Well, it’s that time again: time to clean out the old mailbag for those answers that are either (a) longer than a sentence or two, or, (b) I’ve received similar questions from several people over the last couple of weeks. If you would like to contact me, you can use the comment form on any of the posts, or you can send me an email to Michael at fkbooksandtips dot com (I write it that way in a small attempt to avoid the spam robots).
My Kindle Touch
After beating on the Kindle Touch (again) in one of my “Random Thoughts” posts (you can click here or type in http://bit.ly/KpzWEA into your computer’s web browser to see that particular post again), several people have made some nice offers to purchase my Kindle Touch. While part of me says I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone, I am going to keep it. Why? Mainly so I can try to figure out some of the questions you ask me – part of me likes playing Mr. Figure-It-Out, and another part of me doesn’t want to give up in defeat.
Call me a glutton for punishment….although my Mom has hinted she watns a Kindle so maybe I can pawn it off on her? Mom, I know you’re probably reading this – I’m just kidding. Besides, get Dad to buy you your own!
Free Book Availability
I receive something like this one several times a week:
Lately, it seems you are telling us about free books that are only free to “borrow” if you have Free Delivery Status…where previously you indicated books that were really “free”…not just to borrow, but to save on you own kindle or cloud…Have you changed..it seems like all the kindle books are “free” to borrow, 1 at a time during a month….I am confused about your service. Please let me know if you plan to scope out really free kindle books, or just highlight certain ones that can be borrowed….Thank You.
Please rest assured when I post a book being free in the Amazon Kindle Store, it is free at the time of the post. I have no control over how long a book is offered for free, and many times when people send me a note like the above, it is a few days after a particular free book notification has been posted to the blog. It’s easy to get caught up in the instant click process – I do it all of the time – but the bottom line here is you need to make sure a book is still free before you smack that “buy” button on the Amazon storefront, unless you really wanted to purchase it.
Collections on the Kindle Fire
Here’s a note I received from Elizabeth:
Hi – Just wondering and thought maybe you and your readers have been wondering about the same. Do you think Amazon will ever allow some sort of filing system or collections on the Fire? I use SEND TO READER frequently and I’d love to be able to organize those documents into topic folders. I also tend to jump around a lot with what I’m reading plus have reference books I go back to a lot and that means a hefty bookcase, shelf, whatever the home page is on the Fire where it would also be nifty to be able to group things into collections. An rumors re Amazon maybe adding that option?
(PS Love, love, love your site and send the info. on it to all the new Kindle owners I know!)
My short answer for the collections on a Kindle Fire is “I hope so.”
The longer answer is “I have no idea if and or when that will become available.”
I primarily read on my Kindle Keyboard or Kindle DX – I like the easier on the eyes background for reading purposes vs. the Kindle Fire, and I already have my books in various collections / categories that make it a lot easier to pick my next book to read. I mainly use the Fire to play games (I am a Words with Friends addict, but I am starting a recovery program), check my personal email, surf the Internet while in the TV room with the kids, and watch videos. My kids, however, prefer reading on their Fires vs. the hand-me-down Kindles I gave them.
It’s pretty hard to find a book on the Fire if you have as many books in the Cloud or on the Device as I usually maintain: the books tab seems like a big, unorganized pile. Since the move to an electronic book format, I have a difficult time remembering the names of books as well as the names of authors – if you think about it, most paper books have the name of the book as a header of each page vs. maybe or maybe not for an eBook.
Having books organized in collections is a no-brainer to me and many others: I checked into the possibility of creating an app just for that purpose for the Fire as I could envision making a tidy sum off of charging a buck or two for it, but my programmer friends tell me with the DRM and other software issues out there (you can’t change Amazon’s software code) it’s just not possible for a third-party to code it, that idea was thrown out the window.
All that being said, here’s to hoping the good folks at Amazon (I know you’re reading this, Jason) will get around to making that feature available soon!
My Real Job
Jackie’s question is one I am asked quite a bit:
Hi there. Happy to have found you. If you don’t mind…What is you day job?
For my day job, I am a CPA – no, I don’t do taxes as I will raise my hand and tell you I buy Turbo Tax each year!
Kindle Keyboard Giveaway
I’ve received a few comments that entering this month’s giveaway has instructions that are too hard to follow, or there are some technical difficulties on your end. Unfortunately, I really can’t troubleshoot each problem as I most likely would need to be physically in front of your computer in order to help, and I am unable to manually enter you into the contest. If I do another contest, I will take those questions and concerns into consideration.
With a little over 13 days to go, there are almost 6,500 entries in the contest. Remember, you can enter once each day, so please make sure you stop by the website and enter once a day as, who know, you might be the lucky winner.
To enter, just click here or you can go to your computer’s web browser and type in http://wp.me/p2b82w-2F9 and enter away!
Good luck!
How the Free Books Are Selected
Many people want to know how I pick the free books that are selected for posting, and there are a lot of authors who read this blog and want to know how they can have their book featured on the blog.
I used to do a lot of manual hunt-and-peck, plus I have written some scripts to search the Amazon website for new free book offers. That is generally a slow process, so I’ve been trying to steer people to a web submission form for authors to fill out to tell me about their books. If you are an independent author or agent reading this and would like to tell me – and potentially the 250,000+ people who read this blog each day – about your free book offer, just click here or go to http://www.fkbooksandtips.com/for-authors and complete the form.
I need about a week in advance for your book to be considered, which allows me time to evaluate the offers for a particular day as I do try to mix the genres up vs. having multiples of, for example, romance or mysteries each day (variety is certainly the spice of life).
It doesn’t cost anything to fill out the form, and it doesn’t cost anything for me to post about your book.
Anyway, looking at the word counter I’ve blown past 1,500 words which is making my fingers tired thinking about all of that typing. If you’ve made it this far in the post, whew!
Have a great weekend-
Michael
Download the Free Kindle Books and Tips blog app for your Kindle Fire – for free, of course – by clicking here or type in http://amzn.to/freefireapp into your computer’s web browser.
Posted in: Kindle Tips, Misc. and Random Stuff | 5 Comments »
