Archive for the ‘amazon press release’ tag
Amazon’s Most Well-Read Cities in America no comments
Amazon has compiled a list of the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities in America based on its sales data since the first of the year for book, magazine and newspapers in both digital and print format. The Top 20 Cities were chosen by compiling the data on a per capita basis to cities with over 100,000 residents.
The Top 20:
| 1. Cambridge, Mass. | 11. Knoxville, Tenn. |
| 2. Alexandria, Va. | 12. Orlando, Fla. |
| 3. Berkeley, Calif. | 13. Pittsburgh |
| 4. Ann Arbor, Mich. | 14. Washington, D.C. |
| 5. Boulder, Colo. | 15. Bellevue, Wash. |
| 6. Miami | 16. Columbia, S.C. |
| 7. Salt Lake City | 17. St. Louis, Mo. |
| 8. Gainesville, Fla. | 18. Cincinnati |
| 9. Seattle | 19. Portland, Ore. |
| 10. Arlington, Va. | 20. Atlanta |
Some other factoids gleaned from the data:
- Not only do they like to read, but they like to know the facts: Cambridge, Mass.–home to the prestigious Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology–also topped the list of cities that ordered the most nonfiction books.
- Boulder, Colo., lives up to its reputation as a healthy city by topping the list of cities that order the most books in the Cooking, Food & Wine category.
- Alexandria, Va., residents must be reading a lot of bedtime stories – they topped the list of the city that orders the most children’s books.
- Summer reading weather all year long? Florida was the state with the most cities in the Top 20, with Miami, Gainesville and Orlando making the list.
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Amazon expands trade-in program to include electronics no comments
Amazon has had a textbook trade-in program in place for some time. Now the company has expanded its trade-in program to include electronics. Customers can now trade-in used cameras, GPS, mobile phones and other electronics as well as old DVDs and video games.
To use the service, visit the trade-in program and find your device. If it is listed you click on the “Trade-in” button. Multiple items can be included in one trade-in shipment. Shipping your items to Amazon is free, via a pre-paid shipping label issued for you to print out. Once items have been received and inspected by Amazon, sellers are paid with an Amazon gift card.
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Amazon.de launches German Kindle Store no comments
Amazon.de today today announced the launch of a German Kindle Store that will serve customers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. The new store launches with over 650,000 titles, making it the largest ebookstore in Germany.
Most of the ebooks in the German Kindle Store are in English — at launch there are 25,000 plus German-language ebooks in addition to about 5,000 free public domain titles in German. The store also has a few German newspapers and magazines. Amazon today also announced a new German Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) website that authors and publishers from around the world can use to publish in any of the Kindle Stores. This should result in a wider selection of German-language titles over time.
The Kindle 3 ereader (with English interface) can now be purchased direct from Amazon.de. German-language versions of most of the various free Kindle apps with Whispersync are now available to enable customers of the German Kindle Store to “Buy Once, Read Everywhere.”
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Kindle Singles arrive no comments
Just over three months ago Amazon announced a new section coming to the Kindle Store – Kindle Singles – that would take advantage of one of the unique benefits of digital publishing.
Traditional publishing requires a work to be of at least a certain length to be financially viable to print as a book. This means that in many cases where an idea could be succinctly conveyed in a shorter piece it instead gets bloated with repetition and endless examples in order to create a work that is long enough to be financially viable to be printed as a paper book (did The Long Tail seem a tad too long to you too?).
The alternative to this is to print a shorter piece as part of a collection or in a periodical, which may not reach as large an audience as it would if the piece were presented independently in a book. With ebooks, of course, there are no such restraints.
Today Amazon announced that the new Kindle Singles section of the Kindle Store is now open. The shorts in the new section will be priced between $0.99 and $4.99. They can be read on a Kindle ereader or with one of the Kindle apps.
From the press release:
Before the advent of digital reading, writers often had to choose between making their work short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the "heft" required for book marketing and distribution. Three months ago, Amazon made a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Kindle in making a new kind of content available to readers–Kindle Singles. Typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words, each Kindle Single is intended to allow a single killer idea — well researched, well argued and well illustrated — to be expressed at its natural length.
"The response to our announcement of Singles has been great," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "This first set of Singles was selected by our team of editors, and includes works by Rich Cohen, Darin Strauss, Ian Ayres, and the first-ever books published by TED. We think customers will be riveted by these stories that can take them to a Swedish bank heist or to the Mexican border town of Juarez, or to consider a new way to think about happiness."
Kindle Singles launches with 22 titles, including the following, with more to be added over time:
- Lifted by Evan Ratliff (34 pages, $1.99): The thieves had a handpicked crew, a stolen helicopter, a cache of explosives, and a plan to rob a $150 million cash repository. The Stockholm police had a tip-off. Wired and New Yorker writer Evan Ratliff recounts the inside story of an audacious 2009 bank heist, and the race to solve it. This is an inaugural title from publisher The Atavist.
- The Happiness Manifesto by Nic Marks (40 pages, $2.99): Modern research proves the ancient wisdom that "money can’t buy you happiness." But then why do our governments see their main task as simply growing GDP? Marks, founder of the London-based Centre for Well-Being, sets out an ingenious new way of defining national goals–and in the process reveals five ways people can nurture their own happiness. One of the inaugural TEDBooks.
- Piano Demon by Brendan I. Koerner (37 pages, $1.99): At age six, Teddy Weatherford was working in a Virginia coal mine. Two decades later, he was the jazz king of Asia. Koerner, a Wired contributing editor and author of "Now The Hell Will Start," tells how a piano legend in a sharkskin suit lived the American Dream by leaving it behind.
- Leaving Home by Jodi Picoult (43 pages, $2.99): The deep pains and powerful pleasures of parenting: those are the extremes explored here by the extraordinary novelist Jodi Picoult. In three short pieces that display her wide emotional range, Picoult weaves together stories of love and loss with heartbreaking simplicity.
- The Dead Women of Juarez by Robert Andrew Powell (31 pages, $1.99): It sounded like one of the great murder mysteries of our time: who was killing the women of Juarez? Journalist Robert Andrew Powell went to the Mexican border town to investigate, and separates fact from myth in a saga that eerily echoes the plot of Roberto Bolaño’s epic novel "2666".
- Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks by Sebastian Rotella/ProPublica (38 pages, $.99): The U.S. investigation of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai provides a detailed picture of the ties between Pakistan’s intelligence service and a leading militant group. The latest reporting from ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
- The $500 Diet by Ian Ayres (39 pages, $2.99): When Yale law professor Ayres vowed to drop his weight from 205 pounds to 180 pounds, he put his money where his mouth was — literally. It was either lose the weight, or pay the price. A look into Ayres’ weight-loss method through simple financial incentive.
- Darkstar by Christopher R. Howard (44 pages, $2.99): A pre-apocalyptic love story. Sailor, a homeless Irish teenager who’s haunted by a diabolical voice, seeks to reunite with a soulmate he hasn’t seen since boyhood, as a cosmic event threatens to extinguish life on Earth. Howard’s fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, and his first novel, "Tea of Ulaanbaatar," comes out this May.
- Homo Evolutis by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans (58 pages, $2.99): Enriquez and Gullans–two eminent authors, researchers, and entrepreneurs–explore a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, their own selves and other species. They envision a future in which humankind becomes a new species — one which directly and deliberately controls its own evolution and that of many other species. One of the inaugural TEDBooks.
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New Kindle exclusive: 5 new ebook collections from The Onion no comments
The Onion has created five new ebook collections that will be exclusive to the Kindle Store for one year. The five new collections are $2.99 each:
- America’s Finest Tech News
- Chronicles of the Area Man
- The Finest Reporting on Literature, Media, and Other Dying Art Forms
- The Best of Jim Anchower
- The Best of Herbert Kornfield
“Our customers are fans of books by the Onion in print format, and the Onion is one of our most popular Kindle Periodicals,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. “We hope Kindle readers will enjoy these five exclusive titles, which are the perfect way to add even more levity to your holiday season.”
The Onion is a national publication and website that delivers award-winning satirical news. Every week, the Onion misinforms more than 1.8 million weekly readers of the print edition and about 10 million unique visitors online each month. In recent years, the Onion expanded into radio and video, winning a Peabody Award in 2009 for its online video series, Onion News Network. This January, the Onion will launch two television shows, premiering on IFC and Comedy Central, respectively.
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Seth Godin to publish ebooks exclusively in the Kindle Store no comments
Through his new imprint, “The Domino Project”, Seth Godin will publish an initial list of six titles using Amazon’s new “Powered By Amazon” publishing program:
Godin will serve as the lead writer, creative director and instigator for a series of “Idea Manifestos” under his new imprint, The Domino Project, which will include books by other bestselling authors, entrepreneurs and thought leaders. These books will be made available for sale in print editions via Amazon.com and as audiobooks via Amazon.com and Audible.com, at bookstores nationwide and as e-books exclusively in the Kindle Store.
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to break ground and help define what a new publishing model can become,” said Godin. “We all know that ideas that spread win, and this new publishing house will enable my colleagues and me to create, write and spread ideas that matter. At the same time, we can leverage Amazon’s strength in what they do best: fulfill to a global audience, across all formats, and help me reach my core audience while increasing discovery among brand new readers. A book that isn’t read doesn’t do anyone any good, and too often, the structure of the book publishing industry gets in the way of books reaching people who can benefit from them. Amazon knows what to do to help these books get read.”
Starting today, interested readers can sign up for free updates at www.TheDominoProject.com. Included with the updates will be announcements of free Kindle books and updates about other exclusive content once the books are published in early 2011.
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Amazon announces Kindle book gifting no comments
Kobo announced a couple of days ago that it would soon allow the giving of ebooks as gifts and now Amazon has followed suit. The ability to gift ebooks has been on the wishlists of readers of digital books for a long time.
Starting today, Kindle books can be gifted to anyone with an email address by clicking the Give as a Gift button, which now appears under the Buy now with 1-Click button. The recipient can read the Kindle book on their Kindle ereader or on any of the Kindle reading apps.
All ebooks at the Kindle Store can be gifted and, if the recipient wishes, they may exchange the gifted ebook for an Amazon gift card. Amazon has set up a page
I imagine a similar announcement will be forthcoming from Barnes & Noble very soon.
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Amazon announces 70 percent revenue share for Kindle periodical publishers no comments
Amazon just announced that publishers will be soon be eligible to earn a 70 percent royalty of the retail price (net of delivery costs) of newspaper and magazine sold. The new terms are set to become available on Dec. 1, 2010.
To qualify for the 70-percent royalty terms, newspapers and magazines must satisfy several customer experience requirements, including:
- Customers can read the title on all Kindle devices and applications.
- Customers can read the title in all geographies for which the publisher has rights.
These new terms do not apply to blog publishers because existing terms are generally more advantageous for them.
Amazon also announced the Beta release of the Kindle Publishing for Periodicals tool, which allows publishers to more easily add their newspaper or magazine to the Kindle Store. Publishers can quickly create their account, add content and preview Kindle formatting prior to making their titles available for the fast-growing base of Kindle customers.
More information can be had at Amazon’s Kindle Publishing for Periodicals page.
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Amazon editorial team picks best books of 2010 1 comment
Amazon today announced the best books of 2010 as chosen by its editorial team. Amazon has a page
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. From a single, short life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. From that same life, Skloot fashions a rich and haunting story that redefines what it means to have a medical history.
- Faithful Place: A Novel by Tana French. The past haunts in French novels. In this compelling and cutting mystery, Frank Mackey (the beloved undercover guru from "The Likeness") returns home to investigate the cold case of his teenage sweetheart, and faces down his family.
- Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes. A breathtaking debut (30 years in the making) by a decorated Vietnam veteran that takes readers deep into the jungle, and offers a new perspective on the ravages of war, the bureaucracy of the military, and the peculiar beauty of brotherhood.
- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. As she did with "Seabiscuit," Hillenbrand has unearthed another unlikely and inspiring tale from our past. Louis Zamperini was an Olympic athlete as a teenager, an airman in World War II, an ocean crash survivor, and a prisoner of war before returning home for another half-century of life.
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. Through the eyes of three families, Wilkerson gives vivid life to one of the great untold epics of American history: the migration between the two world wars of millions of African Americans from the South to the North and West.
- Freedom: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen. Franzen’s first novel since "The Corrections," and a match for that great book, is a wrenching, funny and forgiving portrait of a Midwestern family. "Freedom" is deserving of all the unprecedented attention it received this summer.
- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson. The finest example of a book that saves the best for last, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest" roars with an explosive storyline filled with revelations that make the end of this game-changing suspense series all the more bittersweet.
- To the End of the Land by David Grossman. In a fictional story whose events hauntingly parallel the author’s own life, an Israeli mother–one of the most indelible characters in recent fiction–goes on a journey through her past to avoid the news that her soldier son may have been killed.
- Just Kids by Patti Smith. Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe weren’t always famous, but they always thought they would be. Smith’s memoir of their friendship is tender and artful, with the visionary style of her rock anthems balanced by her detailed memories of their bohemian youth.
- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. Of the many books about our economic meltdown, "The Big Short" is the one to read, told, in Lewis’ usual hilarious and clear style, from the perspective of a few iconoclastic thinkers who saw the collapse coming–and bet big on it.
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James Patterson Joins Kindle Million Club no comments
James Patterson has become the second author to sell more than one million Kindle books and is now a member of the Kindle Million Club. Stieg Larsson, author of the Millennium Trilogy was the first author to achieve the one million mark and the first member of the Club. Only paid Kindle book sales count toward membership.
…As of yesterday, James Patterson has sold 1,005,803 Kindle books.
Patterson is the author of more than 65 books that span the genres of suspense, fantasy, romance, historical fiction and children’s. His many books include the popular Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club and Maximum Ride series. His novels have won numerous awards, including the Edgar, the BCA Mystery Guild’s Thriller of the Year award, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Reader’s Digest Reader’s Choice Award. One of Forbes magazine’s Celebrity 100, Patterson’s titles have been adapted into both feature film (“Along Came a Spider” and “Kiss the Girls,” starring Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman) and a television series (ABC’s “Women’s Murder Club” starring Angie Harmon).
Patterson is a prolific writer with 72 titles
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