Goodreads and Amazon parting ways

Effective January 30, Goodreads and Amazon will no longer be partners.  paid.Content.org has a pretty good explanation of the split.

"Book-centered social networking site Goodreads, which allows users to keep records of the books they read and share the information with others, has long sourced most of its basic book data from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN). Now, saying Amazon’s API terms have become “more and more restrictive,” Goodreads is switching data providers and entering an agreement with book wholesaler Ingram—alarming some users who fear their reading records will be lost.


The changes take place January 30. Goodreads’ new data source is book wholesaler Ingram. Goodreads will pay to license data from Ingram, and will supplement it with book records from the Library of Congress and other sources."


Click here for the entire article.

Good year for Amazon

Amazon announced in a press release today that 2011 was the best holiday year for the company.

" Amazon customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers

#1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 published independently by authors using Kindle Direct Publishing"

"SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 29, 2011-- (NASDAQ: AMZN) - Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family as customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. Authors also continue to benefit from the success of Kindle — the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
“We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “And in a huge milestone for independent publishing, we’d also like to congratulate Darcie Chan, the author of ‘The Mill River Recluse,’ and Chris Culver, the author of ‘The Abbey,’ for writing two of the best-selling Kindle books of the year.”
More Kindle holiday facts:

• Throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.
• The new Kindle family held the top three spots on the Amazon.com best seller charts – #1: Kindle Fire, #2: Kindle Touch, #3: Kindle.
• Kindle Fire is the #1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 13 weeks ago.
• Kindle is also the best-selling product on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it this holiday season.
• Gifting of Kindle books was up 175 percent between this Black Friday and Christmas Day compared to the same period in 2010.
• Christmas Day was the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads.
• Kindle Fire is the best-selling product on Amazon.com’s mobile website and across all of Amazon.com’s mobile applications.

Additional Kindle Direct Publishing successes include:

• December’s #1 best-selling Kindle Direct Publishing book “Wife by Wednesday” was also the #5 overall best-selling Kindle book in December and has appeared on both the USA Today and Wall Street Journal best seller lists. Author Catherine Bybee was formerly an emergency room registered nurse, and has now left her job to focus on writing full-time.
• In 2011, KDP and CreateSpace author CJ Lyons reached #2 on the Amazon best seller list, #2 on the New York Times best seller list, and #4 on the USA Today best seller list. As a former pediatric ER doctor, CJ has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels, and she quit her job in medicine after 17 years to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time novelist. Her latest work includes “Face to Face” and “Hot Water.”       

450 Children's books for the Amazon Kindle Fire

A recent post on Mashable Business talked about how Amazon will be offering 450 children's books for the Kindle Fire:

"In a strike against Apple and Barnes & Noble, Amazon’s publishing unit has acquired 450 children’s titles from Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books, which the company plans to format for its full-color Kindle Fire tablet...."


Competition in the ebooks business is great.  I wonder what's coming in the future??

Amazon and Netflix-type service

From the Wall Street Journal Digital edition:


"Amazon Digital Library, Book Prices Pressure Publishers: The Kindle maker is trying to get book publishers to buy into a book rental service for digital content, reports the Wall Street Journal. But publishers aren’t excited, believing that such a Netflix-like service could lower the value of books and strain relationships with other book retailers. The service would charge customers a fixed monthly fee.
According to the WSJ, Amazon told publishers that the service would feature older titles. Publishers would also receive a “substantial fee” for participating."

Amazon Kindle Daily Deal

Today's deal is The Lincoln Lawyer for $2.99.

Don't Miss a Deal


The Kindle Daily Deal will be posted daily on Twitter, and frequently on Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post

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Self-published author sells over a million books for Kindle

John Locke, a self-published author sells over a million books for Kindle on Amazon.com.   MSN reports the "Amazon.com recently announced that Locke is the eighth author to sell over one million Kindle books — over 1,010,370 — to become the newest member of the "Kindle Million Club," and the first independently published author to do so. Using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Locke has made protagonist Donovan Creed a household — or at least a beach and bedside reading — presence that would probably make plenty of print-only authors envious."

I haven't read any of these books, but the last time I looked on Amazon most of Locke's the books were selling for 99 cents.  Surely an inspiration for other authors.

Apple and Amazon ebook sales

paidContent.org  has a short article on the number of sales of Apple ebooks that Steve Jobs announced the other day -- an increase of 30 million since March.   The site also has some statistics on Amazon's sales to as they say "help put Apple's 130 million figure in perspective."






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Kindle Sales

Kindle sales and ebooks are booming!  Last week Amazon released this statement:


Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.


I find this amazing!  Are people just buying the books and storing them to read later.  I have many, many books on my Kindle that I have purchased (inexpensive and special offers) and free books that I plan to read at some point.  Or are people actually reading more now?

Kindle books at your local library

Amazon will make Kindle books available at public libraries.  According to a recent Amazon press release  'Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps....


"We're doing a little something extra here," Marine continued. "Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we're extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced....

Amazon is working with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States, to bring a seamless library borrowing experience to Kindle customers. "We are excited to be working with Amazon to offer Kindle Library Lending to the millions of customers who read on Kindle and Kindle apps," said Steve Potash, CEO, OverDrive. "We hear librarians and patrons rave about Kindle, so we are thrilled that we can be part of bringing library books to the unparalleled experience of reading on Kindle." '

Maybe all the negative comments about Amazon/Kindle not liking libraries made an impact.  A win-win for all.

Lendle gone, Lendle back!

Lendle is back.  The Lendle webpage states the following:

"Amazon revokes Lendle’s API access (Update: We’re back!)

Update, March 22nd, 2011: We’re thrilled to report that Amazon has reinstated our API access, and Lendle is back up and running. Welcome back, Lendlers!"  For more information, go to Lendle.

Amazon Kindle ebooks sales

Amazon.com has sold more Kindle ebooks than paperbacks in the last year.  


The Amazon press release stated:  "Since the beginning of the year, for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company has sold 115 Kindle books." 
"Additionally, during this same time period the Company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books."
"The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 810,000 books including New Releases and 107 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers. Over 670,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 74 New York Times Bestsellers. Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle."