The Kindle Chronicles

Author of This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See Interview starts at 13:06 and ends at 45:08 “I have a bunch of regrets about how Amazon is steering the boat these days. One of the things I think they dropped the ball on is they’ve had a hundred opportunities to make Kindle a social platform, and they have dropped it. And they shouldn’t, because that is a really useful transformation--to be able to say ‘Where are the other thousand people who highlighted this? How can I have a discussion with them?’ That’s magic, and you can’t do it.” (Photo by Brian Bloom) News Amazon earnings release Om Malik on Amazon earnings release Tech Tip How to load the Google Play Store onto your Fire tablet    Interview with Seth Godin Seth Godin’s blog and The Marketing Seminar This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin Genius (formerly known as Rap Genius) commentary by Seth Godin on his book The Purple Cow What to Do When It’s Your Turn (and It’s Always Your Turn) by Seth G

Author of Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives Interview starts at 15:43 and ends at 43:50 “You can be super clever and have all your tricks, but fundamentally everything in your life is crowding out something else in your life. At some point you have to choose, and the choice should be thoughtful.” News “The Prime Challenges for Amazon’s New Delivery Robot” by Matt Simon and Arielle Pardes Gear at Wired - January 23, 2019 “Meet Scout: Field testing a new delivery system with Amazon Scout” by Sean Scott at Amazon’s Day One blog - January 23, 2019 Tech Tip Starbucks Reorder skill for Alexa Interview with Tim Harford Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Harford “How frustration can make us more creative” - TED talk by Tim Harford in September, 2015 “Tim Harford: how behavioral economics helped kick my phone addiction” at The Financial Times - January 17, 2019 (Behind paywall, try Googling the title) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal New

Project Manager for MobiScribe reader/writer by TeamUC Interview starts at 18:37 and ends at 41:06 “It’s basically going to be like a Kindle that you can write on. If you’ve ever had your work documents on the Kindle it must be frustrating, because you feel like you can’t write on your work documents even though you have it in a meeting. So now we have PDF annotation integrated into the device as well as a separate note-taking software.” Comments Open Road Integrated Media list of eBooks, by category Sprocket Photo Paper and camera from Hewlett Packard Polaroid Swinger camera, circa 1965 (Wikipedia) “Alexa gains support for location-based reminders and routines, calling features and more” by Sarah Perez at TechCrunch - December, 2018 News The challenge of covering the Bezos divorce for The Washington Post  - Vanity Fair January 14, 2019 “Ghosts of former Sears buildings could become shiny new Whole Foods” at The Takeout - January 11, 2019 “Amazon is holding a public version of its secretive MARS conferen

Author of Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies Interview starts at 18:51and ends at 43:30 “So much of this stuff that, when we watch 2001 today, makes it feel fresh, makes it still feel futuristic was way ahead of its time at the time that the movie was created." News “The ‘Future Book’ is Here, But It’s Not What We Expected” by Craig Mod at Wired - December 20, 2018 Amazon Showroom - TechCrunch story Amazon Key for Garage - Verge story Echo Auto is shipping - TechCrunch story Amazon pilot project with free samples - Axios story Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos to divorce - WSJ story Tech Tip Readwise now has autosync of your highlights Interview with Dave Addey Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies Content Freedive, the new IMDB streaming service WSJ 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

Chief Marketing Officer at Open Road Integrated Media Interview starts at 9:51 and ends at 38:35 “I do think we’re unusual in that we consistently continue to market these books day in and day out for many years. I think that’s the benefit we bring to our partners in the Open Road Ignition program, that we are taking those eBooks that they don’t have time or resources to market in an ongoing way and doing it on their behalf.” News “Amazon, to Win in Booming Rural India, Reinvents Itself” by Eric Bellman at The Wall Street Journal - December 31, 2018 Russ Grandinetti interviewed for Amazon’s Day One Blog - November 14, 2017 “Hiring for Amazon’s Alexa team massively outpaces that of Apple’s Siri” by James Mattone at Thinknum - January 3, 2019 “Alexa, what’s a screen pass? Amazon speaker can teach football to casual NFL fans” by Edward C. Baig at USA Today - January 3, 2019 Tech Tip Alexa voice commands for Hulu Interview with Mary McAveney Open Road Integrated Media “New Life for Old Classics, as Their C

Forbes contributor & co-founder of Omni Talk blog Interview starts at 7:33 and ends at 41:04 “2018 was a watershed year in terms of how things transpired. This to me was really the year you saw Amazon try to become a physical retailer.” News Amazon holiday press release - December 26, 2018 Sphero Mini Blue: The App-Controlled Robot Ball Tech Tip Calibre Recomendo Fakespot Fakespot Chrome extension Interview with Chris Walton Omni Talk blog “Amazon’s New Mall of America Installation is Absolutely Fabulous” by Chris Walton at Forbes - October 2, 2018 Ryan ToysReview (YouTube channel with 17 million subscribers) “The Nuance of Implicit Vs. Explicit Search Could Be Amazon’s Achilles Heel” by Chris Walton at Forbes - November 20, 2018 Amazon Spark Glossier Amazon Treasure Truck Robomart Zume Pizza Content Moby Dick: Complete and Unabridged (Illustrated with Included Audiobook) - 99 cents at Amazon.com Next Week’s Guest Dave Addey, author of Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fictio

Creator of Calibre Interview starts at 9:53 and ends at 43:03 “So the first and most important thing that is different between a Calibre library and your Kindle collection is that you actually own the books in your Calibre library, whereas you stream them from Amazon for your Kindle collection. ” News Bradley Metrock on Barnes & Noble Will Amazon buy Target? Jefferson Graham’s Talking Tech podcast (look for episode dated December 18, 2018) Amazon Treasure Truck Rocketbook Everlast Smart Reusable Notebook Tech Tip How to play Apple Music on Amazon Echo devices - Business Insider Moby Dick by Herman Melville at Standard EBooks Vector robot from Anki Interview with Kovid Goyal Calibre Calibre listing of eBooks free of Digital Rights Management Next Week’s Guest Chris Walton, an original thinker in retail strategy and frequent Forbes contributor Debut of “Ocean Park Blues” Click here for a free download of my debut song, “Ocean Park Blues,” recorded this week at The Bridge Sound & Stage in Cambridge

TV news anchor and author of the Traveler series Interview starts at 10:21 and ends at 41:59 “Writing is a muscle, I think. If you don’t use it you lose that. Because I write every day both creatively and for my job, I think that’s part of what helps me to write as much as I do as quickly as I do. I write under deadline, so creating my own self-imposed deadlines is pretty easy. It’s just instead of having a time deadline I have a word-count deadline or a date. I think doing one every day actually helps doing the other every day.” News “Amazon has Thrown in the Towel on a Third Bookstore” by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader - December 7, 2018 Amazon’s physical stores “Amazon Kindle Audible Bundle is now available” by Michael Kozlowski at Good E-Reader - December 9, 2018 Kindle Paperwhite Audible bundle - $139 Tech Tip “You can now ask Amazon Alexa to read your email messages and respond by voice--here’s how” by Todd Haselton at CNBC - December 10, 2018 Interview with Tom Abrahams Tom Abrahams author p

Author of We Miss All the Great Parties Interview starts at 2:12 and ends at 35:59 “I had this traditionalist view that I wanted to hold the paper book and feel the turning of the page. I was absolutely wrong in my assumptions. Reading on an eReader felt like reading. It was still this sort of cuddly, warm, meditative, reflective experience. I could sit and read for hours on it. It fit in my jacket pocket, and I could take it with me, and I found that I was reading more when I had my digital reader.” News “Amazon Prime Health is coming, according to an early investor” by Mark Sullivan at FastCompany - November 30, 2018 Morning Consult picks Amazon as the most-loved brand in the U.S. Interview with David Hopkins “How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization: The one where we retain our sanity in a stupid world” by David Hopkins at Medium - March 22, 2016 Articles published by David Hopkins in D Magazine David Hopkins at Medium “Friends” on Netflix Pod Save America “The Unfortunate Appeal o

Host of the Kindle Chronicles News “Amazon gets into the blockchain with Quantum Ledger Database & Managed Blockchain” by Sara Perez at TechCrunch - November 28, 2018 Bitcoin Price Plummets CoinBase (my app of choice for buying Bitcoin) “Apple Music to launchy on Amazon Echo speakers” by Tim Bradsha at The Financial Times - November 29, 2018 “Introducing medical language processing with Amazon Comprehend Medical” by Dr. Taha A. Kass-Hout and Dr. Matt Wood at the AWS blog - November 27, 2018 Being Mortal by Atul Gawande eBook promotions on Black Friday in Poland Ask Me Anything (AMA) links 2010 TKC episode recorded at Tau Game Lodge in South Africa (audio only) TKC 378 Hola from Ecuador!s TKC 529 interview with author Scott Pratt, recorded at Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford, Maine TKC 336 interview with poet John Ashbery Next Week’s Guest Tom Abrahams, author of Home: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 1) Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk co

Vice Principal and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Interview starts at 2:28 and ends at 38:32 “Nobody can see the future, but what we can see from the past is that it unfolds according to certain properties. What [Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and Its Enemies] wrote that was so compelling was that the best properties to help that unfold in the best way are properties of experimentation, of testing, of openness, of collaboration, of letting people try what people do in an environment where they get feedback from the marketplace and then they can respond.” Interview with James McQuivey Bradley Metrock’s This Week in Voice interview with Brian Roemmelle, starting at Roemelle’s estimate that Amazon has 10,000 people working on Alexa. November 15, 2018 Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation by James McQuivey Paleo cheese puffs by LesserEvil at Amazon.com Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict O

Amazon Books Senior Editor Interview starts at 12:44 and ends at 39:11 “We often talk about accessibility. We start there. We talk about quality of writing. The story is important, obviously. Maybe the thing that gets you over the line is your visceral reaction to the book. How much are you willing to argue for it? You win some, and you lose some. Ultimately I think we come up with a great list. Every book on the Top 20 is a great book.” News Amazon’s announcement of HQ2 Jeff Bezos tells employees that one day Amazon will fail. (CNBC) Author Scott Pratt dies in an auto accident (The Passive Voice) The Sins of the Mother by Scott Pratt and Mark Stout Richard Hollick’s sensible take on HQ2 (Making Book) Amazon’s Black Friday Week deals Tech Tip Amazon Key Home Delivery Interview with Chris Schluep Amazon Best Books of 2018 list The Amazon Book Review Podcast, available via iTunes Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Content Amazon’s Best Books of 2018 Next Week’s Guest James McQu

Author of the Breakthrough series Interview starts at 9:36 and ends at 40:28 News Amazon to split HQ2 between two cities (Wall Street Journal) Amazon announces free shipping with no minimum purchase for the holidays My video of a dunk test for the all-new Kindle Paperwhite plus Darlene’s comments Interview with Michael C. Grumley Breakthrough series by Michael C. Grumley: Breakthrough, Leap, Catalyst, and Ripple Words with Friends “Could we speak the language of dolphins?” TED2013 talk by Denise Herzing “Can we really do it? The language of dolphins could be translated by 2012” by Michael C. Grumley - May 8, 2017 Content Amazon Book Review podcast The Washington Post recommends 10 books to read in November Comments CZUR scanner Next Week’s Guest Chris Schluep, Amazon’s Senior Editor for books, talking about his team’s picks for the best books of 2018. For those interested in our experience with a Tesla Model 3, I uploaded a new episode of The Edge of the Road Podcast detailing some minor problems wit

Vice President, Macmillan Podcasts & QDT Interview starts at 9:43 and ends at 40:01 “We can think of podcasting as an entry point to audiobooks. They are less of a commitment, they are free, they can actually give you great insights into book discovery. Podcasts can move at a more rapid pace.” News Jeff Bezos in Cambridge! Black Friday deals Harlequin makes an eReader platform change 4-Star Amazon store coming to Denver Tech Tip Live Ballot on Alexa Interview with Kathy Doyle Macmillan Podcasts “How to Listen to a Podcast with Ira and Mary” (YouTube) - October 3, 2014 Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips Mignon Fogarty author page at Amazon.com I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics podcast Steal the Stars podcast, audiobook, and novel But That’s Another Story podcast with Will Schwalbe The Savvy Psychologist podcast with Ellen Hendriksen, PhD How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety by Ellen Hendriksen, PhD and Audiobook Dirty John show Panoply podcast network Nutrition

Site Reliability Engineering Lead at Shopify Interview starts at 10:07 and ends at 43:36 “If someone were to come around with some hardware that was even 50 percent worse than the Kindle but was opened up for easy highlight consumption, making it easier to see what highlights my friends have done, and all these sorts of things--I would switch in a heartbeat. ” News “Amazon Kindle versus iPhone XS Max: choosing the best e-book reader” at AppleInsider - October 24, 2018 “Jeff Bezos wants us all to leave earth--for good” by Steven Levy at Wired - October 15, 2018 Interview with Simon Eskildsen “How I Read” by Simon Eskildsen at his blog - July, 2018 Shopify The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander (not available on Kindle) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro Listen Notes Readwise Doing Good Better by William MacAskill Content Heavenly Body by Stephanie Edgerly (my sister) was released this week at the Kindle Store for $5.49. Highly recommended! Next

Joerg Tewes, Head of Kindle Product Management, and Kevin Keith, VP Amazon Devices New Paperwhite at Amazon.com Kevin Keith, VP-Amazon Devices Joerg Tewes, Head of Product Management for Kindle Press Release on new Paperwhite - October 16, 2018 Click here to check for software updates for your Kindle or Fire device Next Week’s Guest Simon Hørup Eskildsen, author of “How I Read” 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! Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

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, launch Fortnite” at Amazon’s Dayone blog - October 11, 2018 “Xbox One bundles at Amazon will come with a new Echo Dot for free” by Emily Heller at Polygon - October 12, 2018 “Amazon patents new Alexa feature that knows when you’re ill and offers you medicine” by James Cook at The Telegraph - October 9, 2018 Interview with Dave Slusher Evil Genius Chronicles (Patreon page) ServiceNow’s NowForum in Sydney, Australia Dave Slusher’s blog post on building a book scanner - September 25, 2018 DIY Book Scanner Forum Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking by R. Buckminster Fuller Music for my podcast is from a

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 Chronicles podcast 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! Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

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 Jeffrey Van Camp at Wired - September 23, 2018 Dan Seifert’s first impressions of new Echo Show and other devices Interview with Paul Slavin Open Road Integrated Media Author Earnings Open Road newsletters Next Week’s Show David Peach and I will bring you highlights from Digital Book World 2018 in Nashville 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! Right-click here and then click "Sa

               Author of the Joe Dillard and Darren Street series Scott 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 Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.