Amazon's third-gen Kindle becomes its best selling product ever
Internet retail giant Amazon may sell a lot of stuff, but nothing has sold like the Kindle. The company said Tuesday that the third generation of the book reader has become its best selling product of all time, surpassing 2007 bestseller Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
As has been the case with the Kindle since its initial release, Amazon still has refused to give an exact number of devices sold. An educated guess on sales can be made, however: Harry Potter sold about 2.5 million copies during the first quarter following its release.
Amazon defends, then pulls listing of book for pedophiles
Amazon became the target of Internet criticism after initially ignoring pleas to remove a book it listed in its Kindle store on the subject of pedophilia, only to quietly change position and remove the book on Thursday without much notice.
The book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" by Phillip Graves, was sold by Amazon for $4.79. It was intended to give those interested in such activity advice on the subject. However, child protection advocates saw the book as potentially dangerous, and threatened to boycott the online retailer.
Amazon opens beta of publishing platform for periodicals, ups royalties
Amazon on Tuesday announced it will begin paying 70% royalties to magazine and newspaper publishers who release their periodicals on the Amazon Kindle starting in December. The move follows a similar royalty increase Amazon made in June, when the company began offering a 70% option for books published through its Digital Text Platform (DTP.)
Coincidentally, the company today launched the Beta of the Kindle Publishing for Periodicals tool, which is similar to DTP, but lets publishers add content and preview Kindle formatting prior to making their titles available on the E-reader.
Amazon says 3rd gen Kindle is fastest seller yet, still doesn't say how many sold
Though Amazon doesn't disclose how many Kindle e-readers it sells, the online retailer today announced that the latest generation Kindle devices are the fastest selling Kindles so far. 24 days into the fourth quarter 2010, the 3rd generation Kindle has already passed total Kindle sales for the entire fourth quarter last year.
This sales explosion is no doubt the result of the Kindle's increased availability after it launched in retail stores early in September. Consumers who may have never seen a Kindle before finally gained the ability to feel how lightweight it is, and see its new higher contrast screen.
Amazon's new 'Kindle Single' format: lowering the bar for literature?
Amazon on Tuesday announced it will be trying a new format for the Kindle e-reader which it is calling the "Kindle Single."
Longer than a magazine article, and shorter than a full novel, Amazon says the Kindle Single could be the "perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea...well researched, well argued and well illustrated."
New plugin turns Adobe InDesign into Amazon Kindle publishing tool
Amazon on Friday launched the beta of a new plugin for desktop publishing software InDesign which converts InDesign project files (.indd and .indb) into Amazon Kindle books.
The plugin lets InDesign book and document files keep their font styles, and text and paragraph alignment after being converted to Kindle Format, and allows links, images, tables, and lists (bulleted or numbered) to be embedded as well.
Android App Store from Amazon: potential game changer
Amazon is rumored to be working on its own app store for Android that would compete with Google's Android Market. Though Amazon has not announced it or made any statements confirming the rumor, SlashGear today got its hands on the store's terms and conditions for developers, and they seem to sync with the rumors from earlier this week.
Included in these terms are the royalties for developers, which would be 70% of an app's purchase price or 20% of its list price; and conditions for listing applications in other app stores, (apps must be released in the Amazon store at the exact same time as in other app stores, or earlier.)
Amazon Kindle threatens booksellers by finally launching in retail stores
Amazon's Kindle has managed to make a tremendous impact on the e-reader market without even being available in physical stores. Soon, however, Amazon's best-selling product will be available through retailers in stores across the U.S.
Today, Best Buy announced it will be selling the Wi-Fi only 6" Kindle for $139.99 and its 3G-equipped counterpart for $189 in all of its stores this fall. The company says the 9.7" Kindle DX will be available "later in the season."
Amazon Kindle gets first downloadable apps that aren't e-books
The first two "active content" apps for the Amazon Kindle e-reader have been released for download, consisting of the word games "Every Word," and "Shuffled Row."
In the first weeks of 2010, Web retailer Amazon released the Kindle Development Kit to partners to begin work on interactive applications for the popular e-reader. Formerly, the Kindle platform supported only a very limited amount of interactivity, which included note-taking, highlighting, and later, the ability to send clips and quotations to social networks Twitter and Facebook. Early attempts at games for the platform had to be corralled into the device's experimental browser, which made for a poor overall experience.
Amazon debuts 3rd generation Kindle e-reader: smaller, lighter, cheaper, better
Amazon, online retailer and e-book pioneer announced Thursday the latest generation of its popular 6" Kindle e-book reader.
The Kindle received an overhaul similar to the one its big brother Kindle DX got on the first of July, with a new graphite chassis, improved screen resolution, and lower price.
Amazon, Facebook partner to make recommendations social
Online retail giant Amazon on Tuesday launched a beta of new functionality intended to use data from Facebook to make recommendations. Once connected, the retailer would comb through the data in both your own profile and that of your friends.
Amazon said it would share no personal data with Facebook. The social networking site would be sending data over to Amazon, however: this would include the user's likes and favorites on Facebook as well as his or her friends, and their birthdays. In addition, Amazon would make it easier for a user to find a friend's wish list once the services are connected, but this would be a guess based on given information.
Discovery sues Amazon again for patent infringement over Kindle
Discovery Communications intellectual property subsidiary Discovery Patent Holdings filed suit against Amazon Wednesday, claiming Amazon's line of Kindle e-book readers infringe on two patents held by the company. The suit is the second between the two companies over such technologies.
Amazon was originally sued by Discovery Communications in March of last year, accusing the company of violation of a comprehensive patent on e-book readers titled "Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System" (#7,298,851). This covered the Kindle and Kindle 2 models.
Amazon unveils higher contrast, lower cost Kindle DX
Keeping the Kindle momentum high, Amazon has announced the next generation of Kindle DX is available for pre-order today, and will be shipping on July 7th.
The new Kindle DX has the same 9.7" screen size, and the same free 3G wireless, but features a new graphite chassis and a higher contrast e-ink screen with a purported 50% improvement in contrast. Furthermore, all of this is available at a price about 25% less than the first generation DX.
Deal of the Day: Amazon scoops up Woot for $110 million
Woot said Wednesday that it had been acquired by Amazon, although it provided few details on what exactly will become of the online deal site other than it would become an independent subsidiary much like the online retailer's other acquisitions, Zappos and Audible.
Sources told technology blog TechCrunch that the sale price was in the neighborhood of $110 million in cash. In an e-mail to his employees, CEO Matt Rutledge seemed to suggest that not much would change as a result of the new owners.
Amazon ups the stakes in E-reader war, doubles royalties on cheaper e-books
This month, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders have been engaged in some serious e-reader competition. Following the introduction of Borders' bargain-priced Kobo e-paper reader, both Barnes and Noble and Amazon cut the prices of their Nook and Kindle products to put all three products on a level playing field. All three book retailers have been pushing their cross-platform software readers too, jockeying for superiority in the e-book trade.
But retail price wars and marketing blitzes are only one side of the business. Today, Amazon made a significant appeal to another side: independent content publishers.
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