The Kindle Chronicles

Avid reader, longtime listener Interview starts at 12:45 and ends at 43:20 “My ideal Kindle would have real buttons and would have audio support, so that you could do immersion reading along with just straight reading.” News “Amazon plans to open as many as six more cashierless Amazon Go stores this year” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - February 22, 2018 “Prime Members Now Earn 5% Back When Shopping At Whole Foods Market Using the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card” - press release February 20, 2018 Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card “This board game is powered by Amazon Alexa” by Monica Chin at Mashable - February 19, 2018 Sensible Object “ENCORE: When data rules the world” interview with Yuval Noah Harari on the Financial Times Tech Tonic podcast - replayed on February 21, 2018 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari Tech Tip Click here for the latest software updates for Kindle and other Amazon devices Content (Books mentioned by John Aga in the interview) The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer Freddy the Pig series (Wikipedia) Freddy the Detective by Walter R. Brooks Books by Robert Heinlein including his Juveniles Series Starship Troopers and Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein The Hardy Boys Starter Set (5 Volumes) by Franklin W. Dixon Gabriel Allon Series by Daniel Silva The Liberation Trilogy Box Set by Rick Atkinson The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II by Jan Jarboe Russell (Audible version) We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Film by Noah Isenberg (Audible version) OverDrive cloudLibrary by bibliotheca RBdigital RBdigital  and OverDrive at Amazon app store Our Guest for Next Week’s 500th Episode: Kevin Keith, Amazon’s General Manager Fire Tablets; Amazon Echo & Alexa Product Marketing Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Carmela Orsini of Novel Effect (5:08 to 13:22) Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson The Little Shop of Monsters by R. L. Stine Paul Knopf, chief architect at GFA Technology (13:27 to 21:40) Felix Lloyd, cofounder and CEO of Beanstack (21:44 to 30:53) Harvard (MA) Public Library David Burleigh, director of brand marketing and and communication at OverDrive (30:57 to 40:23) Overdrive’s Libby app Pete Schreiner, Libraries Fellow at North Caroline State University in Raleigh (40:27 to 42:25) Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

My father William and grandson James Interview starts at 17:43 and ends at 42:24 “I’ve been writing a realistic fictional narrative for my class as an assignment. There are certain phrases in [Kindle] books that have been highlighted 300 times or a thousand times. I try to make my phrases be like those phrases, because I’ve gotten to know what are the powerful phrases that people are going to highlight.” News Amazon press release announcing Prime Now delivery from Whole Foods - February 8, 2018 “Amazon Finally Gets Serious About Whole Foods” by Phil Lempert at Forbes - February 8, 2018 “Amazon Prime to offer two-hour Whole Foods delivery” by The Associated Press at New York Post - February 8, 2018 “Amazon looks to put bookstore in Cherry Creek” by Thomas Gounley at BusinessDen - February 5, 2018 The Hermitage Bookshop in Denver “Amazon to Launch Delivery Service That Would Vie With FedEx, UPS” by Laura Stevens at The Wall Street Journal - February 9, 2018 “Amazon passes Samsung for 2nd place in worldwide tablet shipments” by Taylor Soper at GeekWire - February 5, 2018 Tech Tip Readwise recommended in Cool Tools Reading Basics, including View Your Reading Progress Interview with my father William and my grandson James Dad and James on TKC 413 in July, 2016 Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau Grant by Ron Chernow Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow Homecoming (The Tillerman Cycle Book 1) and Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt Tillerman Cycle Series by Cynthia Voigt (Goodreads) Content Monthly Kindle Deals Next Week’s Show I will be reporting from the American Library Association midwinter meeting here in Denver on next week’s show, which I will prepare in Cambridge, Mass. Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Author of Into the Black Nowhere: An UNSUB Novel Interview starts at 18:20 and ends at 40:10 “One of the oldest stories that humanity tells itself is defeating the monster. Whether that’s the dark shape that howls in the night outside the cave or something that drags a club around or sea monsters--humanity always wants to defeat the monster. To do that we have to try to identify and understand it. The idea that the monster walks among us disguised as one of the community I think sets us on edge.” News Amazon releases Q4 Earnings report - February 1, 2018 “Amazon has posted a profit for 11 straight quarters” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - February 1, 2018 “Inside Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence Flywheel” by Steven Levy at Wired - February 1, 2018 Click here for a free three-month subscription to Wired “Amazon is taking a welcome tilt at healthcare bills” by Brooke Masters at The Financial Times - February 2, 2018 “Dallas is best place for Amazon’s second headquarters, Wall Street Journal says” by Bill Hethcock at Dallas Business Journal - January 26, 2018. “Amazon’s Treasure Truck to Provide Offers at Select Whole Foods Market Locations Across the U.S.” - Amazon press release January 30, 2018 Amazon’s Super Bowl ad “Here’s Why Alexa Won’t Light Up During Amazon’s Super Bowl Ad” by Brad Stone at Bloomberg - February 2, 2018 Tech Tip How does Kindle know how fast we’re reading? Interview with Meg Gardiner UNSUB: A Novel and Into the Black Nowhere: An UNSUB Novel by Meg Gardiner “Stephen King on Meg Gardiner” at Entertainment Magazine - February 9, 2007 Meg Gardiner on Twitter and Facebook Stephen King’s tweet recommending Into the Black Nowhere - January 30, 2018 Meg Gardiner’s 2018 tour dates for Into the Black Nowhere Content Prime Reading Comments jeff@amazon.com Next Week’s Guest Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Senior Vice President & Publisher at Open Road Integrated Media Interview starts at 11:28 and ends at 34:48 “No company in publishing right now is better aligned with Amazon in terms of our focus on the customer experience, in terms of our focus on eBooks and driving growth in eBooks.” News Amazon Go video “Amazon Go: convenience and concern at new checkout-free corner shop” by Mark Harris at The Guardian - January 22, 2018 Amazon’s listing of 42 Amazon Go jobs open “Amazon Go draws crowds” by Matt Day at The Seattle Times - January 22, 2018 “Here’s what it’s like to shop at Seattle’s Amazon Go cashierless convenience store” by Christine Clarridge at The Seattle Times - January 22, 2018 “The Amazon Go store - techy-cool or creepy-weird?” by Elizabeth Weise at USA Today - January 26, 2018 “Amazon’s Checkout-Free Store Makes Shopping Feel Like Shoplifting” by Jake Bullinger at The Atlantic - January 24, 2018 “New Walmart Partnership Brings Retailer into the E-Book Game” by John Maher at Publishers Weekly - January 26, 2018 “Apple’s Getting Back Into the E-Book Fight Against Amazon” by Mark Gurman at Bloomberg - January 25, 2018 “Apple’s iBooks Director at Digital Book World: Liveblog” at The Kindle Chronicles - June, 2015 “Thoughts on Apple Books” by Bradley Metrock at Digital Book World - January 25, 2018 Tech Tips “Has Blocking text-to-speech access ended?” by Bufo Calvin at I Love My Kindle - November 28, 2017 Suzanne Skyvara’s Notes & Highlights for Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio - Goodreads Interview with Jon Fine Open Road Integrated Media “Jon Fine Joins Open Road Integrated Media as SVP and Publisher” - press release October 27, 2017 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Open Road’s Early Bird Books email newsletter The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust, Volume 1) by Philip Pullman Agatha Christie mysteries published by Open Road Content Summer Doorways: A Memoir by W. S. Merwin “The Durrells in Corfu” PBS series Comments Greg Montague’s “A Good App Gone Bad” thread at Goodreads Audiobooks Group Recommended by Eolake Stobblehouse: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series “Where do you get your story ideas? - Life Expectancy” by Dean Koontz Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz The Blacklist, an original Netflix series The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (recommended by Jean Remple) Next Week’s Guest Meg Gardiner, a novelist whose next thriller, Into the Black Nowhere, will be released on January 30th by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Editor at Little A Interview starts at 22:52 and ends at 44:24 “The trick with writing is a lot of times the more specific, the more universal something becomes. In taking care of a story, if there is something that I don’t quite understand, I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, that’s not related. We’ll take it out.’ I’m going to ask for more. Show me how this is all of us.” (Photo by Stephanie Land) News Amazon press release on top 20 in HQ2 search - January 18, 2018 Recode on top 20 - January 18, 2018 “Amazon Chooses 20 Finalists for Second Headquarters” by Nick Wingfield at The New York Times - January 18, 2018 “The Case for Ending Amazon’s Dominance” by Tim Harford at The Financial Times - January 19, 2018 “Jeff Bezos Donates $33 million to Dreamers Scholarship Fund” by Matt Shuham at Talking Points Memo - January 12, 2018 TheDream.US Tech Tip Translated skill for Alexa Interview with Hafizah Geter Day One: A Literary Journal for the Digital Age Kindle Singles store Amazon Original Stories Children of the Salt Road by Lydia Fazio Theys When a Camel Breaks Your Heart (Kindle Single) by Kodi Scheer Midair: A Novel by Kodi Scheer The Mothers: A Novel by Brit Bennet Hafizah Geter reading “The Break-In,” her poem published in The New Yorker Soy Sauce for Beginners and Bury What We Cannot Take by Kirstin Chen Halsey Street by Naima Coster Feast: True Love In and Out of the Kitchen by Hannah Howard Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences by Nancy Balbirer Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men by Harold Schechter Little A on Twitter Next Week’s Guest Jon Fine, senior vice president and publisher of Open Road Integrated Media Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Author of Ricochet Joe & the new Jane Hawk series Interview starts at 10:30 and ends at 41:57 “Whatever I was reading in childhood through adolescence, it lifted me up and out. I think it was all of that that made me want to be a writer. I thought it would be the most amazing thing if out there in the world somewhere there was a kid reading something or an adult for that matter that was really getting to them and affecting them as so many people had affected me. And you didn’t even know who they were or where they were. It just struck me as a kind of magical thing to be doing. So because I was a reader, that’s really why I became a writer.” News “Amazon May Have Dropped a Clue About a Likely HQ2 Location” by Aaron Pressman at Fortune - January 11, 2018. “Amazon and Google lead way on virtual assistant dealmaking at CES” by Tim Bradshaw at The Financial Times - January 9, 2018 “Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant compete at CES to control the smart home” by Matt Day at The Seattle Times - January 8, 2018 “This smart suitcase uses Segway technology to balance itself as it follows you around” by Thuy Ong at The Verge - January 4, 2018 “My heart aches for this Segway-inspired auto-following suitcase that won’t stop falling over” by Natt Garun at The Verge - January 8, 2018 Tech Tip “How to pair your AirPods with your Kindle Oasis” by Charlie Sorrel at Cult of Mac - Janiuary 6, 2018 Interview with Dean Koontz Dean Koontz’s web site Ricochet Joe The Silent Corner (Jane Hawk #1) and The Whispering Room (Jane Hawk #2) by Dean Koontz Available for preorder with delivery May 8: The Crooked Staircase (Jane Hawk #3) Dean Koontz author page at Amazon.com Books by Kate DiCamillo: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Tale of Despereaux, Because of Winn-Dixie, and The Magician’s Elephant Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot The Book of Counted Sorrows (Wikipedia) Content The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Wins Best TV Series, Comedy at 2018 Golden Globes (YouTube) - January 7, 2018 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Prime Video Next Week’s Guest Hafizah Geter, editor of the recently closed Day One literary magazine Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Software Quality Engineer Interview starts at 12:46 and ends at 41:14 “Somehow the Goodreads would talk to the Amazon/Kindle cloud, so as new notes come in it would sync those down from Goodreads as well. And then they would just show up in your notes and highlights with the name of the person who you were following. I think that would be really cool.” News “Another big Amazon acquisition, a Peloton IPO--and other commerce predictions for 2018” by Jason Del Rey at Recode - January 4, 2018 “Barnes & Noble shares hit near 24-year low after disappointing holiday sales” by Jessica Dye at The Financial Times - January 5, 2018 Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on HQ2 prospects (CNBC) - January 3, 2018 PaddyPower odds for HQ2 cities - January 3, 2018 “This smart suitcase uses Segway technology to balance itself as it follows you around” by Thuy Ong at The Verge - January 4, 2017 CES in Las Vegas Tech Tip All about Kindle bookmarks Interview with Tom Semple The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space, and Speed [Kindle in Motion] by Scott Parazynski Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0 Book 1) [Kindle in Motion] by Scott Meyer Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Illustrated [Kindle in Motion] by J. K. Rowling Ricochet Joe (Amazon Original Story) [Kindle in Motion] by Dean Koontz Spotify Prime Music Audible Content David Ignatius will appear on C-Span’s BookTV show Sunday, January 7, 2018 at noon EST BBC iPlayer Radio app for Fire tablets Next Week’s Guest Dean Koontz, bestselling author of a new Amazon Original Story, Ricochet Joe, published by Amazon Publishing Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Co-founder of Select A Story Interview starts at 8:33 and ends at 33:40 “An interactive story is essentially a series of interlocking short stories. I think a lot of authors kind of forget about that, and they end up writing a story where at the end of it, it’s like ‘Okay, you saw a spaceship, and then you thought to call the police and then you decided whether you should call your friend, and then you decided whether you should take a picture and put it on Instagram and then you went on the spaceship and you met the aliens, and it was fine. The end.’ Well, yeah, you had a number of choices, but they were all very similar to one another and that is not a story that anyone would write by itself.” Tech Tip Find your annotations at read.amazon.com/notebook Interview with Katie Ernst Select a Story website Select a Story skill for Alexa Cinder/Charming (Select a Story Book 1) Kindle format “The Magic Door,” an Alexa-powered interactive adventure with original stories “Alexa Skills Challenge Offers $250,000 in Prizes for Best Kid Skills” at Amazon Alexa blog - October 25, 2017 Content Ricochet Joe by Dean Koontz Comments Fintie Folio Case for 9th Generation (7-inch) Kindle Oasis - $16.99 News Amazon press release on holiday sales “Amazon’s Alexa Won Christmas This Year” by Steve Kovach at Business Insider - December 26, 2017 Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Doubledecker Bus Driver in London Interview starts at 11:20 and ends at 39:30 “The [Fire HD] 8 will be my Kindle that travels with me. I take it to work. We’re not allowed to have them in the cab for fairly good reasons. They don’t want anything that will distract you from the job of driving.” News “The Kindle changed the book business. Can it change books?” by David Pierce at Wired - December 20, 2017 Mosaic app at iTunes Store Tech Tip Echo Connect and how to set one up Alexa Voice Remote for Amazon Echo and Echo Dot Interview with Mark Jarvis Transportation for London (TfL) The Elizabeth Line CeX All-New Kindle Oasis BBC iPlayer The Verb Podcast (BBC) - Jorie Graham interview “Advertising Standards considers inquiry into Amazon Prime” at BBC - December 18, 2017 Amazon Key in-home delivery Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Edition (Audible) read by Stephen Fry The Quantum Spy: A Thriller by David Ignatius The Theseus Paradox (Detective Inspector Jake Flannagan Series Book 1) by David Videcette  by Diarmuid Jeffreys The Miniaturist: A Novel by Jessie Burton The Poisonous Seed: A Frances Doughty Mystery by Linda Stratmann  by Max Hastings Podcasts recommended by Mark Jarvis: History Extra (BBC) and 9yrspodcast  (iTunes) The Guardian and The Independent Content Goodreads Choice Awards 2017 Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!