Amazon Kindle App For Windows Phone 7 Launches
After weeks of anticipation, Amazon has finally released their Kindle ebook reading application on the Windows Phone 7 platform. The application, that seems to have been made public just hours ago, will be free to download and measures 1.36MB in size. The Amazon Kindle app for WP7 will give users access to over 750,000 Kindle books that includes new releases and close to 107 of the 111 best sellers from the New York Times list. Amazon also notes on their app description that 550,000 of these books will be priced $9.99 or lower.
Given that the app was only recently released, there are no comments as yet. But if you are looking to download the app or read more about the application, you can do so by clicking this link. As always, let us know your views on this app in the comments below.
Amazon Kindle Book Lending Now Available – A Social Network Of Book Readers In The Offing?
Amazon has announced a new feature to Kindle that will let users “lend” ebooks to their friends. The feature is not universal and it is upon the publisher to decide whether or not to allow lending for any particular book. Books that are lending-compatible will now display a new ‘Loan Book‘ that users can click to lend the books to their friends – by entering their name and email address.
The recipient need not be a Kindle owner and can access the loaned book on any Kindle compatible device or application. However, books can only be loaned once and for a period of 14 days – possibly a move to encourage users to purchase their favorite books.
While it is too early to judge the future of this service, there is a good chance that Amazon may be looking at building a “network of book readers” using this feature. By letting book lovers lend/borrow books, Amazon can be mining data of the users’ book-loving friends and this could eventually bring about a social network for book readers.
Would you like to see such a network?
Apple iPad 2 Launch – iPad Shipment For December Down
Concord Equity research analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has come up with a new report where he claims that Apple could be slowing down on the shipment of new iPad units from its suppliers ahead of the launch of the new iPad – rumored to happen in February next year.
According to a note sent to investors, Kuo has claimed that iPad shipments for December amounted close to 1.6 million units that was significantly lower than the 2.1 million units shipped in November this year.
What this has meant is that Amazon Kindle has been able to expand from being a niche player in the segment to becoming a more mass-market player. Kuo points out that shipments of Kindle matched with those of the iPad in December with the Amazon eReader expected to sell as many as 4.5 million units in the first quarter of next year.
Anyway, of interest is the shipment numbers for iPad. Given the February timeline for the launch of iPad 2, we wonder if Apple Stores would start reporting depleting inventory as we head to the new year. Do you see such a thing in your neighborhood store? Tell us in the comments.
Can Amazon Bestsellers List Be Gamed? New Kindle Book Tells How
Amazon’s proprietary algorithm that ranks and offers recommendation to book readers has always been a matter of debate. While there has been several accusations in the past about the company turning a blind eye to authors gaming the system to reach the bestsellers’ list, nothing much has come out of it until now. However, a recent book – ironically available for purchase on Amazon Kindle – tells us the exact methodology that one needs to pursue to ensure that their books top the bestsellers chart on Amazon.
In the book, author Thomas Hertog claims to have successfully got his previous book – “Wealth Hazards” – to reach the #1 on the bestsellers’ list in the personal finance category although he barely sold 32 copies in 45 days of launch. Hertog points out that his gaming technique helped him overtake genuine bestselling authors like Robert Kiyosaki, Andrew Tobias and Dave Ramsey who have sold more than 50 million books. How did he do it? Hertog explains,
“I discovered how Amazon ranks book sales, customer reviews, comments on reviews, books that other buyers bought, and creates Amazon recommendations. Then I bought and downloaded to my Kindle one hundred and seventy-three times my own book Wealth Hazards, wrote numerous five-star customer reviews, and voted on how helpful or unhelpful reviews were in making a purchasing decision. I did this everyday on Amazon for nearly five months.”
Hertog has summarized his experiences on his book, “The Day the Kindle Died“, that can be purchased on Amazon by clicking here. It is a real eye-opener to the way Amazon ranks books besides letting us rethink the way Amazon could be violating the users’ privacy to mine valuable data using simple bookmarking tools like WhisperSync.
Did you read the book? Tell us your views on this debate in the comments below.
New Kindle 3 Is Now Most Popular Product On Amazon [All Time]
Amazon has announced that its third generation Kindle e-Reader is now the best-selling product worldwide over their eCommerce portal. In a media statement released yesterday, Amazon has said that the device has overtaken “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (book 7)” to create this record.
The milestone comes just five months after the launch of the new generation device. Amazon currently offers two variants of their new Kindle – a Wi-Fi only version at $139 and another 3G-enabled device at a price of $189. Not too surprisingly, a big chunk of the sale appears to have come during the holiday shopping season.
Amazon has revealed that the company sold as many as 13.7 million items across all product categories on November 29th – that’s a massive 158 products sold per second. Amazon is expected to sell out 8 million units of the Kindle by the end of this year.
Amazon Launches ‘Give Kindle Books’ For Easy Ebook Gifting
Looking to buy a nice book for your friend as a holiday gift? You could get them a Kindle ebook instead. Amazon has launched a new feature that will make it easy for users to gift friends and family members with a Kindle ebook even if the recipient does not own a Kindle device. Apparently, all that the user needs to provide is the recipient’s email address.
The new ‘Give Kindle Books‘ feature will apparently let the recipient download the ebook on any of the Kindle supported platforms including the Kindle eReader, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Mac, Blackberry or Android devices. While this is definitely a great way to simplify book gifting, it could prove to be quite a hassle for the recipient if they do not own a Kindle compatible device already. That, in my opinion, brings down the utility of this service.
Nevertheless, if you are keen on giving this service a try, check out this link here.
Amazon Kindle Publisher Revenue Share Raised To 70%
Amazon has introduced a major change to its publisher agreement for Kindle devices. According to the new agreement, Kindle Magazine and Newspaper publishers shall stand to earn as much as 70% of the publication’s retail price – net of delivery costs. For a perspective, until now, it was Amazon that cornered close to 70% of the earnings. The new agreement is set to get into effect starting December 1.
Getting into the new 70:30 agreement is not going to be easy. Publishers who want to sell their content with the new revenue share model should ensure that their publications are compatible with all Kindle devices and applications. Also, they should be accessible from all geographies where the publisher has rights to sell. This is clearly in an attempt to ensure that Amazon Kindle users continue to enjoy the nearly device-agnostic accessibility of Kindle content.
The higher revenue share should pep up the newspaper industry that has been facing stiff challenges with respect to monetizing their digital content better. The new agreement should thus be welcomed by these publishers.
Amazon Kindle App For Windows Phone 7 Releasing
Amazon has announced that a Kindle eReader app for the newly launched Windows Phone 7 platform is coming very soon. The application will come with all of the features that users have to come expect from a Kindle app that includes the WhisperSync technology, access to the Kindle ebook store, integrated shopping experience as well as other features like the ability to find personalized book recommendations plus the facility to send these recommendations to friends right from the app interface.
With WhisperSync, users may buy a book once and be able to sync the purchase with any of the other Kindle supported devices including the Kindle eReader, iOS and Android applications. The Windows Phone 7 application should give users access to over 725,000 books on the US Kindle store.
The Amazon Kindle app for Windows Phone 7 will be the first major ebook application on this new mobile platform and is expected to launch later this year.
Amazon “Kindle For The Web” Launches
Amazon has released a beta version of the new “Kindle for the web” feature that allows its users to surf through samples of their digital books before going for a purchase. The feature will allow users to read through the first chapter of any book for free from the web browser before choosing to buy the Kindle edition of the book. The web browser version of Kindle will let users format content by adjusting the font, line spacing, background color besides sharing the sample with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
One of the primary targets of this new feature are web publishers. The new Kindle for the web function allows publishers to embed these web samples on their websites and earn money through referral purchases. Sounds like a pretty neat idea, right?
Play Scrabble On Amazon Kindle With New Application
Amazon Kindle has just received its first paid app from a third party developer – Scrabble from EA. The application will let users play single or multi-player games from a device. However, multi-player games over a 3G or Wi-Fi network is not supported at present.
Though this is the first paid app from a third party developer, the platform does have several other applications that are free to download. A few other apps on Kindle are built into the firmware. Scrabble for Amazon Kindle is available for download at a price of $5 and is compatible with the second and third generation models of Kindle and also Kindle DX.
It is worth noting that this announcement comes barely a day or two after Amazon announced the new updated version of the Android application. The latest release brings several new features including the ability to add notes and highlights to books. Considering the vast user base, it will be interesting to see if the platform will now attract many more developers to build apps for the users.