The Kindle Chronicles

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 that you identify with the Amazon brand.” News “Inside Jeff Bezos’s DC Life” by Ben Wofford at The Washingtonian - April 22, 2018 “Amazon will raise the price of Prime from $99 to $119 in the U.S.” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - April 26, 2018 “Total Recall? Amazon’s giving Alexa a better memory” by Ry Crist at CNET - April 26, 2018 “Amazon’s Next Secret Project Could be Robots That Follow You Around” by Brad Stone and Mark Gurman at Bloomberg - April 23, 2018 Amazon Key deliveries to your car! “Amazon’s new Echo Dot Kids Edition comes with a colorful case and parental controls” by Dan Seifert at The Verge - April

Author of Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen Interview starts at 15:50 and ends at 41:48 “It’s not that I sought out to be published by Amazon. It was that Amazon happened to be the people who believed in me and my book, and they’ve been so wonderful to work with. I do feel also that Little A is a tiny imprint within a huge company, so I kind of get the best of both worlds--that personal TLC and the brawn of the marketing and other kinds of reach of Amazon.” News Jeff Bezos’s 2018 Letter to Shareowners “Jeff Bezos reveals Amazon has 100 million Prime members in letter to shareholders” by Eugene Kim at CNBC - April 18, 2018 David Axelrod interviews Jay Carney, Amazon’s senior vice president for public affairs, on The Axe Files podcast - March 7, 2018 Tech Tip “How to build your own Alexa skills with the new Alexa Blueprints” by Chaim Gartenberg at The Verge - April 19, 2018 Amazon Alexa Skills Blueprints Interview with Hannah Howard Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen The Recovering: Intoxic

Creator of the Kindle Classroom Project Interview starts at 15:29 and ends at 43:19 “I don’t think that the Kindle makes reading any more fun, but a lot of students--especially 9th Grade boys who have been turned off of reading, they get a Kindle, and the Number One thing that they do is they bump up that text size, because they don’t like it to be so small, so they can really feel like they’re achieving as a reader. Even though the book takes the same amount of time to read, they feel they are making more progress through the pages.” News Amazon Device Sale for Prime Members Amazon Key Home Kit on sale for up to $140 off Cities eligible for Amazon Key delivery The Essential W. S. Merwin (Paperback) “Apple poaches ex-Amazon, HP executive for growing software team” by Mike Wuerthele at AppleInsider - April 6, 2018 Jon McCormack Linkedin profile “Shhh...Alexa might be listening” by Alex Hern at The Guardian - April 11, 2018 U.S. Patent Application 20170323645 filed June 12, 2017 by Kiran K. Edara of Amazon T

Author of The Punishment She Deserves: A Lynley Novel Interview starts at 12:25 and ends at 36:50 “The late Sue Grafton said something to me that was really helpful on time. I was talking about difficulty I was having in the book with a character. She said to me, ‘If you know the question, you do know the answer.’ That was really helpful, because what that told me is that if I could articulate what difficulty I was having with a book then buried somewhere in my head was going to be the solution to that problem. That turned out to be absolutely true.” News “Penguin Random house exec gets a promotion” by Keith J. Kelly at The New York Post - April 5, 2018 Tech Tips “Alexa Announcements Lets You Broadcast Messages to All Devices” at Love My Echo “Tell the family ‘dinner’s ready’ with Alexa Announcements” by Ry Crist at CNET - April 6, 2018 “How to Donate to Charity Using Alexa” by Emily Price at LifeHacker - April 2, 2018 List of Alexa-supported charities Roav VIVA by Anker - Alexa-enabled 2-port USB car ch

Co-founder and CEO of Goodreads Interview starts at 14:30 and ends at 36:54 “People read along, and then--for as long as there’ve been books--after you’re done reading, you you go talk about the ideas, the stories, the concepts that you read about. That’s actually a good metaphor for Goodreads and Kindle. Kindle is where you read alone. Goodreads is where you go talk about what you read.” News “Trump hates Amazon, not Facebook” by Jonathan Swan at Axios - March 28, 2018 “The World’s Richest Man Just Lost $10.7 billion as Trump Tweets About Amazon” by Lucinda Shen at Fortune - March 29, 2018 “Here’s the controversial tax practice by Amazon that’s got Trump so upset” by Tae Kim at CNBC - March 29, 2018 “‘Their eyes are on D.C.’: Capital area said to have good shot at Amazon HQ2” by Robert McCartney at The Washington Post - January 20, 2018 “If Trump wants to take a shot at Amazon, there’s a potential billion-dollar deal staring him right in the face” by Allan Smith at Business Insider - March 29, 2018 Tech

Readly U.S. Contact Interview starts at 12:48 and ends at 40:51 “Everyone for a long time has been trying to reinvent the magazine experience on digital, or even the newspaper experience on digital. I was one of those who came out and said, ‘Why?’ What you need to be doing is expanding your brand. People know your brand. Don’t think about shoe-horning the magazine or newspaper into this new--whether it was a device, a screen type, a platform, you’ve got to sit there and think of what do people really want on this platform?” News “Amazon is the most sought-after employer in the U.S.” by George Anders at LinkedIn - March 21, 2018 “LinkedIn Top Companies 2018: Where the U.S. wants to work now” by Daniel Roth at LinkedIn - March 21, 2018 Amazon press release on Harris Poll top ranking - March 22, 2018 “Amazon elbows Alphabet aside as second most valuable company” by Richard Waters and Nicole Bullock at The Financial Times - March 20, 2018 “At Mars, Jeff Bezos Hosted Roboticists, Astronauts, Other Brainiacs a

Brittany Kaiser, Co-Founder, Bueno Capital and CryptoHQ Interview starts at 16:20 and ends at 22:29 South By Southwest Links “Wyoming Passes 5 Pro-Blockchain Laws” at Consensys - March 15, 2018 “Despite some glitches, VR cinema takes a leap forward at SXSW 2018” by Omar L. Gallaga at the Austin American-Statesman - March 15, 2018 “Wyoming’s Blockchain Bills: A Very Personal Labor of Love” by Caitlin Long - March 9, 2018 Pressing On: The e-magazine for growing Christians “U.S. State of Wyoming Defines Cryptocurrency ‘Utility Tokens’ As New Asset Class”rache by Rachel Wolfson at Forbes - March 13, 2018 Doc Searls website “Could an Amazon Token Become a Viable Worldwide Cryptocurrency?” by Erik Kuebler at Bitcoin Magazine - March 9, 2018 SXSW has released streaming audio for the following sessions that I attended: “The Future of Machine Learning: Worth the Hype?” - Jeff Chow of TripAdvisor, Finale Doshi-Velez of Harvard, Tom Foster of Inc Magazine and Chris Jones of iRobot Corporation “Interactive Keynote:

Author of Closer Than You Know Interview starts at 9:29 and ends at 43:09 “I look at certain authors that are greatly esteemed in the moment as literature. But I think, frankly, a lot of what passes as literature today will not stand the test of time, because there’s no story in the story. You have 350 pages of a character examining his navel and having interior monologue, and that’s just not the stuff that’s going to endure....Though he has not won a National Book Award and probably never will, Stephen King is still going to be read a hundred years from now.”   News “Is Amazon Looking to Nation’s Capital For a Second Home?” by Brian Deagon at Investor’s Business Daily - March 5, 2018 “Ripple (XRP) and Amazon Would Be A Match Made in Crypto Heaven” by John P. Njui at Cryptonews - March 4, 2018 Block Zero, Kevin Rose’s new podcast about cryptocurrency. Block Zero Episode #001 “Bitcoin’s true potential - Andreas M. Antonopoulos” The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos Interview with Brad Parks “Who’

General Manager Fire Tablets & Kindle and Amazon Echo & Alexa Product Marketing Interview starts at 15:16 and ends at 39:43 “I loved what I had heard about the leadership principles, particularly the customer obsession and innovation which I was seeing externally. As I came through the hiring process and since my first day that has been the reality. And so I just really love how the company obsesses about customers and looks to invent every day. That’s what really attracted me here.” News “Alexa briefly lost its voice amid widespread Amazon Web Services outage” by Chris Welch at The Verge - March 2, 2018. Amazon Web Services service health dashboard Thanks to James McQuivey of Forrester Research for his comment on the Alexa outage (included in audio) “Why Amazon is Immune To Almost Any Boycott” by Cale Guthrie Weissman at Fast Company - March 2, 2018 “Amazon Buys Ring, Maker of Smart Home Products” by Nick Wingfield at The New York Times - February 27, 2018 “Amazon named Presenting Sponsor of Digi

Avid reader, longtime listener Interview starts at 12:45 and ends at 43:20 “My ideal Kindle would have real buttons and would have audio support, so that you could do immersion reading along with just straight reading.” News “Amazon plans to open as many as six more cashierless Amazon Go stores this year” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - February 22, 2018 “Prime Members Now Earn 5% Back When Shopping At Whole Foods Market Using the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card” - press release February 20, 2018 Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card “This board game is powered by Amazon Alexa” by Monica Chin at Mashable - February 19, 2018 Sensible Object “ENCORE: When data rules the world” interview with Yuval Noah Harari on the Financial Times Tech Tonic podcast - replayed on February 21, 2018 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari Tech Tip Click here for the latest software updates for Kindle and other Amazon devices Content (Books mentioned by John Aga in the int

Carmela Orsini of Novel Effect (5:08 to 13:22) Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson The Little Shop of Monsters by R. L. Stine Paul Knopf, chief architect at GFA Technology (13:27 to 21:40) Felix Lloyd, cofounder and CEO of Beanstack (21:44 to 30:53) Harvard (MA) Public Library David Burleigh, director of brand marketing and and communication at OverDrive (30:57 to 40:23) Overdrive’s Libby app Pete Schreiner, Libraries Fellow at North Caroline State University in Raleigh (40:27 to 42:25) 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 Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

My father William and grandson James Interview starts at 17:43 and ends at 42:24 “I’ve been writing a realistic fictional narrative for my class as an assignment. There are certain phrases in [Kindle] books that have been highlighted 300 times or a thousand times. I try to make my phrases be like those phrases, because I’ve gotten to know what are the powerful phrases that people are going to highlight.” News Amazon press release announcing Prime Now delivery from Whole Foods - February 8, 2018 “Amazon Finally Gets Serious About Whole Foods” by Phil Lempert at Forbes - February 8, 2018 “Amazon Prime to offer two-hour Whole Foods delivery” by The Associated Press at New York Post - February 8, 2018 “Amazon looks to put bookstore in Cherry Creek” by Thomas Gounley at BusinessDen - February 5, 2018 The Hermitage Bookshop in Denver “Amazon to Launch Delivery Service That Would Vie With FedEx, UPS” by Laura Stevens at The Wall Street Journal - February 9, 2018 “Amazon passes Samsung for 2nd place in worldwi

Author of Into the Black Nowhere: An UNSUB Novel Interview starts at 18:20 and ends at 40:10 “One of the oldest stories that humanity tells itself is defeating the monster. Whether that’s the dark shape that howls in the night outside the cave or something that drags a club around or sea monsters--humanity always wants to defeat the monster. To do that we have to try to identify and understand it. The idea that the monster walks among us disguised as one of the community I think sets us on edge.” News Amazon releases Q4 Earnings report - February 1, 2018 “Amazon has posted a profit for 11 straight quarters” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - February 1, 2018 “Inside Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence Flywheel” by Steven Levy at Wired - February 1, 2018 Click here for a free three-month subscription to Wired “Amazon is taking a welcome tilt at healthcare bills” by Brooke Masters at The Financial Times - February 2, 2018 “Dallas is best place for Amazon’s second headquarters, Wall Street Journal says” by Bill Heth

Senior Vice President & Publisher at Open Road Integrated Media Interview starts at 11:28 and ends at 34:48 “No company in publishing right now is better aligned with Amazon in terms of our focus on the customer experience, in terms of our focus on eBooks and driving growth in eBooks.” News Amazon Go video “Amazon Go: convenience and concern at new checkout-free corner shop” by Mark Harris at The Guardian - January 22, 2018 Amazon’s listing of 42 Amazon Go jobs open “Amazon Go draws crowds” by Matt Day at The Seattle Times - January 22, 2018 “Here’s what it’s like to shop at Seattle’s Amazon Go cashierless convenience store” by Christine Clarridge at The Seattle Times - January 22, 2018 “The Amazon Go store - techy-cool or creepy-weird?” by Elizabeth Weise at USA Today - January 26, 2018 “Amazon’s Checkout-Free Store Makes Shopping Feel Like Shoplifting” by Jake Bullinger at The Atlantic - January 24, 2018 “New Walmart Partnership Brings Retailer into the E-Book Game” by John Maher at Publishers Wee

Editor at Little A Interview starts at 22:52 and ends at 44:24 “The trick with writing is a lot of times the more specific, the more universal something becomes. In taking care of a story, if there is something that I don’t quite understand, I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, that’s not related. We’ll take it out.’ I’m going to ask for more. Show me how this is all of us.” (Photo by Stephanie Land) News Amazon press release on top 20 in HQ2 search - January 18, 2018 Recode on top 20 - January 18, 2018 “Amazon Chooses 20 Finalists for Second Headquarters” by Nick Wingfield at The New York Times - January 18, 2018 “The Case for Ending Amazon’s Dominance” by Tim Harford at The Financial Times - January 19, 2018 “Jeff Bezos Donates $33 million to Dreamers Scholarship Fund” by Matt Shuham at Talking Points Memo - January 12, 2018 TheDream.US Tech Tip Translated skill for Alexa Interview with Hafizah Geter Day One: A Literary Journal for the Digital Age Kindle Singles store Amazon Original Stories Children of the Sal

Author of Ricochet Joe & the new Jane Hawk series Interview starts at 10:30 and ends at 41:57 “Whatever I was reading in childhood through adolescence, it lifted me up and out. I think it was all of that that made me want to be a writer. I thought it would be the most amazing thing if out there in the world somewhere there was a kid reading something or an adult for that matter that was really getting to them and affecting them as so many people had affected me. And you didn’t even know who they were or where they were. It just struck me as a kind of magical thing to be doing. So because I was a reader, that’s really why I became a writer.” News “Amazon May Have Dropped a Clue About a Likely HQ2 Location” by Aaron Pressman at Fortune - January 11, 2018. “Amazon and Google lead way on virtual assistant dealmaking at CES” by Tim Bradshaw at The Financial Times - January 9, 2018 “Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant compete at CES to control the smart home” by Matt Day at The Seattle Times - January 8, 2018

Software Quality Engineer Interview starts at 12:46 and ends at 41:14 “Somehow the Goodreads would talk to the Amazon/Kindle cloud, so as new notes come in it would sync those down from Goodreads as well. And then they would just show up in your notes and highlights with the name of the person who you were following. I think that would be really cool.” News “Another big Amazon acquisition, a Peloton IPO--and other commerce predictions for 2018” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - January 4, 2018 “Barnes & Noble shares hit near 24-year low after disappointing holiday sales” by Jessica Dye at The Financial Times - January 5, 2018 Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on HQ2 prospects (CNBC) - January 3, 2018 PaddyPower odds for HQ2 cities - January 3, 2018 “This smart suitcase uses Segway technology to balance itself as it follows you around” by Thuy Ong at The Verge - January 4, 2017 CES in Las Vegas Tech Tip All about Kindle bookmarks Interview with Tom Semple The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space, and Sp

Co-founder of Select A Story Interview starts at 8:33 and ends at 33:40 “An interactive story is essentially a series of interlocking short stories. I think a lot of authors kind of forget about that, and they end up writing a story where at the end of it, it’s like ‘Okay, you saw a spaceship, and then you thought to call the police and then you decided whether you should call your friend, and then you decided whether you should take a picture and put it on Instagram and then you went on the spaceship and you met the aliens, and it was fine. The end.’ Well, yeah, you had a number of choices, but they were all very similar to one another and that is not a story that anyone would write by itself.” Tech Tip Find your annotations at read.amazon.com/notebook Interview with Katie Ernst Select a Story website Select a Story skill for Alexa Cinder/Charming (Select a Story Book 1) Kindle format “The Magic Door,” an Alexa-powered interactive adventure with original stories “Alexa Skills Challenge Offers $250,000 in Pr

Doubledecker Bus Driver in London Interview starts at 11:20 and ends at 39:30 “The [Fire HD] 8 will be my Kindle that travels with me. I take it to work. We’re not allowed to have them in the cab for fairly good reasons. They don’t want anything that will distract you from the job of driving.” News “The Kindle changed the book business. Can it change books?” by David Pierce at Wired - December 20, 2017 Mosaic app at iTunes Store Tech Tip Echo Connect and how to set one up Alexa Voice Remote for Amazon Echo and Echo Dot Interview with Mark Jarvis Transportation for London (TfL) The Elizabeth Line CeX All-New Kindle Oasis BBC iPlayer The Verb Podcast (BBC) - Jorie Graham interview “Advertising Standards considers inquiry into Amazon Prime” at BBC - December 18, 2017 Amazon Key in-home delivery Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Edition (Audible) read by Stephen Fry The Quantum Spy: A Thriller by David Ignatius The Theseus Paradox (Detective Inspector Jake Flannagan Series Book 1) by David Videcette  by Diarmui

Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Interview starts at 9:06 and ends at 43:24 “I think Amazon feels pretty confident that they could attack any business they want, and the incumbents will spend four or five years resisting before they realize that they have no choice. Whereas a little proactive customer obsession on the part of any of those companies could probably make it so that Amazon decides to go elsewhere.” News “Kindle will evolve new forms of online literature: Sanjeev Jha, Director of Kindle Content India” by Rahul Sachitanand at The Economic times - December 10, 2017 Amazon announces expansion of Prime free same- and one-day shipping in time for Christmas (press release) - December 13, 2017 Click here to see if Amazon is offering free same-day and one-day Prime shipping to your city or town. Start a 30-day Prime Free Trial “Amazon to start selling Apple TV and Google Chromecast” by Ben Fox Rubin at CNET - December 14, 2017 Tech Tip “Amazon Alexa can now wake you up with m