Monday 28 March 2011

Great Kindle Deals Newsletter - Monday, 28th March.

Hello and welcome to another edition of Great Kindle Deals. This edition has been slightly delayed by a day due to the blogging system which this is posted through but it's here now for your pleasure! Thanks for all the positive emails to greatkindledeals@gmail.com as well as making us one of the Top 10 Kindle Blogs. Let's get straight in: to start there's a mixture of both positive and negative kindle news:

1. Writers donating to Japan Relief - a number of writers have decided to give all of part of their profits from their books to Japan to help the disaster. Thank you to everyone who has done this, I am sure the people there really do appreciate it. As there have been a large number of authors who have done this I didn't think it fair to only include some and not others directly here in the newsletter.

2. Ebook lending site shut down by Amazon.com - Although ebook lending is not avaialble in the UK as of yet, Amazon.com (in the US) has disabled the e-book sharing site "Lendle." This site allowed users to find others to trade books with; instead of just their friends they were able to trade with anyone onine. Amazon clearly didn't like this and shut the system down. What difference it makes to Amazon who is reading the book remains unclear to me..

3. Audiobooks come to Kindle - US only for now - Audiobook service Audible.com is now available for American customers on the Kindle. Both UK and US users can copy Kindle files and listen to them through the MP3 player app on the Kindle, but now US users can download these files directly onto their Kindle for ease of use.

4. Kindle Millionaire gets 4-book deal - Minnpost.com reports: " 26-year-old Minnesotan Amanda Hocking, aka the “Kindle millionaire,” has signed a seven-figure, four-book deal with St. Martins Press got around very fast.  On the New York Times blog Media Decoder, Julie Bosman writes: “A heated auction for the rights to publish her books began early last week, and several major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, dropped out as the price climbed into the seven figures. The bidding eventually rose beyond $2 million for world English rights ... The first book in the series will be released in fall 2012, a spokeswoman for St. Martin’s said."

5. More kindle apps - Appleinsider.com today reports that: "Henri Hansen, the developer of Atomium, a periodic table reference app that sells for $0.99 in the App Store, contacted AppleInsider to note that Amazon had invited him via email to bring the app to Kindle, noting that the company was especially interested in educational apps."

Cheap books:

1. Sugar & Spice (£0.71)
Rated 4.5 stars average from 50 reviews
Synopsis: "Driven by the need to know why, a mother confronts the man accused of her daughter’s murder, He presents a compelling defence, convincing Claire not only that he is innocent of harming her daughter, but that his previous convictions were not what they seemed.
Would you trust a convicted sex offender to help you find your daughter's killer? Claire did...
Teaming up with a second-year psychology student and a fourteen year-old truant schoolboy, Sugar & Spice is the story of a mother’s fight to bring one man's reign of terror to an end."

2.BURN, BABY, BURN (£0.71)
Rated 5 stars average from 22 reviews
Synopsis: "Donna O'Prey is the most junior member of a small private security firm. A routine search for a missing teenage girl escalates into something much more serious when a ransom demand is received. Donna becomes convinced that Marcus is responsible for the abduction. Eleven years previously, while still a child, Marcus had been convicted of the brutal murder of two young children, but a Home Office review board has now sanctioned his release.
Donna needs all her battling qualities as she attempts to rescue the missing girl, but how will she cope when her own safety is threatened?

3. The Complete Father Born Mystery Collection (£0.71) - 52 Mysteries in 1.
Rated 5 stars average from 11 reviews
Synopsis: "Father Brown, a short, stumpy Catholic priest with shapeless clothes and a large umbrella, has uncanny insight into human evil.
Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process more concerned with spiritual and philosophic truths rather than scientific details, making him an almost equal counterbalance with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, whose stories Chesterton read and admired. Father Brown was the perfect vehicle for conveying Chesterton's view of the world and, of all of his characters, is perhaps closest to Chesterton's own point of view, or at least the effect of his point of view."

4. But Can You Drink the Water? - £0.70
Rated 4 stars average from 22 reviews
Synopsis: "A humorous portrayal of a naive working-class family’s attempts to fit in after emigrating from Liverpool to apartheid SA.
When Frank Turner informs his wife and teenage son they are emigrating from Liverpool to sunny South Africa, he is unprepared for their hostile response. His defiant son makes his own silent protest, and his wife’s assertion that “we never shoulda come” is parroted at every minor calamity.
The bewildered working-class scousers are thrust into an alien world of servants, strange African customs, unintelligible accents, and unexpected wild life (‘crocodiles’ on the wall). "

Free e-books:
1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Rated 4.5 stars average from 39 reviews
Synopsis: "The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution. Although Dickens borrowed from Thomas Carlyle's history, The French Revolution, for his sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris, the novel offers more drama than accuracy. The scenes of large-scale mob violence are especially vivid, if superficial in historical understanding. The complex plot involves Sydney Carton's sacrifice of his own life on behalf of his friends Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette. While political events drive the story, Dickens takes a decidedly antipolitical tone, lambasting both aristocratic tyranny and revolutionary excess--the latter memorably caricatured in Madame Defarge, who knits beside the guillotine."

2. Emergency: Wife Lost and Found by Carol Marinelli
Rated 4.5 stars average from 7 reviews
Synopsis: "Marriage reunited – in A&E!  Every emergency doctor dreaded recognising someone in Casualty – even cool-headed consultant James Morrell. But he was doubly shocked when the unconscious patient he was asked to treat was instantly familiar. It was his ex-wife!
Dr Lorna McClelland hated being ill, hated being stuck in a hospital bed, but above all she hated having to rely on James. Then, as she recovered, all the wonderful things about their marriage came flooding back"

3. Mia's Scandal
Rated 3.5 stars average from 4 reviews
Synopsis: " Billionaire Oscar Balfour’s daughters are the darlings of the tabloid press – so it’s no surprise that the arrival of an illegitimate Balfour girl sends the gossip columns wild! Mia needs to learn the gilt-edged ways of his world fast. Brooding Greek tycoon Nikos takes her on as his personal assistant. Can he come to her rescue"

I hope you enjoy these books and grabbed some great freebies. See you next week!

Friday 18 March 2011

Great Kindle Deals Newsletter - Saturday, 19th March.

Happy weekend everyone, with Spring starting this next week, it really means that we are well and truly into 2011. And what a year it's been so far, we have a lot of news which shows that the Kindle is well and truly being more and more massmarket as well as some good free books to keep you occupied for a few weeks. Enjoy the newsletter and share it with your friends.

News:

1. New Kindle 4 in the works - With the Kindle 2 being relased 15 months after the first Kindle, and the current 3rd generation being released around 15 months after Kindle 2, it seems that we are on track for a November release date for the Kindle 4. But does Amazon really need one? The New York Times is reporting that they may be working on an Android-based Kindle which may or may not feature all LED screen instead of the e-paper screen, as well as being colour. Although colour is a nice addition, I feel it would add too much to the price of a Kindle and for me it does have to be e-ink as it currently is, it's easy on the eyes and a pleasure to read which isn't the case with an LCD screen for me.

2. Or how about a free Kindle 3? - The price of the Kindle has been reducing at a steady pace, leading to speculation that the next generation of the device may be free, provided users pre-purchase a number of books or book credits. This would be an interesting system is say, Amazon allowed users to buy £75 worth of books and get a free Kindle. Then, market adoption would be immense. Kindle books already outsell paperback books.

3. Or how about a free Kindle 3 right now? - Well, there is one catch. If you sign up to a mobile contract at the Carphone Warehouse that costs £15 a month or more, you can get a free Kindle too. Best Buy is doing this too in theUK.

4. Kindle proliferation - Speaking of the Carphone Warehouse, they and Best Buy are both selling the Kindle at same prices as Amazon.co.uk in store giving consumers a chance to feel it and try it before they buy it. Let's hope this helps with the proliferation of the Kindle in the UK market.

5. Real page numbers - You can already get real page numbers on your Kindle 3 by updating the software but now theis feature is also available on the mobile apps for the Kindle such as the iPad app.

Free books:
1. When Darkness Falls (Part 1, 2, 3 currently available)
 Rated 5 stars average from 4 Reviews
Synopsis: "From the moment Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck is called upon to defend a new client—a homeless man jailed for threatening to jump off a bridge—it's obvious something is amiss. For one thing, the man called Falcon manages to come up with the $10,000 bail...in cash. Then the body of a brutally murdered woman is found in the trunk of the abandoned car he's living in.
But it isn't until a panicked Falcon takes a group of innocent people hostage, including Jack's best friend, and barricades himself and his prisoners in a motel room that Swyteck realizes how much is truly at stake. For Falcon has a bigger agenda than suicide, and Jack Swyteck must get to the root of a dark history and bitter secrets before Falcon decides he has nothing to lose by killing them all."

2. Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen - A classic
Rated 4.5 stars average from 170 reviews
Synopsis: "Elizabeth Bennet is the perfect Austen heroine: intelligent, generous, sensible, incapable of jealousy or any other major sin. That makes her sound like an insufferable goody-goody, but the truth is she's a completely hip character who ,if provoked, is not above skewering her antagonist with a piece of her exceptionally sharp, yet always polite, 18th-century wit. The real point of the book though, the critical question which will keep you fixated throughout, is: will Elizabeth and Mr Darcy hook up? Read this genuine all-time classic and discover the answer while enjoying a story that has charmed generation after generation."

3. Get Some by Daniel Birch
Rated 3.5 stars average from 4 reviews
Synopsis: "Anybody who has read Danny Birch's groundbreaking first novel, 'Clipped', will be expecting a fast-paced, sharply-written, emotionally charged gangster thriller, written in Danny's inimitably catchy, witty and streetwise style. If so, prepare yourself for 'Get Some', a gangster revenge thriller that fizzes and crackles off the page like few others.
It is the tale of two childhood friends, Tommy and Joey, and of how they stand by each other in traumatic times. Tommy's trauma is to be betrayed by an army colleague to a militant group in Iraq and to be subjected to routine and gruesome torture. Pity his betrayer should Tommy manage to escape. And Joey's trauma? Ah, for that, you have to read this book. "

Cheap Books:
1. The Case of the Missing Boyfriend by Nick Alexander (£0.99)
Rated 4.5 stars average from 9 Reviews
Synopsis: "C.C. is nearly forty and other than her name (which she hates so much she can’t bring herself to use it) everything about her life appears to be wonderful: she has a high powered job in advertising, a great flat in Primrose Hill, and a wild bunch of friends to spend her weekends with. And yet she feels like the Titanic – slowly, inexorably, and against all expectation, sinking. Could her best friend be right? Could her past really be preventing her from moving on? And if she unlocks that particular box, will the horrors within simply drift away and leave her free? Or will they sink her?"

2. Sugar & Spice by Safina Desforges (£0.71)

Rated 4.5 stars average from 40 Reviews
Synopsis:  "It's every parent's worst nightmare: A child fails to return home. As hours turn to days, all they can do is hope. Some children never come back... Sugar & Spice is a ground-breaking new crime-thriller set against the background of Britain's fragmented criminal justice system, with the key protagonists the mother and partner of a murdered child."



I hope you enjoyed the newsletter, have a great week and stay tuned for next week's edition!

Monday 7 March 2011

The return of Great Kindle Deals

Hi everyone,

Despite being just 5 weeks gone, the emails I have recieved from all my former readers have been overwhelming in support and asking for the blog to return. Well - here it is.

Now, some of you may be wondering why I have chosen to bring back the blog and the answer is very simple - Amazon has provided me with statistics. Yes, the lack of statistics made the blog disappear but now Amazon is giving me up to date statistics for every subscriber meaning I can communication coherently with you.

So, what does this all mean?
Great Kindle Deals is returning with at least one newsletter a week packed with reviews, tips, news, free books and of course Great Kindle Deals targetted only at the UK Audience.

How do I subscribe?
As before, just search for Great Kindle Deals in the Amazon Kindle Store and subscribe from there. All new posts will come to your Kindle automatically as soon as they are published.

But I didn't just want to leave you there hanging until next week, so here is some quick Kindle News, much more will follow in usual issues including reviews and free books.

News:
1. Apple's 30% asking - Apple is asking App makers such as the Kindle for 30% of all their sales. Amazon has not commented on the issue but is understood to be in talks with Apple. If these talks do not succeed there will be two options - either remove the Kindle store from Apple devices and make it a book-reading only app with no ability to purchase books, or remove the App entirely. Amazon has another couple of months to decide its options.

2. Kindle millionaire - Amanda Hocking has made over $1,000,000 in book sales from the Kindle store through her vampire books as an independant author. Nice job!

3. Kindle firmware update - You can update your kindle through the settings menu and you cna take advantage of new features: page numbers - just like real books, you'll get a page number as well as a location meaning you can follow along with others reading regular paperbacks; Public notes - see notes in books left by others; Before you go - as soon as you finish a book you are now prompted to review it, please do this as it allows people to get a better understanding of which books are worth buying; new layout - magazines and newspapers now had a better, more skin-readable layout.

4. Kindle books outsell paperbacks - Although this is only on Amazon's website, Kindle books have outsold paperbacks for the first time - in fact for every 100 paperback books, 115 Kindle books are sold. The e-reader is truly proliferating.

So that's it for this quick update - I'll see you this weekend for the regular newsletter packed with Great Kindle Deals!
Go on, Subscribe now.