The Kindle Chronicles

Audio recorded at BookExpo America in Chicago and related links: Jon Malinowski (2:00-4:25), president of The Combined Book Exhibit, creator of the Book Fair Buddy app on iOS and Android platforms.      Pubmatch.com “Authorship in the Digital Age” panel moderated by Jon Fine (14:24-21:13), former Director of Author and Publishing Relations at Amazon “At Chicago’s BEA-Lite: A Meaningful Discussion on Publishers and Authors” by Porter Anderson at Publishing Perspectives - May 13, 2016 Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow (10:17-12:46)    Barbara Freethy (8:40-10:00)   A. Konrath(12:55-13:57).    Scott Turow interview (21:24-31:02)     “BookExpo America panel: Digital Authorship” by Chris Meadows at TeleRead - May 12, 2016     “Scott Turow: Amazon uses ‘unfair tactics’ in e-book market” by Shoshana Davis at CBS News - October 16, 2013     A Taste of Generation Yum: How the Millennial Generation’s Love for Organic Fare, Celebrity Chefs and Microbrews Will Make or Break the Future of Food by Eve Turow     “Why Ar

Jeff Bezos: We need to take The Washington Post from being a great local paper, which was a very successful strategy for decades, and transform it into a great national and global paper. We have the capability to do that, and as we do that we’re going to change the revenue structure. We’ve historically made a relatively large amount of money per reader on a relatively small number of readers. We need instead to make a relatively small amount of money per reader on a much larger number of readers. If you are studying the news business, the Internet has been a disaster for traditional news companies for the most part, because it takes a lot of things away. There are a lot of anti-gifts the Internet brought to the traditional news business. But it does bring one huge gift. You have to maximize your usage of that new gift, which is that it provides almost free global distribution. We could have hundreds of millions of readers and make very little money and have an amazing institution. And I’m happy to fund that u

Accessibility Architect at Amazon’s Lab126   Interview starts at 9:45 and ends at 39:50   We continually evaluate ways we can make reading on the Kindle more enjoyable, more comfortable, more accessible. This led us to create the Bookerly font. This led us to include the open-source OpenDyslexic font. So we continue to evaluate and bring innovations to our customers.      News “Amazon borrows from YouTube script, opens marketplace to video creators” by Angel Gonzalez at The Seattle Times - May 10, 2016 “Google’s Answer to Amazon’s Echo is code-named ‘Chirp’ and is landing soon” by Marg Bergen at The Verge - May 11, 2016 “Forget Amazon’s Echo: Lexi lets you speak to Alexa through your phone” by MIX at TheNextWeb - May 6, 2016 “Move Over Lexi - Roger Puts Amazon Alexa in Your iPhone for Free” by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader - May 12, 2016 Free Roger app for iOS “Goodreads launches free e-book giveaway promotions for $119 fee” by Chris Meadows at TeleRead - May 6, 2016   Tech Tip Audible’s new S

Author, Poet and Associate Editor of TeleRead   Interview starts at 22:08 and ends at 43:10   This [Kindle Oasis] basically gives Amazon its BMW or its Mercedes Benz, which is a pretty powerful draw for the entire range. It has produced a very fine, high-end E Ink eBook reader which caters very well to really serious readers.   News Amazon’s First Quarter earnings report - April 28, 2016 Motley Fool Money podcast on Amazon earnings - April 29, 2016 (Thanks to David Enzel for the link) "Amazon was profitable for four quarters in a row" by Jason Del Rey at re/code - April 28, 2016 “Jeff Bezos Sells $671 Million of Amazon Stock in Biggest Sale Ever” by Aaron Pressman at Forune.com - May 6, 2016 “Jeff Bezos to personally match up to $1M in donations to Mary’s Place homeless nonprofit” by Todd Bishop at GeekWire - May 2, 2016 “Mary’s Place receives $2 million thanks to matching donations from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos” by John Knicely at KIRO7 - May 4, 2016 Mary’s Place link for Amazon wish list “Video: Jeff Bez

Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research   Interview starts at 12:00 and ends at 44:01   I’ve got to write this down in a way that helps people understand how this cycle works, where technology comes in and allows us to render scarcity irrelevant. And then what’s the business strategy to do this? And that’s where I point to people like Uber, Airbnb, Amazon—who are in the habit of saying, “How could we give people more for less?” Which is not the way traditional business was operating.   News Kindle Oasis at Amazon.com Check out $20 off deals on Kindle, Kindle for Kids Bundle, and Kindle Paperwhite! (Not sure how long they will last.) My 17-minute video review of Kindle Oasis, featuring Darlene’s comments in her quilting studio - April 27, 2016 Fintie Oasis cover story by Chris Meadows at TeleRead “Amazon in Talks to Create Virtual Reality Content” by Joan E. Solsman at The Wrap - April 26, 2016 “Amazon Studios May be gearing up to make its own original VR content” by Bryan Bishop at Th

Assistant Professor at AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow Poland   Interview starts at 20:15 and ends at 43:40   On the Kindle Oasis: "I remember the first eBook readers that were available in Poland cost about that much as well, seven to eight years ago. It’s quite a steep price, and I’ve read comments on Polish web sites that indeed it’s very expensive. I also think that it’s something that you first need to probably experience when you’ve had it in your hands, and I think that’s when you can really say if it’s worth the price."   News Kindle Oasis: Unlike Any Kindle You’ve Ever Held (If you order with this link, it will support the podcast with Amazon Associates commissions—thank you!) “When will your Kindle Oasis e-reader arrive? MAYBE not until September. My sympathy, Merlot fans” by David Rothman at TeleRead - April 21, 2016 This Week in Tech 558 with Leo Laporte & Friends - April 17, 2016 “Estimating Kindle E-Book Sales for Amazon” by Trefis Team at Forbes - April 2, 2016 “Dance W

Featuring Neil Lindsay, Amazon VP Devices and Chris Green, Amazon Lab 126 VP Industrial Design   This special episode of The Kindle Chronicles is all about the new Kindle Oasis, based on an embargoed preview of the device that I attended in New York City on April 7, 2016. The episode is divided into the following four parts: Meet the Oasis - product specs and first impressions. 2:14 to 8:4   (Note: In answer to Faith Eldridge's question, it turns out the Oasis does not have an adaptive light sensor. If that is an important capability, you may want to stick with the Kindle Voyage, which does have one.) Live from New York: It’s the Kindle Oasis briefing! 8:47 to 28:37 Will Oasis be a Success? My thoughts. 28:40 to 32:06 What’s next for the Kindle? 32:10 to 36:20 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 Persepctive" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.    Please Join the Kindle Chro

Author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity   Interview starts at 28:24 and ends at 42:21   The people who are throwing rocks at the Google bus, they’re on to something. The understand something. We should listen. And we can reconfigure, we can optimize, reprogram our economy to help everybody—That’s extremely optimistic. I put myself on the hopeful side of the equation right now.    Intro Elon Musk unveils Tesla Model 3 (YouTube) - March 31, 2016   News “Amazon Takes on PayPal with New Payments Program” at Fortune - April 4, 2016 “Was Horace and Pete” even Television?” by Ian Crouch at The New Yorker - April 6, 2016 “The next hot job in Silicon Valley is for poets” by Elizabeth Dwoskin at The Washington Post - April 7, 2016 “The inside story of how Amazon created Echo, the next billion-dollar business no one saw coming” by Eugene Kim at Business Insider - April 2, 2016  Jeff Bezos’s 2015 Letter to Shareholders (PDF) “Kids Are Practicing Their Reading Skills to So

The Kindle Chronicles’ first listener   Interview starts at 14:54 and ends at 43:13   I should have known that we’d be building our life around it like we have other things that you’ve done. I’ve gotten used to it. I should have known.   Intro Whill wheelchair site   News “Amazon is the ‘most reputable’ company in the US” by Julie Bort at Business Insider - March 29, 2016 Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown Echo Dot and Amazon Tap arrive!   Tech Tip An ethical question about borrowing eBooks from your library with OverDrive   Interview with Darlene TKC 1 with Baratunde Thurston TKC 208 with Jeff Bezos Darlene’s art quilts page   Next Week’s Guest Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity - recorded at South by Southwest Interactive   Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat

  Editor-at-Large, CNET’s Technically Literate   Interview starts at 19:40 and ends at 43:30   We have a very different generation coming up who may relate to literature in a different way, because we have completely digital generations coming up. So I think those of us who present stories to the world have to be open to different ways to present them. And when we have a way to do it like we do in Technically Literate, that is an on-line way to do it, I think we always have to be thinking about pushing the boundary.    News “2016 Digital Book World Keynote Presentation” by Data Guy at Author Earnings - March 11, 2016 “Most everything you wanted to know about Data Guy: Revealed This Sunday in TeleRead” by David Rothman - March 25, 2016 Interview with Data Guy by Susan Lulgjuraj for TeleRead - will be live March 27, 2016 here. “Data Guy’s Web of Analysis: DBW Turns Hostility Into a Handshake” by Porter Anderson at Publishing Perspectives - March 10, 2016 “City re-introduces $30M Amazon contract for e-book m

Start and End Times of Interviews at South by Southwest Interactive Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post (8:20 to 18:34) Scott Totman, head of digital product engineering at Capital One 22:16 to 31:30) Rob Holzer, founder and CEO of Matter Unlimited and executive producer of Inside Impact: East Africa Adrian Bell, co-founder and Executive Director of Action Impact in Dubai   Links to topics mentioned President Obama’s Keynote address at SXSW (Video) - March 11, 2016 Dewey Winburne Community Service Awards MEANS database to fight hunger in America http://www.theparentscircle.com/http://www.theparentscircle.com/ Inside Impact: East Africa, 360 Video film by Matter Unlimited for the Clinton Global Initiative Ricoh Theta S Digital Camera at Amazon.com Brené Brown, author of Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution. OpeneBooks.net Two TED talks by Brené Brown   Next Week’s Guests Janis Cooke Newman, Editor-at-Large, Technically Literate Douglas Rushkoff, author of  Throwing Rocks a

Senior Writer, Publishers Weekly   Interview starts at 19:24 and ends at 33:23 I absolutely think it’s madness to continue to push for regulatory input into the eBook market. Look what it did for you last time. Let’s just let the lawyers go away now. We’ve all articulated what we think the problem is in the market. Publishers came together to put the agency model in place, and they perfectly articulated the reason why they believe the agency model should be in place. I think that there’s got to be business solutions at this point.    News “Supreme Court Rejects Apple’s Appeal” by Andrew Albanese at Publishers Weekly - March 7, 2016 “Supreme Court Declines to Hear Apple’s Appeal in E-Book Pricing Case” by Adam Liptak and Vindu Goel at The New York Times - March 7, 2016 Hagens Berman press release on Supreme Court decision - March 8, 2016 “Apple’s $400M E-Book Payout: How Much You’ll Get and When” by Jeff John Roberts at Fortune - March 8, 2016 Department of Justice press release on Apple case - March 7, 20

English Translator of Winter Men by Jesper Bugge Kold   Interview starts at 20:10 and ends at 41:14 I like the fact that I can tell an editor there [at AmazonCrossing] that this book is something that you should really look for, and they listen. And in this case, from start to finish, I suggested this book, and it became a reality and now I’m sitting with it right here on my desk.   News Amazon Tap - pre-order available at Amazon.com for $129.99, with delivery march 31, 2016 Echo Dot - Order from your Alexa or the Amazon app on your Android or iOS smartphone “Amazon Tap puts Alexa into a portable Bluetooth speaker” (with video demo) by Lauren Goode and Dieter Bohn at The Verge - March 3, 2016 “Amazon’s Echo Dot lets you put Alexa inside any speaker” by Lauren Good and Jacob Kastrenakes at The Verge - March 3, 2016 “Amazon’s smartphone flop was the best thing that happened to Alexa” by Lauren Goode at The Verge - March 3, 2016 “Amazon Fights for a bigger share of the AI Assistant Pie with Echo Dot and Amazon T

Author of Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives   Interview starts at 14:49 and ends at 42:07 You worry about the next generation of readers. Is literature going to survive? It seems to be surviving at the moment, but the iPhone has been around since 2007, and the way that digital culture has taken over in those nine years is staggering. Its’s much more comprehensive and thoroughgoing than anyone expected.   Intro The music of bluegrass legend Peter Rowan News “Apple Thinks It Can Win This Case at the Supreme Court” by Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune - November 3, 2015 Apple’s Supreme Court Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (PDF) - October 28, 2015  “Apple’s $450 million e-books settlement gets final approval” by James Niccolai at PC World - November 22, 2016 “Scripps National Spelling Bee Announces Kindle as New Presenting Sponsor” - press release February 23, 2016 World’s Most Admired Companies in 2016 - Fortune   Tech Tip Dave Slusher podcast episode of Evil Geni

Author of Winter Men   Interview starts at 9:42 and ends at 43:24   I was very scared that it was translated into German. I really wanted it to be translated but still scared, because it’s like their war. I come from another country with another perspective on the war and write about their war and their forefathers. But the reception has been overwhelming. I’ve seen some reviews where they write that every college student should read this book, to read about their past. It’s a lot of responsibility to put on me, but some wrote that they are better able to understand their grandfathers better because of this book. That’s quite amazing.   News Anonymous “Data Guy” of Author Earnings does hourlong video interview with Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast - February 16, 2016 Author Earnings website “Amazon Kindle sales up 200% in India” at The Times of India - February 19, 2016 “Kobo CEO faces uphill e-book battle against Apple, Amazon” at The Globe and Mail - February 19, 2016 Amazon press release o

Chief Executive Officer of The Tattered Cover Book Stores   Interview starts at 10:03 and ends at 42:09   I think it would be interesting for independent booksellers to experiment with selling eBooks directly, because it’s become much less device-centric. Tablets have in some ways normalized that world, and the notion that someone could build an open-source eReader app and that we could have direct relationships with publishers and sell eBooks is something I think worth exploring down the road. But it’s not a part of our core business. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google do what they do really well. For us, we have limited resources and limited brainpower. I’d rather see us make our stores even better than focus a lot of energy on that.   News “Amazon exec to run digital efforts of Italy’s government” by Angel Gonzalez at The Seattle Times - February 10, 2016 Diego Piacentini featured on Amazon employee page “Working at Amazon” web site - includes signup for receiving email updates Amazon organization

Creator of the I Love My Kindle Blog   Interview starts at 10:46 and ends at 44:02 If people were evolving away from reading long-form reading, we would not have series. But right now people will say, “Oh yes, that’s great. It’s a 200-page book, but I want a thousand pages about this character. So I think you can make an argument that people are more into long-form reading that they were in the past.   News “Mall CEO claims Amazon Books will open up to 400 physical storefronts” by Sam Machkovech at ars technica - February 2, 2016 “Amazon Plans Hundreds of Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores, Mall CEO Says” by Greg Bensinger at The Wall Street Journal - February 2, 2016 Business Insider photos of Amazon’s Seattle Book Store - February 3, 2016 “Unsubstantiated Rumor: Amazon to Open as Many as 400 Bookstores” by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader - February 2, 2016 Woody Allen interview in May, 2015 in which he whines about Amazon deal   Tech Tip “Amazon’s Echo speaker can finally order you an Uber” at The Verge -

Editor of Amazon’s Little A imprint and Day One magazine   Interview starts at 18:03 and ends at 42:20   A lot of editors across Amazon Publishing kind of have their hands in Day One. Everyone’s really excited about it and dedicated to discovering these new voices and finding opportunities for new writers. (Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths)   News Amazon.com announces fourth quarter earnings (Press Release) - January 28, 2016 “Amazon Stock Plummets on Disappointing Q4 Results” by Jason Del Rey at re/code - January 28, 2016 “Amazon’s stock dives, but it’s because of a ‘good problem’” by Tracey Lien at The Los Angeles Times - January 29, 2016 “Amazon Prime is growing like crazy” by Jillian D’Onfro at Business Insider - January 25, 2016 “Amazon Prime Grew 35% in 2015” - report (PDF) by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners - January 25, 2016 “How Many Prime Members Does Amazon Have (And Why It Matters)” by Daniel B. Kline at The Motley Fool - January 26, 2016 TV commercials for #BaldwinBowl - Cheerleaders a

Helping authors and publishers flourish in the digital age   Interview starts at 12:44 and ends at 32:05   This question has become a little bit of a litmus test in the writing and publishing community. It’s almost interesting to talk about how other people react very viscerally to Amazon as a good or bad influence or factor. I do consider myself mostly neutral. Nothing about it, I feel, is wholly good or bad. Mainly, it’s just brought about this enormous change. And for some the changes have been good, and for others they’ve been bad. For me personally, the change has been great.   News “The drone invasion now underway” (video) at CBS News - October 18, 2015 “Exclusive: Amazon Reveals Details About Its Crazy Drone Delivery Program” by David Pogue at Yahoo.com - January 18, 2016 “Kindle e-Books will have a warning message if they have spelling or bad formatting” by Michael Kozlowski at Good E-Reader - January 20, 2016 via The Passive Voice. “Is Amazon’s First Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore the Future of Retai

Author of Maude   Interview starts at 15:00 and ends at 44:33 I do have an agent who called me, and he’s representing Maude. She’s been translated into Italian, German, and Russian. He made the deal for the audiobook. He’s right now negotiating with a few more countries. Whatever Kindle and Amazon don’t cover as far as print copies, he will handle that for me. And hopefully some day a motion picture!   News “Amazon Prime Price Drops to $73 This Weekend” at Forbes - January 15, 2016 Prime Discount at Amazon.com “Mozart in the Jungle” at Amazon.com “Amazon to Release Portable Version of Echo Speaker in Coming Weeks” by Greg Bensinger at The Wall Street Journal - January 11, 2016 “Ford, Amazon working to connect cars to smart homes” by Autuan Goodwin at CNET - January 5, 2015 “First Click: Apple should echo Amazon with a Siri speaker” by Thomas Ricker at The Verge - January 14, 2016 Alexa - $179.99 at Amazon.com   Tech Tip IFTT recipe for setting temperature on a NEST thermostat with Alexa IFTT recipe for ha