Light My Kindle

Over on the Mobile Read forums, a user is offering a Kindle publishing special for all NaNoWriMo writers (to read more about National Novel Writing Month, click here).

The poster, named Joshua, is a professional eBook developer specializing in formatting. His website, KindleFormmating.com is offering a special price for NaNoWritMo writers. They will format your novel for publishing on the Kindle for only $40. It looks like his usual price is $40 per hour plus a $50 flat rate for an index linked to page locations.

You can visit the Mobile Read Forums to view his post, or visit his NaNoWriMo page for more details.

Breaking news! Thanks to the Oprah-induced discount on the Kindle, the Kindle is currently sold out for the first time in months.

Another Kindle-related blog broke the news earlier today. This is huge news for Amazon, and a bigger response than I ever imagined Oprah could cause with her support of the Kindle as her favorite gadget.

At this point it looks like Kindles are shipping in 2-3 weeks, so you might want to order one now if you’re planning on giving one as a Christmas gift.

About a week ago I wrote about Oprah declaring the Kindle as her favorite gadget. I was interested to see how her choice would affect one of my favorite blogs, Living Oprah. In case you haven’t heard of it, Living Oprah is a project run by a woman who is following Oprah’s advice to the letter. Everything on her show, her website and in her magazine is fair game. If Oprah says to exercise five times a week, she’s doing it. If Oprah says to buy Celine Dion tickets, she’s doing it (and actually has).

LO (as she signs her posts) had a very interesting day the day Oprah announced the Kindle as her favorite gadget. You can read all about it on LivingOprah.com, but here’s an excerpt:

Oprah told us, “I just love it…” While she, of course, gave them to her audience (each already containing her newest Book Club pick), she told us at home to get one “if you can afford it.” I start to consider how I will broach the subject with my husband when he gets home from work.

LO received a call that her caller ID identified as “The Oprah Show” and was told that an employee was downstairs with a package for her.

I met a woman downstairs who had a wrapped package for me. It’s clearly the same package that Oprah’s audience all opened, containing a Kindle. I looked at this package and said, “I know what this is.” I thanked her and asked her to tell Oprah thank you. I think I also said something along the lines of, “Well this has turned into an odd morning.”

When I got back up to my apartment, I opened the package. There was a Oprah Winfrey notecard with the Kindle. It read:

Enjoy Robin(sic),

Wanted to save you a few dollars on this one!

Thanks for watching.

Oprah Winfrey (This was her actual signature.)

Go to on LivingOprah.com to read the rest of this fascinating post. You won’t believe what happened next.

I’ve been fascinated with the Living Oprah project for a couple of months now, despite not really being an Oprah fan myself. I read it daily, and definitely recommend it to anyone else.

Are there any Oprah fans out there that were influenced to buy a Kindle by her choosing it as her favorite gadget?

As mentioned before, Oprah chose the Kindle as her new favorite gadget. As a gift to potential Kindle customers, Oprah and Amazon have provided a $50 discount through November 1st. According to Engadget, if you enter the code OPRAHWINFREY at checkout, you’ll receive a $50 discount.

This is an excellent promotion for Amazon. Not only did Oprah tell her legions of fans that she loves the Kindle, but the $50 discount will seal the deal for hesitant buyers.

Sony announced a new reader featuring a touchscreen, which will allow readers to turn pages with the swipe of a finger (much like you can flip through photos on an iPhone or iTouch). It has larger storage capacity than the Kindle (about 350 books, compared to Kindle’s 200), but still doesn’t have the wireless connection that makes the Kindle so special.

The new reader will be approximately $400, making it more expensive than the Kindle’s current $359 price. Whether a touchscreen is worth it to new e-reader purchasers is yet to be seen. Personally, I’d prefer to read my books without fingerprints all over them.

Read more about the new Sony PRS-700 at Tech News World.

The Silicon Alley Insider wrote an article yesterday about the Amazon Kindle starting to pass “the subway test.” The subway test is simply that more Kindles have been seen “in the wild” on subways, commuter trains, and the like.

As a Kindle owner, I’d have to agree. I’ve seen at least a few people on my commuter train with Kindles, including one yesterday evening who discussed her Kindle with me. She’s had it for six weeks and enjoys using it for travel and for reading books that she doesn’t need to pass on to another reader. (I share that sentiment in that I have a hard time reading James Patterson novels on the Kindle because I so often share them with my mother and my mother-in-law.)

Any other commuters seeing Kindles popping up more frequently in fellow commuter’s hands?

A site called the Boy Genius Report claims to have pictures of the second generation Kindle. While Amazon hasn’t announced anything yet, the photos appear real, and the device itself doesn’t look like a fake.

Assuming the pictures are real, however, there seems little reason to buy the new one if you already own a Kindle. It’s approximately the same size as the original Kindle, maybe even a smidge bigger. The buttons are all pretty much the same, except the keyboard is now one continuous keyboard (rather than having the break in the middle) and the scroll wheel has morphed into a joystick (what for?). The back of the thing is awful - it looks like the back of an iPhone: silver, fingerprint-attracting, and probably really cold while waiting for a train in the middle of December.

The one improvement that I do appreciate is the addition of rounded corners. Sometimes when I’m reading my Kindle outside of the included case, the corners poke into my palms. It wasn’t enough to hurt, or to dissuade me from using my Kindle, but it is enough to annoy me. However, I won’t be buying a second generation Kindle just for rounded corners.

While the pictures appear legitimate, I am worried about a slight smudge that appears just to the left of where the Amazon Kindle logo appears on the current Kindle. Check out the bottom row of pictures in their gallery to see what I mean.

Check out the article and the photo gallery for yourself.

As a current Kindle owner, would the changes entice you to upgrade? If you don’t currently own a Kindle, are the changes enough to convince you to buy one?

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.

Ever wanted to see the insides of your Kindle? Now you can without taking it apart yourself. CNet took apart a Kindle and posted the pictures on their site.

It’s a pretty informative post about what all the shiny pieces are and how they help your Kindle be one of the coolest gadgets out there.

Check out news.CNet.com for the pictures.

Engadget caught a screenshot of a recent Verizon commercial with a special guest star - a Kindle! The commercial is an obvious ripoff of the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” commercials starring Justin Long, with the contrast being the “supercool” Verizon guy and the “lame” cable guy. The Verizon guy, for reasons unknown, is carrying a Kindle. Check out a piece of the screenshot below, and go to Engadget for the full video.