Kindle Unlimited Update: Author Uprising Afoot? (IndieReader)
Do subscription services like KU make it impossible for authors–both traditional and indie–to earn a living wage?
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I Used Dictation and Voice Control for a Week. Here’s What Happened (Lifehacker)
We like to make fun of how badly it works, but I decided to dive in headfirst to see what it’s like to actually use it…for everything. Here’s what happened.
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My eReader is Selling Me Toilet Paper (Book Riot)
But should I get a Kindle with special offers? Or pay a bit extra for one without?
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Amazon.com Releases the Top 20 Most Romantic U.S. Cities (Amazon)
Love is in the air at Amazon.com as the company unveiled its annual list of the Top 20 Most Romantic Cities in the U.S.
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Kindle Daily Deal: The Night Rainbow (and others)
I found the article about Special Offers on Kindle timely. My Paperwhite was of the Special Offers variety, and I did find the book recommendations generally on target enough. However, over the holidays, the non-book ads arrived, and I found them distracting enough that I paid to have them turned off. The Gilette ad with some guy sticking a razor in my face was just off-putting.
Special offers on my Kindle 3 aren’t that bad. It’s just what’s only the screen when I turn it off. At that point, I’m disengaged from reading anyway. If those special offers appeared in other contexts—like they do on webpages—I’d be getting ticked off though.
Can you imagine an ereader so awful that when someone in a novel enters a cafe, a little window pops us with special offer for Happy Meals at MacD? Grrrr….
A lot of people dislike seeing our government moving toward a nanny state, telling us, for instance, how large a soft drink we can buy. It appears that the corporate world is moving toward a similar nagging state, one where our every waking moment is filled with targeted ads. That’s definitely worth some effort to avoid.
For those who have iPhones, i’ve just discovered that they have a marvelous feature. I was getting two-or-three calls a day from a telemarketer and growing tired of having to let it ring. Then I discovered that iPhones (and probably other smartphones) let you block calls from any number of your choosing. You don’t even know they’re trying to bug you.
Fight those bad technological developments with good ones.
Funny that my old hometown Springfield, MO is #15 on that romantic cities list. I don’t remember anything being particularly romantic about the place.
I’ve always opt out on ads. Frankly, all ads anywhere for anything are going to be irrelivent to life and purchasing choices. Why would anybody decide to buy brand x over y because they saw it on a Kindle screen? When I run low on toliet paper, I buy more, it is that simple, and no ads are needed to help or influence me.
Somebody might make the argument that ads for other books on the Kindle might make a little sense, but as I see it, I’ve got more choices on books than I can read, and a review on NPR or the Washington Post will be better than an ad. The is just no upside to ads.
If Amazon were to ever omit the opt out option on Kindle, I would drop Amazon as my business of first choice to buy my books.