 Sweepstakes runs until noon on Sunday October 23, and entry details can be found at the end of this post.
But there’s another changing of the guard that we would be remiss not to mention: we have a brand new sponsor for Week #2, and those who have yet to discover the short story mastery of James Scott Bell are in for a special retreat. In particular, we’d like to draw your attention to a remarkable collection of a novella and three stories entitled One More Lie:
One More Lie
- “James Scott Bell is at his best in One More Lie. Fast paced, this novella will leave you breathless to the unforeseen end. Once I started reading I couldn’t put it down. Novel Rocket and I give it our highest recommendation. It’s a must read!”Ane Mulligan, V. P./Sr. EditorNovel Rocket
- “A Great Man” – The Reverend Mike Rickland was not expecting one of New Jersey’s most notorious mobsters to pay him a visit. All Angelo Scapelli wanted was to offer Mike’s church ten million dollars. On one condition.
- “Some Hero” – Garth Himmelfarb, middle aged and paunchy, was only trying to work off a few pounds by jogging in his neighborhood. He didn’t expect to help a woman in distress, a beautiful woman, a woman he could be a hero for. He didn’t expect to step in to a situation that could get him beaten up or killed. But he did.
- “How to Make Living as a Freelance Writer” – A struggling author, once popular, now on the way out, comes up with a last attempt to make enough money to live on as a writer . . . . and actually finds it. Let’s just say it’s not the “traditional” route.
- “James Scott Bell is a master storyteller. In a few short words he can make you care about a character, cause you to wave your hands in warning as they speed toward disaster, or root for them to win the day.” – Susan May Warren, bestselling author
- James Scott Bell is the #1 bestselling author of Plot & Structure (Writer’s Digest Books) and numerous novels and stories of suspense. Among these are Watch Your Back and Try Dying. Writing as K. Bennett he is also the author of the zombie legal thriller Pay Me in Flesh.
So … is that it?
Of course not!
Here are the details on the Kindle Nation Week #2 KINDLE FIRE Giveaway Sweepstakes:
There’s no purchase required, but we do need you to go to our Kindle Nation Facebook page and “Like” us. Give the page a few seconds to load, because for some reason it takes a little longer. Then just follow the prompts to enter the sweepstakes, and you’re done! (Of course, if you want to really improve your chances of winning by multiplying your good fortune by your good karma, we hope you’ll pick up both One More Lie and TAKE THE MONKEYS AND RUN. But like we say, there’s no purchase necessary.
Good luck! And happy reading!
Now Available on Kindle: A Kindle Fan’s Report from the Front Row At Amazon’s NYC Press Conference, by Len Edgerly
Edgerly of The Kindle Chronicles agreed to live-blog the Kindle Fire/Kindle Touch press conference for Kindle Nation readers. Our gratitude remains, but not it is matched by great admiration for Len’s accomplishment in bringing out a short-form Kindle ebook version of his reportage and thoughtful commentary less than a week after the event. It’s a worthy addition to every Kindle library, and at 99 cents it will not cut deeply into your Kindle budget.
Here’s the set-up, directly from Len:
In this 30-page article, I invite you to join me in the front row at Amazon’s press conference in New York city on September 28, 2011. That’s when Jeff Bezos introduced the next generation of Kindles, including the Kindle Fire tablet. Just being at the event was a major thrill for a book lover whose life has been changed by the Kindle. I thought I’d seen the future when I bought a Rocket eBook in 1998. That didn’t work out too well, but the Kindle in 2007 looked like the real thing.
The next year, I started a weekly podcast, The Kindle Chronicles, to participate in the revolution in reading that I was sure would follow. Since then, I’ve interviewed 165 people representing all parts of the Kindlesphere–from Amazon executives to nervous writers, from technologists to school administrators, from the editor of the New York Times Book Review to my wife Darlene, who reads three times as many Kindle books as I do but is an endearing skeptic about technology.
I traveled by train to New York City worried that Amazon executives might get so excited about their shiny new color tablet that they would forget to keep improving the monochrome e-ink Kindles. In the event, I need not have worried. Jeff Bezos started the press conference by telling the Kindle story in a way that touched me as highly personal and revealing. Come join me in the front row, and I’ll show you what I mean.
They’re Here, and They’re Gamechangers! Amazon Announces Four New Kindles at Stunning Prices, Including a $199 Kindle Fire Tablet, a $99 Kindle Touch and a New $79 Kindle Base Model
By Steve Windwalker
September 30, 2011
Amazon held a press conference in New York Wednesday morning, and Kindle Nation was well represented by correspondent Len Edgerly of The Kindle Chronicles, who provided our readers with a live blog of a truly dazzling event marked by the launch of four brand new Kindles — include the new Kindle Fire tablet — at prices that shocked us all.
There’s a lot of information to share with you, but we’re going to try to strip it down and proceed from the simple to the sublime, with links in this week’s Kindle Nation WEEKENDER to more information and video for those who want to read more.
In that spirit, let’s begin with a very simple comparison chart for the hardware Kindle models that were unveiled Wednesday:
COMPARING THE NEW KINDLES
| Model | Kindle* | Kindle Touch* | Kindle Fire |
| Price | $79.00 | $99/$149 | $199.00 |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi | $99 Wi-Fi Only; $149 Free 3G+Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi |
| Release Date | Available now | 11/21/2011 | 11/15/2011 |
| Covered by 30-day no-hassle return policy | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content | Millions of
books, newspapers, magazines, games, and docs |
Millions of
books, newspapers, magazines, games, and docs |
18 million movies,
TV shows, apps, games, songs, books, newspapers, audiobooks, magazines, and docs |
| Web browser | Experimental
browser |
Experimental
browser |
Amazon Silk
cloud-accelerated browser |
| Display | 6″ E Ink Pearl | 6″ E Ink Pearl | 7″ Vibrant Color IPS |
| Text-to-Speech | No | Yes | No |
| Battery Life | 1 month | 2 months | 8 hours continuous reading or
7.5 hours video playback |
| Cloud storage | Free for all
Amazon content |
Free for all
Amazon content |
Free for all
Amazon content |
| Dimensions | 6.5″ x 4.5″
x 0.34″ |
6.8″ x 4.7″
x 0.40″ |
7.5″ x 4.7″
x 0.45″ |
| Weight | 5.98 ounces | 7.5/7.8 ounces | 14.6 ounces |
| Interface | 5-way controller | multi-touch | multi-touch |
| *Models with Special Offers | Kindle | Kindle Touch | Not yet |
| *Prices with Special Offers | $79.00 | $99/$149 | Not yet |
| *Models without Special Offers | Kindle | Kindle Touch | Kindle Fire |
| *Prices without Special Offers | $109.00 | $139/$189 | $199.00 |
Now Available for Pre-Order: Amazon Launches the Kindle Tablet – It’s the KINDLE FIRE, for just $199!
By Steve Windwalker
September 28, 2011
Click here to pre-order your Kindle Fire
Amazon has just announced that, at long last, its Kindle tablet — the Kindle Fire — is now available for pre-order. You can place your pre-order right here, right now to have it shipped starting November 15 for a price of just $199.
How’s this for a value proposition? Amazon announced 4 new Kindle models today, and you can buy all four of them for less than the cost of a 32GB wi-fi only iPad.
Here’s the rest of the story on the new device:
- What is the new Kindle tablet called? The Kindle Fire.
- How much does the Kindle Fire cost? $199
- When is the Kindle Fire available for pre-order? Right now.
- When will the Kindle Fire ship? Starting November 15.
- Will it sell out before Christmas? We won’t be surprised if it sells out this week, but if that happens it should be available again within a few weeks.
- How should one balance one’s reservations about buying version 1.0 of the Kindle Fire with the fear that one may be left behind if it goes out of stock. Amazon’s no-hassle, no-questions-asked 30-day return policy makes this a no-brainer. Grab it, test-drive it, and make your decision at the 25-day mark, two weeks before Christmas. We’ll be very surprised if you don’t want to keep it, but if you don’t want it and Amazon does sell out, you might even end up being able to decide whether to return it to Amazon or to sell it for a profit on eBay.
- Is the tablet the only product that is being announced with this event? No, Amazon also announced a $139 e-Ink Kindle Touch with a touch screen (just $99 with special offers) and a $79 base model e-Ink Kindle. These all ship at various points in November and are available for pre-order today.
- How large is the Kindle Fire display? 7 inches on the diagonal, and yes, it is color and backlit with capacitative touch.
- How much does the Kindle Fire weigh? 14.6 ounces.
- What’s the battery life? It’s be a little hard to get a handle on this given the different effects on battery life of reading, listening to music, watching streaming video, websurfing, and other uses, but if you are going to get full enjoyment from the Kindle Fire you’ll probably find yourself charging the battery at least as often as you charge your cellphone.
- Does it come with 3G? No, but we won’t be surprised to see a 3G or 4G option in 2012.
- If Amazon is selling a tablet for $199, a touch Kindle for $99, and a base model Kindle for $79, how can it possibly make a profit? Covers, content, e-commerce, and special offers sponsorships.
- As a content delivery system, what are the Kindle Fire’s areas of strength? The Kindle Fire will allow seamless, wireless delivery from the cloud of Kindle books and periodicals, Amazon MP3 music files, Audible.com books, streaming movies and television programs with Amazon Prime Instant Video, and a wide range of Android-compatible Apps available from Amazon’s own AppStore for Android.
- What about YouTube, email, VOiP, Angry Birds, Facebook, Twitter, texting, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, blog posting, gaming, Groupon, LivingSocial, Woot, Windowshop, Amazon Mobile, Amazon Local, Amazon Fresh, and everything else you’ll ever want to do on the Kindle Fire? In just about every case, there’s an app for that.
- Is the Kindle Fire essentially a closed environment controlled by its manufacturer, like the iPad and the Nook? Essentially yes, but operationally it may be far more open than those competitors, given selection and pricing in Amazon’s content platforms, the growing scale of Amazon’s AppStore for Android and the easy access that content providers have to platforms such as Kindle Digital Publishing and, ultimately, Amazon’s MP3 and video platforms.
- What’s the unlikeliest word that we can expect to hear repeated by Jeff Bezos and his minions as they describe the Kindle Fire in the next few days? Best guess: “Sofa.” As in shopping on the sofa, reading on the sofa, watching movies on the sofa, etc. This is probably not a good thing for the future of laptops, notebooks, netbooks, and even some other tablets.
- What special “value proposition” features might be bundled with the Kindle Fire to entice buyers. Best guess: free or cheap Amazon Prime, a $79 a year value that would underline importance of the Kindle Fire as the sofa shopper’s favorite gadget.
- So which is it, a content delivery device or a sofa shopping portal? Both, but if the Kindle Fire’s primary uses list too much away from ebooks and toward shopping, a nice countervailing value proposition would involve the offering of some form of a Netflix-type bundling of free ebooks to steer folks toward reading.
But here’s the bottom line for the Kindle Fire:
There is an understandable tendency, when new products like the Kindle, the iPad, and the Kindle Fire are launched, for many of us to focus too narrowly at first on hardware specs and feature sets. It is important to remember that it wasn’t only hardware features that set the Kindle Revolution aflame, it was Amazon’s remarkable edge in each of the 4 C’s of customer base, catalog, convenience and connectivity. The Kindle capitalized dramatically on each of those unfair edges, and so will the Kindle Fire.
No single competitor can touch Amazon in more than one of these areas.
Great Expectations and Kindle Fire: What to Look Forward to with Wednesday’s Kindle Tablet Press Conference
“More and more, over time, people are going to be buying from tablet computers. They’ll lean back on their sofas…. That’s very exciting for us. It gives us a new environment to experiment and invent in. “
By Steve Windwalker
First, we’re very pleased and excited to announce that we’ve arranged for podcaster extraordinaire Len Edgerly of The Kindle Chronicles to live-blog Amazon’s 10 a.m. Wednesday press conference announcing the new Kindle Tablet, a.k.a. the Kindle Fire, for Kindle Nation readers at http://bit.ly/LEN-LIVE-FROM-NY-ON-KTAB. Len promises to start posting as he travels to New York via Amtrak later today, and the action will really heat up shortly before 10 a.m. Wednesday, which is when we expect Jeff Bezos to take the stage at Stage 37 in New York.
So we’ll be covering the big announcement from multiple vantage points. You can follow Len’s live blog here, we’ll be gathering all the key information on our Kindle Nation Daily blog, and we’ll send out an email to our thousands of opt-in email subscribers when the Kindle Fire is available for pre-order.
Here are some of the questions we expect to see answered, and you can count on us to pass the answers on to you as soon as we have them. The “best guess” answers below come from a variety of sources and our own brain cells, but they will all be replaced with hard information tomorrow morning.
- What is the new Kindle tablet called? Best guess: the Kindle Fire.
- How much does the Kindle Fire cost? Best guess: $299, with a “Special Offers” version for $249.
- When is the Kindle Fire available for pre-order? Best guess: at or about 10 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday.
- When will the Kindle Fire ship? Best guess: Thursday, November 17.
- Will it sell out before Christmas? Best guess: We won’t be surprised if it sells out this week, but if that happens it should be available again within a few weeks.
- How should one balance one’s reservations about buying version 1.0 of the Kindle Fire with the fear that one may be left behind if it goes out of stock. Best guess: Amazon’s no-hassle, no-questions-asked 30-day return policy makes this a no-brainer. Grab it, test-drive it, and make your decision at the 25-day mark. We’ll be very surprised if you don’t want to keep it, but if you don’t want it and Amazon does sell out, you might even end up being able to decide whether to return it to Amazon or to sell it for a profit on eBay.
- Is the tablet the only product that is being announced with this event? Best guess: No, Amazon may also announce a $189 e-Ink Kindle with a touch screen and a $99 base model e-Ink Kindle with Special Offers, but these might not be available for pre-order until later this fall.
- How large is the Kindle Fire display? Best guess: 7 inches on the diagonal, and yes, it is color and backlit with capacitative touch.
- How much does the Kindle Fire weigh? Best guess: 12.8 ounces.
- What’s the battery life? Best guess: It may be a little hard to get a handle on this given the different effects on battery life of reading, listening to music, watching streaming video, websurfing, and other uses, but if you are going to get full enjoyment from the Kindle Fire you’ll probably find yourself charging the battery at least as often as you charge your cellphone.
- Does it come with 3G? Best guess: Doubtful; it may be wifi-only this year, but we won’t be surprised to see a 3G or 4G option in 2012.
- If Amazon is selling a tablet for $250, a touch Kindle for $189, and a base model Kindle for $99, how can it possibly make a profit? Best guess: Covers, content, e-commerce, and special offers sponsorships.
- What are the most important accessories for the Kindle Fire? Best guess: a power adaptor and USB cable, a cover, and — if it is enabled — a micro SD card.
- As a content delivery system, what are the Kindle Fire’s areas of strength? Best guess: the Kindle Fire will allow seamless, wireless delivery from the cloud of Kindle books and periodicals, Amazon MP3 music files, Audible.com books, streaming movies and television programs with Amazon Prime Instant Video, and a wide range of Android-compatible Apps available from Amazon’s own AppStore for Android.
- What about YouTube, email, VOiP, Angry Birds, Facebook, Twitter, texting, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, blog posting, gaming, Groupon, LivingSocial, Woot, Windowshop, Amazon Mobile, Amazon Local, Amazon Fresh, and everything else you’ll ever want to do on the Kindle Fire? Best guess: there’s an app for that.
- Is the Kindle Fire essentially a closed environment controlled by its manufacturer, like the iPad and the Nook? Best guess: essentially yes, but operationally it may be far more open than those competitors, given selection and pricing in Amazon’s content platforms, the growing scale of Amazon’s AppStore for Android and the easy access that content providers have to platforms such as Kindle Digital Publishing and, ultimately, Amazon’s MP3 and video platforms.
- What’s the unlikeliest word that we can expect to hear repeated by Jeff Bezos as he describes the Kindle Fire? Best guess: “Sofa.” As in shopping on the sofa, reading on the sofa, watching movies on the sofa, etc. This is probably not a good thing for the future of laptops, notebooks, netbooks, and even some other tablets.
- What special “value proposition” features might be bundled with the Kindle Fire to entice buyers. Best guess: free or cheap Amazon Prime, a $79 a year value that would underline importance of the Kindle Fire as the sofa shopper’s favorite gadget.
- So which is it, a content delivery device or a sofa shopping portal? Best guess: both, but if the Kindle Fire’s primary uses list too much away from ebooks and toward shopping, a nice countervailing value proposition would involve the offering of some form of a Netflix-type bundling of free ebooks to steer folks toward reading.
But here’s the bottom line for the Kindle Fire:
There is an understandable tendency, when new products like the Kindle, the iPad, and the Kindle Fire are launched, for many of us to focus too narrowly at first on hardware specs and feature sets. It is important to remember that it wasn’t only hardware features that set the Kindle Revolution aflame, it was Amazon’s remarkable edge in each of the 4 C’s of customer base, catalog, convenience and connectivity. The Kindle capitalized dramatically on each of those unfair edges, and so will the Kindle Fire.
No single competitor can touch Amazon in more than one of these areas.
What are some of the other questions you’d like to see covered?