Weekend free books reminder - and Odd News

Fireflies in December - this book averages 5 stars from 25 users rating it, so I thought I'd start with that.

Here is the Direct Link to the most recent free and under $1 books reminder, unchanged from Late October.   Click on that to get various lists of free or ultra cheap books and the links to them.  It would be difficult not to find something for $0.00.
  (Maybe return here later for the odd tidbits below.)

  Unfortunately, I need to add now that international Kindle users in Europe and some other countries are in high wireless-cost areas, so Amazon charges about $2.30 for the otherwise free book.  For those Amazon customers, I recommend again the following instead

You can download to your computer for later transfer to your Kindle free "mobi" or "prc" format books from feedbooks.com, manybooks.net, fictionwise.com, and as I've often mentioned, any of 30,000 well-formatted books from the Project Gutenberg set.  The instructions meant for the Project Gutenberg to Kindle will work for your computer, and you can move the downloads over to the Kindle later.

 For those interested in an easier-to-remember shortcut to Amazon's 100 Bestsellers (the majority seem to be free but there are regular-priced ones in the list as well), try http://bit.ly/kbsellers.

A FEW NEWS TIDBITS - SOME QUITE ODD
1.   Crunchpad - There are many articles wondering if it's a dead project.  Consensus seems to be, from 5 months of silence, that after a rise of expected price from $200 to $300 and then to $400, the parts became even more expensive and this web-only tablet would not likely sell well at $600 or $700.  In the meantime, no one at TechCrunch is saying a thing.
  At the same time, there are several articles also saying that it would not do well at that price because the currently vaporware Apple Tablet (someone wrote about it as Apple Slate) would do much more and "come in under $1,000."  I should hope so; I have no idea why something so pricey would be considered an e-reader killer.  But it will no doubt be fun to use.

  I'm elated with the Samsung NC10 Netbook which, at under 3 lbs, I carried on my 3-wk vacation (often in a backpack along with my DX), blogging comfortably from Egypt on it and now it can read my Kindle books.  With 7 good hours of battery use, I can't see wanting a battery-eating tablet.  Unfortunately, the pricing went up on this Samsung model, because it's the only 10" netbook with a non-glare screen - no reflections - and a great keyboard plus excellent screen display with accurate color.

2.   NOOK display stands in New York
This is a very promising e-reader, with its added file formats, including ePub, its loaning capability and the WiFi option plus an SD card slot (not to mention people are attracted by the possibly battery-gobbling color LCD navigation screen at the bottom of the unit).

Forum responses from B&N staff confirm that publishers decide which books can be lent out and that any one book can be lent out once only, for 14 days, during which time the owner can't read it (the latter part makes sense).  A second loan to another person later can't be done for the same book.

Gizmodo has a story and photo, with their trademark style caption - "The $259 Double-screen Gadget That Stole All The Crappy Kindle Thunder will arrive in November 30" - while showing a Nook stand at 86th and Third Ave.
  They updated this with the news from another reader that there was a 2nd stand at Union Square but that "He says the units are not real, however: They are plastic mock-ups."  It could be that unanticipated demand for the product affects demo models.

3.   Robert Murdoch is still complaining
Recently, Murdoch had complained that the Wall St. Journal saw only 1/3 of revenue from Kindle subscriptions (it's said by an industry insider as mentioned in another blog entry here that the split is 33% publisher, 33% Amazon and 33% wireless-provider -- the latter paid by Amazon).
  Now, he's got a slightly better cut and is not happy about that.

' Murdoch, speaking during a conference call, noted that News Corp. gets about $6 to $6.50 for every $15 Journal subscription Amazon sells on the Kindle.  "That is not a great deal," he said.  "Amazon treats those people as their customers, not our customers." [Imagine the nerve of Amazon.]  Murdoch said there will probably be "half a dozen" e-readers of some kind on the market eventually, and News Corp. will be open to deals with the distributors of those devices.  "As long as we get a [sufficient] portion of the revenue." '

  He's also been threatening to charge iPod and Blackberry users soon.  But I haven't read anything on that recently; on the other hand, I haven't been paying attention.

  Murdoch has also announced that he plans to block Google search-access to his newspapers once they all go to Pay status.  Two interesting and different takes on that (not negative) are at bigmouthmedia and PCAdvisor, UK.

4.   Completely off topic - "My Nightmare Interviews with Google"
Reading this gal's experience with the strange questions asked by two interviewers was mind-boggling.  They're looking for people fast on their feet, but ... Also, here's a follow-up story: 15 Google-interview questions that will make you feel stupid

5.   A maybe useful 'gadget' for a Kindle world:
  Massaging backpack relaxes your back.
  (The link doesn't work at first. Click on "Try again" and then it does -- very weird.)

Amazon Wireless Store launches, and other news

AMAZON WIRELESS STORE
GigaOm's Om Malik noticed that Amazon has launched its Amazon Wireless store, with free 2-day shipping on all phones.  They'd been offering mobile plans and special deals for some time but now they've made a dedicated shopping center for it.

Recently, Amazon had aunched Endless, a shoe store not unlike Zappos and bought Dpreview.com a camera review and forum site I visited a lot and was surprised had been bought by Amazon.  No ill effects reported -- they've let the previous owner run it, and they've done the same with IMDB, The Internet Movie Database.  Now, with the launch of the Wireless store, they're taking on "Let's Talk" of San Francisco though the latter has 10 years on Amazon.

Malik thinks the new store will do well citing its "clean and easy to use design, description of devices and the quality of reviews." Here's another report on it by Intomobile.  They say that only AT&T and Verizon are on board for now.  There are some good phones for "a penny" but we'd have to, of course, pay monthly for 181 days after activation to get that price and we can't change our plan to a lower monthly rate without additional charges.  Nothing unusual there though.  This is a mite off-topic but it's a wireless topic in a Kindle world! :-) and I thought some would want to hear about it.

MURDOCH NOT READYING KINDLE-LIKE READER AFTER ALL
GigaOm also reports that Murdoch, when asked if he was going to get into the hardware business with an e-reader, said,

' I don’t think that’s likely.  We’re looking and talking to a lot of laboratories and big companies around the world like Sony, Fujitsu, Samsung.  We’re all working on wireless readers for books or for newspapers or for magazines.

I think they’re a year or two away, being marketed in a mass way, high quality ones.  And we will be absolutely neutral.  We’re very happy to have our products distributed over any device provided it’s only going to subscribers who are paying for it. '

Other Murdoch statements (often contradicting) in earlier reports here.

BACK TO SCHOOL KINDLES?
Huffington Post's Giles Slade writes "Come September about 60% of American college textbooks -- including most freshman texts -- will be available from Amazon.com in cheaper, portable Kindle editions."  He doesn't source that percentage info though.

  But while he sees students carrying Kindle 2's, I don't think those are ideal for textbooks (although I do use Photoshop books on mine).  While he points out the Kindle DX is out of stock for another 3-5 weeks, they ought to be back in stock before Fall sessions.

AMAZON PATENTS FOR ADS IN E-BOOKS AND ON-DEMAND PRINTED CONTENT?
Alibaba reports that Amazon was granted patents for advertising and that they filed a trademark application for the word "Kindle" with indications that "social networking" is a possible use for the brand name.  Of note, since many are concerned about Amazon's plans, are the following thoughts:

If Amazon did go ahead and include ads in books, the filings imply that Amazon would make the books free or discount them—some consolation for those not used to seeing ads in their texts.

Cutting the price of e-book titles would contrast with the view among some analysts that Amazon will actually have to hike the price of its e-books in order to improve economics for both publishers and Amazon.  Maybe including ads could help offset that need.

Murdoch wants more money for Kindle-WSJ

Well, Robert Murdoch wants more money for all his other news deliveries too, in general.
See the earlier article about Murdoch "rebuffing" the Amazon Kindle business model.  He said that Amazon wouldn't be getting his content, while others pointed out Amazon already had the Wall Street Journal content and books by Harper Collins.  If he didn't already know that (seems so), he may have gotten even more perturbed that this was a done deal in his case.  The sudden 50% increase in the Kindle pricing of the Wall Street Journal was made about 2.5 weeks later.  No other increases have been seen on the other Kindle newspaper offerings.

The Amazon Kindle Community forum response is something less than delight (with numerous reports of WSJ cancellations) over the WSJ price increase from $9.99/mo. to $14.99/mo. and one can wonder if Murdoch won't see a net loss on this.  He had bristled over the idea of the 30% or so said to be alloted to publishers while probably assuming that Amazon got the balance.
  As mentioned here in an entry posted on May 10

"According to a reliable source in the know, The New Yorker's Kindle split is divided 33% New Yorker, 33% Amazon, and 33% wireless carrier."

At Washington Post's paidcontent.org, Staci D. Kramer wrote, on May 6:

' Murdoch put it simply ...“We will not be ceding our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle.  We will control the prices for our content and we will control our relationships with our customers.

' Any device maker or website which doesn't meet these basic criteria on content will not be doing business long-term with News Corporation.”

' Take this one of two ways: News Corp. will keep pushing other possibilities until Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) backs down on its controls (good luck with that) or News Corp. will opt for a device it either owns or at least controls and can use in a proprietary way. '

But then, WP's paidcontent.org added:

' (The perils of writing live about Murdoch.  In further comments, he brushed off the idea of News Corp. investing in a device, saying the company may invest in something experimentally: “We're not appliance makers.”  A spokesperson later explained that the decision about how News Corp will handle this literally hasn't been made yet.
' But in nearly the same breath, Murdoch bragged about 360,000 downloads of the free WSJ iPhone app over the past three weeks; that would be from the App Store operated by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) with the same lack of control for News Corp.  It's as contradictory as offering the content-rich app for free and complaining about how the online business model has to change.

'   Then again, he promised that as soon as the technology is there, readers will be asked to pay “handsomely” for access. (It will be fascinating to see how many “free” readers pony up—and how much the WSJ charges.) '

  On May 11, Kramer wrote

' And, in today's reality, DJ [Dow Jones] is looking at any and every way to get more people to pay directly for access to the WSJ in a variety of forms, while encouraging current subscribers to pay even more by expanding offerings... '

For the WSJ-disenchanted who still want a good paper for financial news and analysis, try the Financial Times subscription, at $9.99, as they get an average of almost 5 stars from a good number of Amazon customer reviews.  The WSJ never did better than 3 stars in customer satisfaction.  The 14-day free trial applies to this also.

Murdoch Rebuffs Amazon's terms for Kindle model

Financial Times's Kenneth Li and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson report Murdoch's strong resistance to Amazon's Kindle business model.

Proposing a new revenue stream for newspapers, Amazon apparently wants as much as 70% of any subscription revenues earned through the Kindle, per a statement by James Moroney, the chief executive of the Dallas Morning News during a Senate hearing on the future of Journalism.  Moroney mentioned that Amazon also wants "the right to republish the newspaper’s stories on other portable devices," per the FT writers.

 It's been established (but not mentioned in the FT article) that Amazon offers Kindle book publishers 35% of the List price but can discount their own selling price to $10~ while still paying the publisher 35% based on the publisher's price.
 So, if a publisher sets the List price at at $25 and Amazon sells a book at $10, Amazon pays the publisher almost $9 from the sale and keeps about $1.

Murdoch is quoted as saying that though News Corp could make money from customers' interest in using a mobile device to read the news, "We will not be giving our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle."

At the same time he said one of his general newspapers will start charging for its content online, within the year.

The New York Times and the Washington Post are backing the Kindle model (though the pricing could vary somewhat for each company).  And the FT adds that "Textbook publishers Pearson, owner of the Financial Times, Cengage Learning and Wiley are also to offer some books on Kindle."

UPDATE 5/8/09: - Financial Times is puzzled by this, since Wall St. Journal and Harper Collins are part of his operation and are already on Kindle.  Is he threatening to withdraw? (Not ultra likely)