The Kindle Chronicles

Author of The Selected Poems of Donald Hall   Interview starts at 12:51 and ends at 43:57   It was a house that my great-grandfather bought in 1865, and the same family’s always lived in it. I’ll be dying pretty soon, of course, in the way of things. But I have a granddaughter who’s going to take it over then. Magnificent!   News Tweet of Blue Origin landing by @JeffBezos Blue Origin rocket video...

Creator of the Cuenca Tech Life blog   Interview starts at 1:29 and ends at 21:34   I just turned 70, so growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s was very special. Cuenca reminded me of Brooklyn in the 1950s. The word for neighborhood in Spanish is barrio, so each barrio had its own butcher and baker and church. People knew you on the street, and they were very, very friendly. It was a safe place to be...

This is the third of my Ecuador TKC episodes, uploaded today (Tuesday November 10, 2015) from the Ali Shungu Mountaintop Resort in Otavalo. You will hear the owners and hosts at Ali Shungu, Frank and Margaret, talk about their thirty-plus years in Ecuador, and you will hear from our birdwalk guide in Mindo, Alex Luna. Also, another roundtable conversation with Darlene and Deb on the week's highlig...

This is the second of my Ecuador TKC episodes, uploaded today (Thursday November 5, 2015) from the cloud forest in Mindo at the Sisakuna Lodge . You will hear our Overseas Adventure Travel guide, Roberto Quintana, on location in the Galapagos, telling us about sea lions, blue-footed boobies, and Galapagos hawks, as well as a conversation I recorded with Darlene and Deb aboard our ship, the Carina....

I am posting Friday's episode of the podcast very early, on Monday, this week from Quito, Ecuador, because tomorrow we leave for the Galapagos Islands where there will be little if any Internet connection. In this show you will hear two of our fellow Overseas Adventure Travel  tour members talk about how they use their Kindles. Also, inspired music by a choir of disabled children at the Sinamune S...

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon Highlights from my interview recorded on July 26, 2012 , at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle   The Pre-Trip Conversation  My wife Darlene, her sister Deb and I look ahead to our travels in the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador Recorded on September 28, 2015 “Portrait of a Cheetah”   - November 8, 2010 “How to Make a Cheetah Purr” YouTube video - November 8, 2010 “...

Creator of Kindle Nation Daily and BookGorilla   Interview starts at 9:38 and ends at 39:45   Of the top 100 bestsellers in the Kindle Store for the entire year of 2014, 91 of those books were made available by the publishers at prices that we discovered, put up and featured on BookGorilla. The average price of those 91 on their feature day was $2.92. The total price of those 91 books if you had b...

This is another test of my mobile podcasting gear, two days before we leave for Ecuador. I am hoping the photo of Claire and me shows up with RSS feeds.  For audio, I used 44:58 of recording from my visit to San Francisco to attend the Amazon new-products demonstration on September 16, 2015.  Playing with tech stuff when I should be packing, Len

The New York Times’s publishing industry reporter   Interview starts at 12:44 and ends at 32:05   For the people that are price sensitive--if you’re not somebody that reads digitally because you prefer that, because you find it more convenient--but you’re maybe a hybrid reader, you might get a paperback if it’s significantly cheaper than an eBook, if you are somebody that toggles back and forth.  ...

Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research   Interview starts at 14:38 and ends at 41:53   It’s not about Amazon Echo, it’s about putting microphones in various contexts in your life. Plug one in, like a Glade air freshener, into your bathroom, one next to your bedstand, one in the hallway, one in the laundry, and pretty soon you don’t need  Dash buttons. All you have is Alexa ever...

General Manager of Amazon’s Kindle Scout   Interview starts at 16:58 and ends at 44:45   It’s really the best part of the job. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not either extremely proud as a publisher or really inspired as a human.   Intro Agents of Change conference on September 25, 2015, in Portland, Maine hosted by Rich Brooks of Flyte Media     Click here if you are interested in purch...

Links related to Amazon’s 2015 Fall Product Launch in San Francisco Amazon news releases on the new $50 Fire tablet , the new Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 10 tablets , new Fire Kids Edition , new Fire TV with 4K Ultra HD and Fire TV Stick with voice remote The new Fire Tablets lineup “Amazon has 6 New Devices—and an actual plan for hardware” by David Pierce at Wired - September 17, 2015 How Spritz works...

Author of Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books   Interview starts at 15:46 and ends at 42:34   My main attraction to a Kindle is only age-related. If my vision deteriorates enough that I need to make the type bigger, then I could see that it’s just a wonderful tool to have. But so long as I can enjoy the books that I have, the physical books, I’ll stick with them. I have...

Author of The Well-Presented Manuscript   Interview starts at 12:13 and ends at 42:27   There are some wonderful stories that I just can’t enjoy, because the author has done such a poor job with the language.  One of the reasons that I wanted to write The Well-Presented Manuscript was selfishly to increase my own enjoyment of other people’s books by helping them to not make so many errors that wou...

Editorial Director of Books and Kindle at Amazon.com   Interview starts at 14:54 and ends at 39:15   On The Story of the Lost Child : I think this is going to break Elena Ferrante out as a bona fide super star in this country. And nobody knows who she is, which I love!   News “Amazon e-book deal with NYC public schools postponed as blind advocates say it would leave out visually impaired students”...

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Six Colors   Interview starts at 17:44 and ends at 42:27   I hope the E Ink readers stick around, because I do love them. But it’s going to be a niche market. It’s going to be for people who are dedicated book readers who are willing to spend at least a little bit of money for a nice, distraction-free experience.    News “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruis...

I am experimenting with iPhone apps that may enable me to post episodes of the Kindle Chronicles while Darlene and I are in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands this fall. I won't bring my MacBook Air, but it looks as if the tools for mobile podcasting have greatly improved in the past few years. I found an iOS app named Opinion that has a very simple editing function for recording audio, and it can...

Creator of the Fiona Griffiths crime series   Interview starts at 12:44 and ends at 37:59   Whoever heard of a retailer offering 70 percent royalty? It’s never happened before. How’s that not a good thing for authors? So I just think the Authors United group are bananas, quite frankly. And I think there is increasingly a swell of opinion among authors—not amongst yet among the more traditional str...

Creator of Dispatches from the Frat House   Interview starts at 14:23 and ends at 40:20   I’d like to write the kind of book that I’d like to read. And immediately there’s that thing in your head that goes, “Why? There are a gazillion books out there. Why would you want to write a book? This little wife in the midwest surrounded by kids—who’s going to want to read that?” And the other part of my b...

Editor of TeleRead   Interview starts at 11:26 and ends at 37:11   Even if all the publishers remove DRM from every eBook they sell tomorrow, I would be the vast majority of Amazon Kindle customers would go right on being  Amazon Kindle customers, just because it’s so easy to tap the button and start reading the book.   News “Amazon Kindle Voyage to be Released November 2015” by Michael Kozlowski...

Author of Let’s Get Digital and Let’s Get Visible   Interview starts at 16:56 and ends at 44:39   If you look at stores like Barnes and Noble and Kobo and Apple, I don’t think they’ve even caught up to where the Kindle Store was in 2011 or 2012 yet, let alone approaching where it is now in 2015. I still think they haven’t grasped the core part of Amazon’s philosophy, which is that they will always...

Founder and President of IndieReader.com   Interview starts at 11:46 and ends at 41:02   It’s very hard to tell a self-published book these days from one that is traditionally published.   News David Pogue’s must-see Alexa demonstration and review (video) at Yahoo Tech - July 16, 2015   Tech Tip Amazon page on Cloud Collections   Interview with Amy Edelman “Self-publishers flourish as writers pay...

My wife the amazing art quilter and Kindle enthusiast   Interview starts at 14:08 and ends at 39:48   A friend of mine said, “How many times have you dropped a Paperwhite in the tub?” And she’s right. I never have. And so at that point I decided that I was just going to hold the Kindle, and if it fell into the tub I would deal with it.   News “Half of Net Proceeds Is the Fair Royalty Rate for E-Bo...

Project Manager and TKC Listener   Interview starts at 13:52 and ends at 39:03   I have the books that I read, and I read the books that I have. The ones that I collect now are meaningful to me.    News “Apple Loses Appeal, E-book Decision is Affirmed” by Andrew Albanese at Publishers Weekly - June 30, 2015 US Court of Appeals affirmation of verdict against Apple (PDF)- June 30, 2015 Frequently As...

Amazon’s Senior Vice President - Kindle   Interview starts at 10:17 and ends at 42:35   My guess is that if you asked all the publishers with whom we’ve reached agreement in the last year they would tell you that they had to compromise some things they didn’t love. And we’ve had to compromise some things we didn’t necessarily choose on our own. And that’s okay. That’s business.   News Amazon Echo...