Light My Kindle

National Novel Writing Month occurs in November each year and inspires tens of thousands of people to write novels within thirty days. This is the tenth year of National Novel Writing Month.

According to the NaNoWriMo website (as it’s shortened to), National Novel Writing Month is,

a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

I think the introduction of the Kindle may help independent authors in getting their first books published. NaNoWriMo is a great kick in the pants to those of you thinking about publishing your first novel on the Kindle, or otherwise.

If you’d like to participate, you can sign up and track your progress at NaNoWriMo.com. Novel writing ends at midnight on November 30th, so start thinking about your novel now!

With baseball season winding down, I thought it only appropriate to feature a new book by a baseball player. Josh Hamilton, center fielder for the Texas Rangers, has written a book called Beyond Belief. The Amazon description reads,

Josh Hamilton was the first player chosen in the first round of the 1999 baseball draft. He was known not only for his gargantuan homeruns, his speed on the bases and his fielding talent but also for his caring and humble character. He was destined to be one of those rare “high-character ” superstars. But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors,-all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness. What followed was a 4-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball.

Hamilton most recently hit the most homeruns in a single round of the home run derby with 28. For baseball fans, and fans of true-life recovery stories, Beyond Belief Kindle Edition is available now.

The official Amazon Kindle blog announced that through the end of today you can download Stephen Windwalker’s The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle for free. The book explores all the wonderful things you can do with your Kindle, such as access your email, use Google Notebook, and even publish your own Kindle books.

I’m a big fan of Gregory Maguire, the author behind Wicked, which was turned into a Tony-winning Broadway musical. His latest book is called A Lion Among Men and continues the Wizard of Oz-based stories that he started with Wicked and continued with Son of a Witch.
Amazon’s description of the novel reads,

A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald City’s approaching armies. What does the Lion know of the whereabouts of the Witch’s boy, Liir? What can Yackle reveal about the auguries of the Clock of the Time Dragon? And what of the Grimmerie, the magic book that vanished as quickly as Elphaba?

The book was released this week, and is available in hardcover. Hopefully it will be available on the Kindle soon. If you’d like to read A Lion Among Men on the Kindle, be sure to click the request button on the hardcover product page. Since I haven’t read it, I can’t recommend it (yet), however I can say that Wicked is one of my favorite novels.

UPDATE: A Lion Among Men is now available in a Kindle Edition.

I’m a huge Stephen King fan (as any casual reader of this site knows), so I was thrilled to see that his new collection of short stories, Just After Sunset, is available for pre-order on the Kindle.

I didn’t even know it was possible to pre-order Kindle books. After all, they don’t get shipped. I think it’s fantastic, though, that you can pre-order a Kindle book and have it arrive the day it’s available. I will definitely be on the lookout for more Kindle books to pre-order now that I know.

Amazon’s description reads:

Just After Sunset-call it dusk, call it twilight, it’s a time when human intercourse takes on an unnatural cast, when nothing is quite as it appears, when the imagination begins to reach for shadows as they dissipate to darkness and living daylight can be scared right out of you. It’s the perfect time for Stephen King.

Click here to pre-order Just After Sunset for your Kindle. It’s also available for pre-order in hardcover. Both will be available on November 11, 2008.

All the Harry Potter fans can be happy that there will be one more piece of Rowling-approved Potter literature in the world soon. According to The MTV Movies Blog, J.K. Rowling has written the introduction to a new novel called Harry, A History. The book is written by Melissa Anelli and recounts the craze surrounding the Harry Potter books.

Anelli is the webmistress of The Leaky Cauldron, a Harry Potter fansite. Rowling not only wrote the intro to the book, but also gave Anelli tips on authorship, as well as encouragement and exclusive interviews.

Harry, A History will be available on November 4th. Unfortunately it is not yet available for the Kindle, but you can request it using the Kindle request button on the Amazon page.

Personally, I’m looking forward to reading about the <b>Potter</b> phenomenon. I’m sure as the webmistress for one of the most popular fansites Anelli will have unique insights into the hardcore fans.

There was a time when I was incapable of walking into a Barnes & Noble without spending $50. I loved to wander the aisles and find books I never would have sought out on my own. It’s how I started reading Christopher Moore’s books (the cover of You Suck drew me in like a moth to a flame). But things started to change…

My betrayal of Barnes & Noble started the day the Kindle was announced. It was love at first sight. Even the advertisement with the Kindle leaning next to a stack of books seemed aimed directly at me. Not only did the Kindle look sleek and super-gadgety next to the stack of enormous books, but I had just purchased two of those books at Barnes & Noble (Freakonomics and Lisey’s Story). I have yet to read one of them (Lisey’s Story) because of its ridiculous weight. I can’t read it on the train because it weighs more than the rest of the things in my bag combined. I can’t read it while lounging on the couch because I just don’t have the arm strength to hold that giant book over my head for more than fifteen minutes.

The mind-cheating continued as I lusted after the sold-out Kindle. I desperately wanted to drop $400 and wait my turn in line to get one. But I was saving for a wedding, and had another gadget to buy for my husband-to-be as a wedding present (a Canon Rebel XTi, if you must know). Luckily, he noticed my gadget lust, despite frequent trips to Barnes & Noble. He bought me a Kindle for a wedding gift. And while it was still sold out, the Kindle arrived promptly when we got back from our honeymoon.

The unboxing was a beautiful thing. Oh look! It comes in a fake book! How clever! Oooh…a leather cover. And look at that screen! Have you ever seen anything like it?

As I said, it was love at first sight.

Within minutes I had connected the Kindle to my Amazon account and had purchased my first Kindle book – On Writing by Stephen King (read my review here). I had been meaning to read this book for years, and within seconds I owned it, and I hadn’t even put my shoes on. I could tell the Kindle and I were going to be friends.

But what of my former love, Barnes & Noble? She didn’t sell Kindle books. After owning the Kindle for a couple of months, I had worked out this great system where I was constantly reading one book on the Kindle and one “real” book (to get through the stacks of books I had purchased at Barnes & Noble over the past couple of years, and never got around to reading). It was working so well…until a few days ago.

I was in Barnes & Noble spending a gift card I received for my birthday (everyone knows of my love affair with B&N). I had been thinking of picking up Jesse Kellerman’s new book, since I’m a big fan of his dad’s work. But when I saw the $24.99 price tag (which I wouldn’t have hesitated paying pre-Kindle), I immediately said to my husband, “It’ll only be $10 on the Kindle” and I put it back on the shelf. Worse, if I had been carrying my Kindle in my bag, as I usually do, I would have been able to purchase it, or add it to my Saved For Later list before even leaving the store.

So, while my love for Barnes & Noble hasn’t dimmed – I still go there and roam the aisles, or sit in the attached Starbucks (albeit reading my Kindle), and I even still buy the occasional book there – my Kindle has become my first love in books. It brings the bookstore to me, charges me less, and lets me carry all my books, magazines, and newspapers in one small 10 ounce package.

Make your Kindle versions of books available at the same time as the print version. Pretty please?

I was extremely excited to see that Lewis Black had a new book coming out (titled Me of Little Faith). He is one of my top five favorite comedians, and I enjoyed his last book, Nothing’s Sacred. Naturally, once the book came out I searched for it in the Kindle Store. Unfortunately it wasn’t available.

I assumed that the publisher wasn’t going to make it available, and the next time I was in Barnes & Noble I paid the full retail price of $24.99 (minus my 10% B&N Member discount, of course). I didn’t mind paying that amount because I enjoy Lewis Black’s stand-up comedy and I knew I would enjoy the book.

Just a few short days after I finished reading the book, however, I spotted it in my Recommended For You section on my Amazon.com home page…in a Kindle edition. I was disappointed, because I would have liked to have read it on the Kindle (especially for the $9.99 price).

The moral of this story is that had the publisher made the book available in Kindle form at the same time as the print version, I would have bought the Kindle edition. I would think this would be beneficial to publishers thanks to the extremely low cost of production compared to the print version.

Lewis Black’s publishers aren’t the only ones. The highly anticipated Stephenie Meyer novel Breaking Dawn, the fourth in the Twilight series, was released in bookstores on August 2nd. The Kindle version (and other e-book formats) weren’t released until August 3rd. This obviously upset some fans. Some probably rushed out to join the midnight madness parties and bought the print version. Others, particularly those that aren’t hardcore fans, may have waited it out to see if/when the e-book version would be available. For a less anticipated book, some might have forgotten about it and wound up not buying any version. It’s something publishers should keep in mind when scheduling releases.

Amazon had a very special announcement for today, the birthday of fictional character Harry Potter and his creator J.K. Rowling. On December 4th, fans will be able to buy the story-within-a-story The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The book of fairy tales is featured as part of the storyline of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Rowling hand-wrote a handful of copies to be auctioned off for charity back in December 2007 (Amazon purchased one of the original copies.). Fans were thrilled that she had actually thought about the content of the fairy tales, but sorely disappointed that few would ever have the chance to read them.

On December 4th, 2008, fans will be able to purchase either the Standard Edition or the Amazon-Exclusive Collector’s Edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

The Standard Edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard includes:

• All five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard
• A new introduction by J.K. Rowling
• Illustrations reproduced from the original handcrafted book
• Commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore

The absolutely gorgeous Amazon-Exclusive Collector’s Edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard (seen above) includes:

• All five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard
• Outer case disguised as a wizarding textbook from the Hogwarts library
• Exclusive reproduction of J.K. Rowling’s handwritten introduction
• 10 new illustrations by J.K. Rowling not included in the Standard Edition or the original handcrafted edition
• Velvet bag embroidered with J.K. Rowling’s signature
• Metal skull, corners, and clasp
• Replica gemstones
• Emerald ribbon

The Standard Edition is only $8, and the beautiful Collector’s Edition is a fairly reasonable $100. Both are available for preorder now. You can get them on Amazon. No mention has been made of a Kindle version, but for a book with illustrations and such a beautiful collector’s edition, I doubt many would buy a Kindle version.

Julia Keller of The Chicago Tribune wrote a fantastic article about the connection readers feel with books, and why it’s so hard to abandon an unfinished book. She points out that turning off a TV show, walking out of a movie theater, and walking out of a play somehow make you feel less guilty than abandoning a book you just can’t get into.

I know exactly what she means. I have been trying to get into The Ruins on and off for about four months now. I never finished reading Stephen King’s The Stand because I read it when I was eleven-years-old and I was bored. I also never finished King’s short story The Sun Dog (from Four Past Midnight) because I was eleven-years-old and too scared to turn the next page. I never finished The Great Gatsby, even though it was assigned for my tenth-grade English class. And I have a biography of Dave Grohl (lead singer of Foo Fighters) that I put down three years ago and never bothered to pick back up.

All of them make me feel guilty. The author has her own list included in the article, and I’d bet every avid reader has a similar list of books they just couldn’t finish. She points out,

To abandon a book feels all wrong. If you do it, you look around warily, half-expecting to see your middle-school English teacher in the corner, giving you a gravely disappointed glare.

That’s only the half of it, really. While you do feel guilty in that “I didn’t do my homework” kind of way, not being able to finish a book has a stronger effect, at least on me. You know that elated feeling you get when you finish a good book? I get the exact opposite when I think of the books I never finished - I feel like I let myself down. The author seems to feel similarly:

Certain books just don’t grab you. So you let them go. But they never really go away, those cast-aside books, because their forlorn covers haunt your sleep. And sometimes, late at night, you could swear you hear them offering a sad little plea: “Can’t we try it just one more time?”

I have a hope that the Try a Sample feature of the Kindle Store will prevent me from starting books I don’t want to finish. At least I’ll be able to sample the writer’s style and a little of the story before spending money on a book.

You can read the entire article (which mentions the Kindle) on ChicagoTribune.com.