Amazon and ATT & T reach agreement on new deal, brings price of cheapest Kindle down to $139.

At seems that these two huge companies have reached an agreement relating to the 3G connectivity of the Kindle 3 which will enable Amazon to bring the price of the Kindle 3 down to a mere $ 139.   Well actually what it means is that they can now sell the ad supporting Kindle 3  model for this price, and on top of this they (ATT & T) are also offering a whole range of money saving special offers and screen savers to Kindle owners as part of this deal.

Otherwise nothing changes, you will still have the amazing convenience of the seamless method of obtaining your ebooks from Amazon as before, just with those added extras, and for a rather good price as these things go.

As they put it in their press release:

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Jedi and the rest of the gang will invade your ereaders this month!

Lucas Film and Random House Publishers have just announced that they Will be releasing the entire Star Wars Library of books in ebook format, which for all you Star Wars fanatics  with ereaders has to be good news.   It means that you can carry the entire body of Star Wars books around with you on your Kobo or Nook instead of needing a Super Market trolley to cart them around with you.

You will be able to sit with your fellow fans, and refer to any of the Star Wars books all on one handy gadget…………..

This bonanza of over 100 titles will be launched on 28th June and will work on your Kobo or Nook ereaders.   There was no information about which ebook format they will come in, so I can’t promise they will work on other types of ereaders, but when they are actually available we shall be able to find that out as well, but I assume they will be variously in ePub and one or other of the formats designed for ecomics.

Apart from all the newer Star Wars books, the older ones will also be available, such as Original Trilogy novelizations and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.

Not only all of this, but from now on, any new Star Wars books will also be released in ebook format as well.

As an extra goodie, all these ebooks will include these extras for your pleasure:

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Amazon sell more ebooks than all other types of book combined……  Astonishing!

In a Press Release yesterday, Amazon tell us  “Today, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books – hardcover and paperback – combined”.

If this is true, and I see no reason to doubt it, then this is a very significant statement, as Amazon are one of the biggest book retailers in the world, so presumably the same situation is happening with all other online book/ebook sellers.

Apparently they now sell 105 ebooks for every 100 paper books (both hardback and paper back) -  which includes all paper books for which there is no ebook version available yet.

As Jeff Bezos (Founder and CEO of Amazon) puts it:

“Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly – we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years,”

So, it has finally happened, ebooks  have truly come of age now it would seem……..

As a foot-note to that Press Release, Amazon also announced Read full story »

I suppose it is inevitable, the first ebooks about Bin Laden are already happening:

Never slow to see a commercial advantage in large scale events in the world, publishers are rushing to print a whole slew of books, both ebooks and paper  ones all about the man, what the effects may be of his death and other ponderings.

Whatever one may feel about the assassination of Bin Laden, it is an event of major significance to the world, and thus it is not unreasonable that we are now seeing the first wave of what I am sure will be many books on the subject.

A serious look at it all:

One that has caught my eye is a collection of essays by a number of heavy weights on this subject, called Beyond Bin Laden: America and the Future of Terror (eISBN 978067964449. $1.99 Random House),  I have not read it yet, as it will be published on 9th May.  this one is a collection of ponderings  by people such as James A. Baker III, former secretary of state; Karen Hughes, former counselor to President George W. Bush and former under secretary of state for public diplomacy; Richard N. Haass, president, Council on Foreign Relations; Bing West, author of The Wrong War and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security; Daniel Markey, a senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations; Evan Thomas, an award-winning historian and former editor at large at Newsweek; as well as Meacham himself.

As you can see, these are people who know what happens in the real world, not a collection of speculations by journalists who are mainly famous for making up their stories as they go along…………………

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An interesting collection of Queensland short stories:

As a result of the terrible floods earlier this year, an ebook collection of 100  short stories written by a number of Queensland authors is now available to be downloaded for your reading pleasure.

Note added later:

I have had a couple of comments (see below) which  point out a few errors in this post, specifically:

Not all the authors are Queenslanders

When you buy the actual ebook (as opposed to the taster) you have the choice of PDF or e-Pub formats.

Almost 100% of the money from sales of this ebook will go to the Flood victims.

Had a look, and liked what I read:

I have downloaded them and had a bit of a snuffle around the collection, and some of them are remarkably good reading I found to my pleasant surprise.  They cover a huge range of genres, ranging from stories about the floods themselves to pure science fiction, and all points in between.   As an example of the state of Australian short story writing they are very encouraging, the art form is obviously alive and very healthy in Oz just now.

As the CEO of The Queensland Writers Centre, Kate Eltham puts it:

“One hundred beautiful stories. Our stories.
When so much was lost or destroyed, this was created.
That’s something that can never recede or wash away.”

100 STORIES FOR QUEENSLAND has something for everyone, from slice of life to science fiction, fantasy to romance, paranormal to literary fiction. Heart-warming, quirky, inspiring and funny, the stories between these covers will lift readers to higher ground.

I reckon that is a pretty good description of the variety of writing you will find if you purchase this bundle from them.    And not only will you be giving yourself a whole heap of good reading, but also helping the victims of those horrible floods, which caused so much destruction in Queensland.   Sadly they don’t state on their website what percentage of the money will go to the Flood Relief of Queensland, which is a pity, as I would personally find it better if I knew that, say, 40% would go to the relief fund….   So we have to simply trust that they will actually donate to the fund……..  Read full story »

Seems I was not 100% correct when I wrote that the Kno was not to be:

As a result of the post I wrote yesterday, in which I said that I thought that the Monster Kno ereaders were not going to happen,  I have had a prompt reaction from the Kathryn Kelly of Kno inc., in which she pointed me at a press release that I had not noticed  – perhaps its rather long winded and not exactly clear title may have been why I didnt notice it…..  It glories in the name of  ” Intel Capital, Advance Publications, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, FLOODGATE and SV Angels Invest $30 Million In Kno”. Has a certain “zing” to it, doesn’t it?

Back to basics, it seems:

Anyhow, in this press release it is stated that Kno will be concentrating on their core business, which is the production of educational software, and drop the idea of producing their own ereaders, so I was partly correct at least.  But it is a pity all the same…………………..

As they say in that press release:

As part of the agreement, Intel and Kno will join forces to advance the use of tablet computers designed to meet the needs of interactive and 1:1 student learning environments. The two companies will explore opportunities to make Kno’s touch-based applications available for Intel’s educational platforms.

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