The Kindle Chronicles

Host of Evil Genius Chronicles Interview starts at 10:55 and ends at 40:51 "Really and truly [with a DIY book scanning device] I'm moving my hoarding from physical hoarding to digital hoarding. But I'm in favor of that maneuver. The bits and bytes are cheaper to store, and they take up a lot less room, and I'm okay with that." News Data Guy's presentation slides at Digital Book World "Alexa, launc...

David Peach , TKC Reporter-at-Large Links Mentioned in this Episode Digital Book World 2018 Alexa Developer website The Dog Feeder Skill for Alexa Digital Book World Hall of Fame inducts Marie Dutton Brown and Len Edgerly Novel Effect skill for Alex Audioburst Libsyn Macmillan podcasts Readercoin Veronica and the Volcano by Geoffrey Cook OverDrive Next Week's Guest Dave Slusher of The Evil Genius...

CEO of Open Road Integrated Media Interview starts at 3:32 and ends at 27:40 "Industry-wide, if you took all eBooks, it looks like it's going down maybe 7 to 10 percent. If you look at the very top booksellers it looks like it's down 30 percent." New Alexa Products The Verge's Dan Seifert's first impression (video) of Alexa-powered AmazonBasics Microwave "In Defense of Amazon's Alexa Microwave" by...

               Author of the Joe Dillard and Darren Street series S cott Pratt author page at Amazon.com Jeff Bezos on the David Rubenstein Show - taped September 13, 2018 Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please...

  Director of Deaf Ministries for Baptist International Outreach Interview starts at 12:12 and ends at 40:04 "If I'm getting a book that I'm independently loading on [to a Fire tablet] I tend to do it in the Google Play books and not the Kindle app, mainly because it's easier to put it on there. " News "U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002-2017" (PDF) - report by the National...

Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group Interview starts at 5:19 and ends at 36:00 "With respect to blockchain, there's an opportunity to--I wouldn't necessarily say disrupt--but to create an alternative to the closed ecosystems that Amazon has with Kindle and that other online platforms have and to provide peer-to-peer trading as well as easier e-commerce networks for publishers. It m...

  CEO of Publica Interview starts at 7:05 and ends at 42:10 "So a book token in our eReader app is going to be used as part of the cryptographic protection of the book to authorize you to read it by proving that you bought it. There's another token that we made called the Pebble (PBL). It's a ticker on exchanges, and if you want to go looking for what the Pebble is doing in the world you would loo...

  Editorial Director at Thomas & Mercer Interview starts at 16:49 and ends at 43:56 "It's interesting to think about readers around the world being able to find these books about a chemistry teacher turned homicide detective in Seattle, Washington. And I think that's the global power of stories. Great stories are something that appeals to everyone. Figuring out the best ways that we can make it th...

Author of the Tracy Crosswhite and David Sloane mysteries Interview starts at 1:30 and ends at 35:00 "I'd say the primary difference between Thomas & Mercer and my experience with Big 5 publishing is that Thomas & Mercer never stops selling my books. When I'm with a Big 5 publisher, my book would come out and there would be publicity leading up to the book's release and then there would be publici...

Partnerships Manager for the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children's Hospital Interview starts at 7:44 and ends at 28:24 "One of the barriers with voice in general is you don't know what's out there. You don't really know like you do with a phone what app options you have, so it's a little bit harder for people to find new things. Amazon in general is pretty concerned about...

  Jim Jones, right, Associate Professor of Management at University of Nebraska at Omaha Interview starts at 9:03 and ends at 40:50 "In the classroom, I really do strongly feel that attention is so critical to actual understanding that the more that you can remove the electronic connection and the focus on inputting electronically or--even worse sometimes I think, is passively taking pictures of t...

  Links to items mentioned in this 10th Anniversary episode First episode of The Kindle Chronicles (TKC 1) with Baratunde Thurston on July 26, 2008 My interviews with Jeff Bezos in 2012 and 2016 Transcript of my 2012 Bezos interview (via Kindle Nation Daily ) Kindle Oasis Interview with Russ Grandinetti , VP Kindle Content, in 2010 TKC 338 with Andy Weir , author of The Martian - January 23, 2015...

Author of Departure , The Extinction Files and The Origin Mystery Interview starts at 13:07 and ends at 43:36 "I feel very lucky about the timing. The Kindle had just come out. I would go home from work and read my Kindle every night, and I thought, 'There's got to be a bunch of people like me that are doing this that I could write a story for.' And that's kinda what I got to." News "Amazon report...

Author of Somebody's Daughter Interview starts at 17:04 and ends at 43:26 "I think there's nothing more terrifying than the realization that someone you thought you knew--whether it's your spouse, your parent, your sibling, someone you thought you knew really well, someone in your family--has been keeping some kind of secret from you." Photo by Glen Rose Photography News Kindle Paperwhite will be...

  Founder & Chief Trailblazer of Retirepreneur Interview starts at 16:01 and ends at 40:10 "I went deep into Kindle and the electronic piece, and then I began pulling back some. I would tell you right now I am right down the middle. I'm a hybrid." News Amazon's Prime Day starts July 16th at 3 pm ET "How to Get Primed for Amazon Prime Day" at Wired - July 3, 2018 Delta Trinsic faucet with Alexa con...

Author of the Deadly Edits and Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries Interview starts at 16:16 and ends at 44:12 "What I try to do is after I get up and have my coffee and my toast, is to come into my office and sit down and write at least one scene, the next scene in the story. I do that usually seven days a week." Tech Tip My comparison of Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant News Prime Wardrobe Alexa on iPhon...

Seattle Music and Arts Pioneer Interview starts at 9:38 and ends at 44:45 "There it was, the [Seattle] head tax. 'We're going to do it, this is what we're going to do. It's going to address homelessness. We'll collect the money--we don't know how we're going to spend it yet, but we're going to hit these businesses with this tax.' That's just not the way to govern, in my opinion." News Atul Gawande...

New Owner of Digital Book World Interview starts at 12:01 and ends at 43:50 "Everything with books orbits  discoverability. That's the billion-dollar problem. That's the problem that Apple has never figured out yet. That's the problem that Amazon has sort of figured out." News Target dazzles me with service Rebranding Prime Mayday! Mayday! The end of a great customer help service. Tech Tip Alexa o...

Author of "The List" in Amazon's The Real Thing Collection Interview starts at 13:23 and ends at 39:21 "I think we look at the Big Five publishers as being kind of set in their ways and really traditional, but I actually think that everyone is looking to try new things. I think everyone is realizing that just putting out a hardcover in the exact same way isn't going to always work in a way that th...

Senior Editor, The Information Interview starts at 11:36 and ends at 43:50 "[Amazon's HQ2 decision] will be before the end of the year, unless something radical changes. I don't think it's imminent. It's probably--I'm guessing here--but it's probably months away. I would guess like towards the end of the summer, early fall. That's really not based on hard facts but kind of reading between the line...

Author of the Frank Adversego Thriller Series Interview starts at 11:14 and ends at 35:51 "Alexa's pretty primitive. I think it's very concerning from a cybersecurity point of view, because people have already learned how to spoof Alexa. Just a few days ago they came up with the equivalent of a dog whistle-type command that you couldn't hear, but Alexa could. Someone could turn it on and off." New...

Editor-in-Chief of Good E-Reader Interview starts at 3:45 and ends at 33:51 News "Amazon Go cashier-free store could be headed to SF's Union Square" by Matier & Ross at The San Francisco Chronicle - May 13, 2018 "The Information hires NY Times's Wingfield" by Chris Roush at Talking Biz News - May 15, 2018 The Information "Trump personally pushed postmaster general to double rates on Amazon, other...

Authors of Our Towns: A 100,000-mile Journey Into the Heart of America Interview starts at 9:43 and ends at 39:14 "James Fallows: 'Through my reportorial lifetime I've seen a number crises for the American system, which the U.S. has so far managed to muddle its way through. That does not guarantee continued muddling, but I personally am more heartened than I thought I would be by all this resilien...

Traveler, teller of tales, reviewer of eReaders Interview starts at 15:25 and ends at 41:53 "To be honest, I haven't met one person outside tech nerds like myself that use it [Kindle's X-Ray feature.] I very rarely use it. I kind of go 'Let's see what this is about." I think it takes away from the immersion of reading. If I'm interested in something I'll take a look at it later on, but during the...

Longtime Kindle Chronicles listener Interview starts at 18:14 and ends at 43:00 "It was very clear what was missing [in Seattle's Amazon Go store]. There was no Kindle, no Fires, no place to scan and order one. Maybe that's because you can just walk out, and they figure if they're going to lose inventory they want it to be five dollars or under. What was distinctly absent was any Amazon products t...