
Archive for the ‘Giveaways’ Category

But wait, there’s more! Another giveaway for my 12 February birthday!

February 12, 2019

But wait, there’s more! Another giveaway for my 12 February birthday!

I already wrote about giving away two of my books for my birthday:

It’s my birthday…but I’m giving you the presents

 

but I haven’t done a non-e-book Amazon giveaway in a while…so I decided to give away a set of Echo Buttons!

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/4d2d284ea4c0fceb

While these are mostly used to play games (by seeing who “buzzes in” first), you can also use them to run Alexa routines (note: you need a compatible Echo/Alexa device for this to work.

Partially, I wanted to see how much Amazon Giveaways have changed…and they have, a lot! I’ll write more about that later (birthday/family stuff, you know), but I did want to get this out to you, my readers…and I’ll tweet it as well.

Good luck!

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. :) Shop ’til you help! :) 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog

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It’s my birthday…but I’m giving you the presents

February 12, 2019

It’s my birthday…but I’m giving you the presents

February 12th is my birthday, along with

  • Judy Blume
  • Charles Darwin
  • Juanita Coulson
  • Donald Kingsbury
  • Cotton Mather
  • George Meredith
  • R.F. Delderfield

among many others (I’ve tried to stick mostly with writers in this listing…I’ll tweet geek-friendly actors & such as part of my #OTD in geeky history…).

As has become an annual tradition, I decided I wanted to celebrate by giving you something. 🙂

After all, you readers (and especially the subscribers…hello, subscribers!) give me so much.

Amazon allows us to give our books away as part of Kindle Direct Publishing (although there are restrictions on how much you can do it for each title).

Please check that a title is free for you before buying it.

I have asked Amazon to make them free on February 11th, 12th, and 13th…I figure that gives my readers more of a chance to get it than if I do it just the 12th. I think they will also only be free to customers in the USA.

So, you can click on the titles before, but please make sure it is free when you click the 1-click buy button.

This year, I decided to do these two books:

The Collected I Love My Kindle Blog Volume 1 (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

This is the first 101 posts in this blog. 🙂 I did 101 posts so I wouldn’t cut off Doctor Watson’s Blog: A Kindle Abandoned (which is a four-part story).

The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

When it was first published back in 2012, I believe it was the most popular book of quotations in any format at Amazon…for a really, really short time. 😉 The focus is on geeky books/movie/TV and I know they aren’t the most profound quotations for everybody, but I really enjoyed doing this.

Remember, double-check that they are  free to make sure before buying.

Also, if you are just interested in reading them (not owning them), they are both available through

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Happy birthday! 😉

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. :) Shop ’til you help! :) 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog

“Buy Kindle Books for Others”

June 17, 2018

“Buy Kindle Books for Others”

I remember back in 2010 (November 19th, to be specific) when Amazon enabled the giving of Kindle books as gifts. It’s something people had wanted from the beginning.

However, it’s never been easy to give Kindle books to a group of people, or to strangers.

That’s because you either e-mailed them one at a time (so you needed an e-mail address), or you sent them to yourself and printed them out. Even if you did the latter, where you didn’t need an e-mail address, you still had to buy them one at a time.

You might think that not that many people want to give books to strangers/groups, but there are many times that might happen.

I’ve been the recipient of books like that. Recently, at work for example, my manager got us all the same book:

Disney U by Doug Lipp (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I read it, and thought it was quite good. It has to do with training employees, but also with how to deliver a great “customer” experience. There were several things that exactly lined up with things I’ve said…even some similar terminology. That’s not what made it good, though. 😉

My manager bought us all hardbacks.

Honestly, I just don’t read hardbacks any more, especially when I want to read something quickly. I use text-to-speech a lot in the car, and that was definitely how I wanted to read this book…so I bought my own Kindle copy.

As a side note, that’s one of my (few) major frustrations with Amazon right now. I’ll get a book (I think just through Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*), but I’d have to look), and even though text-to-speech has not been blocked by the publisher, it only wants me to listen to it with an audiobook (synced in the Kindle book). I know I’m unusual in this, but I really prefer text-to-speech to an audiobook, unless I’ve already read the book (in which case, it’s like watching a movie for me…a new adaptation). I don’t like the actor or even the author interpreting the characters for me: TTS much more emulates the experience of sight-reading a book for me. I’ve talked to them about this before and may try again in case something has changed. I’ve tried deleting the audiobook, deleting the e-book, redownloading it, restarting the device…oh, well.

That’s been particularly difficult because I’m reading a book I am enjoying:

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni (at AmazonSmile*)

I would have been finished with it long ago, but since I’m only sight-reading it, it’s going to take some time. Sight-reading competes with things where I can’t use TTS, such as magazines.

I did borrow that one from KU…it has 4.8 stars out of 5 with 540 customer reviews, and that’s quite high.

Anyway, it would have been a lot easier if my manager could have just given us e-books…and that would have been easier without having to know the e-mail addresses associated with our Amazon accounts.

The same would be true for a teacher with a classroom full of students, especially perhaps on the first day of class.

Another example, which may especially affect some readers of this blog, is the case of authors at events. The common thing now is to show up with a stack of books…yes, that’s partially so you can sign them, or sell them, but in some cases it’s giving them away.

I sometimes want to give a copy of one of my books to someone at work (usually, The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*))…there hasn’t been a good way to do that.

Now, there is!

You can now buy multiple copies of a Kindle book at the same time. You get an e-mail with a link to your redemption links…those are URLs, so they are a bit lengthy if someone was hand-typing them from a printed card, but it could be done. It would have been better if they’d given us QR codes (those “squiggly boxes” that your camera can use to launch a website) as an option. There are websites which will convert a URL into a QR code, but I don’t know enough about them to recommend a specific one. I assume there are apps that can read the URL and launch it as well.

I’ve tested it out; it was all pretty simple.

All you have to do is go to the book’s Amazon product page, and choose to “Buy for others”. Note that you have to choose a quantity higher for one for this to kick in.

You get that e-mail with the link to the links…and that’s pretty much it. You can copy and paste the e-mail link, or you can print them out. They’ll also give you instructions you can share. Here’s the help page:

Amazon Help Page (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Similar to giving an individual gift, it may not be able to be redeemed outside your country, and if your recipient already has it, they can exchange it for an Amazon gift card.

I think this is a really nice option! I can see a lot of uses…goody bags at a kids’ birthday party, even for Halloween trick-or-treaters, book clubs… I can also see situations where you might not be happy with it…people giving you literature at the airport or during a political campaign. I’d much rather get the code than a hardback in that situation. I suppose they could put a limit on how long you had to redeem it (authors could do that, too), and reissue the same code. You can tell at the Amazon site if it has been redeemed or not.

I did see an author…commenting on how you don’t get a discount, but you do get your royalty, of course. Could authors use this to manipulate a book up the bestseller list temporarily? I’m not sure if the sale is counted when the book is purchased or when it is redeemed. If it’s the former, than yes…someone could buy a 100 copies and in many cases, shoot the book temporarily to the top of the list (in some categories) so they could claim that. If it’s the latter, it would depend on when they were redeemed…and I’m pretty sure that those 100 books would have to be redeemed on 100 accounts.

Those seem like quibbles when this opens up so many possibilities!

Thanks, Amazon!

What do you think? Does this sound like something you would use? How would you feel about getting a redemption URL instead of a hardback? Any suggestions to make it better? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.


Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. :) Shop ’til you help! :) 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Happy my birthday, 2018! I’m giving you presents!

February 12, 2018

Happy my birthday, 2018! I’m giving you presents!

February 12th is my birthday, and continuing a tradition, I’m giving you presents!

This is to thank you for making another year of my life richer. I have a lot of fun writing this blog, and I sometimes get to help people…and what could be better than that?

Please check that a title is free for you before buying it.

I have asked Amazon to make them free on February 12, but I can’t say exactly when it will happen. I think they may also only be free to customers in the USA.

Some might be fun to give as a little Valentine’s Day present…for somebody on your account. I don’t think you can get them for people not on your account through this one-day promotion.

So, you can click on the titles before, but please make sure it is free when you click the 1-click buy button.

The Mind Boggles (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

When this one was first published in December of 2012, it was the number one bestselling book of quotations at Amazon…including paper! That didn’t last long, but it was fun while it did. :)

The Kindle Kollection: Three Early Books about the Kindle (at AmazonSmile*)

This one combines the three below into one volume:

* ILMK! (I Love My Kindle): Being an Appreciation of Amazon’s E-Book Reader, with Tips, Explanations, and Humor
* Free Books for Your Kindle
* Frequently Asked Kindle Questions

They are largely out of date now…think of it as a collector’s item. 😉

The Collected I Love My Kindle Blog Volume 1 (at AmazonSmile*)

This is the first 101 posts in this blog. :) I did 101 posts so I wouldn’t cut off Doctor Watson’s Blog: A Kindle Abandoned (which is a four-part story).

Feel free to spread the word on these freebies…there’s no limit, as far as I know, to the number I can give away on this day.

This one is a “big” birthday, so people have been asking me if I’m doing anything special. I’m not, really. 🙂 I’m not at all ashamed of my age…I always figure every of those years helped me become who I am. I don’t mention it on this blog, because I like people to feel like they can comment here with no need to identify themselves by intrinsic characteristics.

I did take the day off of my day job, and I am getting my annual check-up. I like to do that on the actual day when I can. It won’t be my best check-up…my chronic condition has deteriorated noticeably (I’m getting a disabled placard for the first time from the DMV…I won’t use it most of the time, but I can’t do stairs, and sometimes, the special parking places are the only ones without stairs). I’m just about recovered from that nasty virus, but I still have some symptoms. I’ve also gained maybe ten pounds of unhealthy weight, but I’m still in pretty good shape. I’ll lose that weight…I’ve been indulging myself a bit while sick (which for me means things like eating two apples in a day instead of one), and I’m having to rework my exercise regimen because of decreased capability. However, I do still exercise on average about 90 minutes a day.

I am more aware of my mortality, though, so we are doing something special…we are getting a Safe Deposit Box. Even though that’s sixty dollars a year and our income was recently reduced, I think it’s worth it. The big thing that will be in there will be a way to get into all of our accounts…our now adult kid will have access to that if we die. That’s what I figure will preserve my writing, and our Kindle library.

The tentative plan is that I work in my day job until just after May 31st, 2025. That will give me twenty years in the job before retiring…and then I expect to be writing a whole lot more. 🙂

I have a thing that I write on my own time, but I publish at work (I own it…I don’t do it for work), which has to do with celeb birthdays. People seem to like it, and after I have a solid year’s worth, I may do something else with it. For fun, though, here are some other people born on my birthday…how many can you identify?

Happy February 12th birthday to Radric Delantic “Gucci Mane” Davis, Tara Strong, Mike Posner, Bill Russell, Jennifer Stone, Charles Darwin, Christina Ricci, Jesse Spencer, Scott Menville, Josh Brolin, Aaron Sanchez, Arsenio Hall, Louis Renault, Anna Pavlova, Lincoln LaPaz, Wallace Ford, William Collier Jr., Ted Mack, Joseph Kearns, Gordon Lee “Tex” Beneke, Lorne Greene, Forrest Tucker, Franco Zeffirelli, Joe Garagiola Sr., Charles Van Doren, Vince Montana Jr., Costa-Gravas, Annette Crosbie, Gene McDaniels, Ray Manzarek, Ray Kurzweil, Michael Ironside, Simon MacCorkindale, Joanna Kerns, Joe Dever, Chynna Phillips, Darren Aronofsky, and Judy Blume!

I had somebody at work ask me why Abraham Lincoln isn’t on the list…it’s because it’s a work thing, so I try not to list people known primarily as politicians…it’s just less controversial that way.

Have a great day…happy my birthday!


You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!


Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. :) Shop ’til you help! :) 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Last day to enter for a chance to win Beyond Curie: Four Women in Physics and Their Remarkable Discoveries, 1903 to 1963 by Scott Calvin

October 25, 2017

Last day to enter for a chance to win Beyond Curie: Four Women in Physics and Their Remarkable Discoveries, 1903 to 1963 by Scott Calvin

Today (October 25th) is the last day to enter my current Amazon giveaway!

Beyond Curie: Four women in physics and their remarkable discoveries 1903 to 1963 (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Giveaway:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/b139e577ee333624

  • Winner:Randomly selected after Giveaway has ended, up to 1 winners.
    Requirements for participation:
  • Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia
  • 18+ years of age (or legal age)
  • Follow Scott Calvin on Amazon

Start: Sep 25, 2017 5:46 AM PDT
End: Oct 25, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

This has been a very popular giveaway for me, with 259 entrants at time of writing!

Your chance will be just as good as anybody else’s…don’t be discouraged by the hundreds of other entrants. 🙂

Full disclosure: Scott is my sibling. However, I had nothing to do with the production of the book and do not directly financially benefit from it.

For more information on the book, see this interview:

Interview with Scott Calvin, author of Beyond Curie: Four women in physics and their remarkable discoveries 1903 to 1963

Good luck!


Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. :) Shop ’til you help! :) 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

It’s ILMK’s 8th birthday…and I’m celebrating with two giveaways!

August 28, 2017

It’s ILMK’s 8th birthday…and I’m celebrating with two giveaways!

August 28, 2009: the I Love My Kindle blog begins with this post:

Oh…um, Hi!

While I have predicted a few things correctly over the years (and been wrong on some others), I could never have predicted what the experience of writing this blog would be like!

It’s been wonderful! I’m not saying that was a surprise. 😉 I’ve been writing and/or doing other creative things for a very long time, and I’ve always enjoyed it and found fulfillment in it.

Rather than that, I’d say the biggest surprise has been how collaborative it has been.

Generally, when you write something, it’s a pretty solitary activity. Even when I’ve written with others, it still largely happens in your own head. Then you put it out there, and while you might get some feedback, it’s mostly finished once it leaves you.

With a blog, it’s different. For the first bunch of years, I posted every day (now, it’s more often several times a week). When I write the post I usually invite, and actively encourage, comments. I then can respond to those (and do, to almost all of them…in some cases, no response is necessary), and we may have a real dialogue. I would guess that there are some posts where I’ve written more in the comments than I did in the original post!

I can learn a lot in those exchanges with my readers, and they can get me to see what I’ve said and thought from a different perspective. I really appreciate that!

Based on that, I may (and have) revise a post, making it better (and typically crediting the commenter for helping with that), or write another post further exploring that topic.

I couldn’t do that easily with a book or a play or even when I was doing an “e-zine”, as we used to call them. With a blog, there is a site where people can go back and find it, so if they do, they get a better read. The international nature of blogging (I have readers around the world, which is cool!) also means people read it at different times, so I may improve the post before some people see it.

Polls are another way that people can give me their opinions (and in that case, do so without any identifying information), and I’ve had a lot of fun with those! I’ve also changed the blog based on them (largely dropping book reviews here, for example, and I stopped using the term “Mindle” for the least expensive Kindle).

Thank you to my readers and commenters for doing this together!

What I cover has also changed. When I started this, I pictured mostly writing about tech tips for the Kindle, and some about the Kindle culture (which was still developing). It really grew out of the Kindle forums, which I was visiting multiple times a day, most of the time.

I’m a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, and a techie going back to the punch card days…and a trainer for a long time. Helping people by writing about the Kindle made sense.

However, just as Amazon has greatly expanded what it does, so have I. It’s not really possible to write about the Kindle without writing about Amazon. Amazon started out as a bookstore, but that’s only a small part of what it does now. For me, the Kindle and e-books are still my primary focus, but I didn’t think I’d be writing about grocery stores! 😉

I do plan to check in again with my readers about the topics I cover and the way I write about them…that helps me decide how to try to improve the blog going forward. I think I’ll leave that for another post, although I welcome your feedback.

Here are the most popular posts since ILMK started (over a million views!):

Title Views
Home page / Archives 1,018,258
Which Kindle do you have? 165,869
The reading experience: Paperwhite vs. Kindle Fire HDX 105,547
Got a new Kindle? Here’s the most important thing to know 81,696
You can now reset your Kindle password yourself 80,600
What to do if your Kindle is lost or stolen 64,022
Parental controls and your Kindle 50,568
Amazon: “Deregistering the Kindle will remove all content from the device” 40,998
Why I don’t use Amazon’s Silk browser 27,684

It’s telling to me that the second most popular post is something that is effectively a tech tip…and that you wouldn’t guess would be an issue at all. 🙂

In the past, I’ve made some of my books free on ILMK’s birthday, but I wanted to do something different this year. Now that Amazon has its

Amazon Giveaways (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

and I’ve had so much fun with those, I’m going to give away eight Kindle versions of

The Collected I Love My Kindle Blog Volume 1 (at AmazonSmile*)

That collects the first 101 posts in this blog. I didn’t stop at 100 because I wanted to include all of my Sherlock Holmes story

A Kindle Abandoned

That’s a random giveaway, and will end in eight days. I do ask that you watch a twenty second video of one of our dogs when you enter…you know, we’re hoping it goes viral. 😉 Ideally, it would show up on the  Echo Show (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)…that would be so cool!

Here is the link:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/de03be17bb4d0ecb

and the details:

Start:Aug 28, 2017 4:42 AM PDT
End:Sep 5, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

Winner:Randomly selected after Giveaway has ended, up to 8 winners.
Requirements for participation:
Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia
Watch a YouTube video
18+ years of age (or legal age)

However, I also know that many of my readers already have that book. 🙂 I’ve given it away many times. So, I’m also doing this: I’m going to give a $8 Amazon “gift card” (it will be electronic). I’ll randomly select one winner from everyone who comments on this post before this coming Sunday (September 3rd, Pacific Time). That way, you can get whatever you want. 🙂

Good luck in both giveaways, and thank you for a great (first?) eight years!


My other current Amazon Giveaway:

We Can Do It! giveaway

That’s for a chance to win my sibling’s book:

We Can Do It!: A Problem Solving Graphic Novel Guide for General Physics (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! 🙂 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

New Amazon Giveaway! We Can Do It!

August 19, 2017

New Amazon Giveaway! We Can Do It!

I’m doing a giveaway for my sibling Scott’s book,

We Can Do It!: A Problem Solving Graphic Novel Guide for General Physics (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I’m giving two winners one Kindle version each. At time of writing,  it’s $7 in this edition, 4.8 stars with eight customer reviews.

You can enter the giveaway here:

We Can Do It! giveaway

If you just want to read it (curiosity about physics, which is really about how everything works 😉  , would be a good reason) , it is also available at no additional cost through

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Since some of my readers are authors, or have other things they want to promote, I like to give you an idea about hw things like this can affect a book. This is what the stats were before I started the giveaway:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,069,494 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

#2849 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Physics
#15527 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Comics & Graphic Novels > Graphic Novels
#19877 in Books > Science & Math > Physics
@terrance_can followers: 6

Here are the details on the giveaway itself:

  • Winner:Randomly selected after Giveaway has ended, up to 2 winners.
  • Requirements for participation:
  • Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia
  • 18+ years of age (or legal age)
  • Tweet a message (“I’ve got a chance to win a copy of We Can Do It!, which teaches college physics using cartoon dinosaurs!”)
  • Start:Aug 18, 2017 5:41 AM PDT
  • End:Sep 2, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

At time of writing, there are almost 100 entrants already! Good luck!

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! 🙂 

It’s National Book Lovers Day: five ways to share the love (and a giveaway)

August 9, 2017

It’s National Book Lovers Day: five ways to share the love (and a giveaway)

August 9th is National Book Lovers Day!

A bit of research hasn’t told me exactly why, though. 🙂 I didn’t see any special birthdays or anniversaries that would relate right offhand.

I think one of the best things about being a book lover is sharing your love of books (both generally and specifically) with others. I’ve been doing that for a very long time. Back in high school, I was the “librarian” for our science fiction club. We were actually given the use of a very small room for it, and people could check out books. I’ve also been the Education Director for a non-profit, which included digitizing public domain books to give away online. I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore. I’m coming up on eight (!) years of writing this blog.

I used to buy pretty much every used paperback of the first Doc Savage novel I saw, so I would have copies to give people to get them started with Doc (even though that first one is atypical, it’s part of Doc’s development and important to understanding what one of my fictional heroes becomes).

Amazon gives us several ways to share our love of (Kindle) books with others, and I thought I’d list five.

  1. Give someone the book! Barnes & Noble had gifting of e-books before Amazon, and people talked about that a lot. It was something people definitely wanted to do, and I’ve given many books to people over the years…it’s definitely one of my favorite things to do. Since we got that ability on November 19, 2010 (three years to the day after the Kindle was released), the ability to do it has expanded. There are still (understandably, in my mind) some limitations (geographical, primarily), but it’s really quite easy. You can gift a book from the book’s Amazon product page, but a fairly recent and welcome addition is the ability to do it from the MYCD (Manage Your Content and Devices), formerly MYK (Manage Your Kindle) (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) page. Yep, find the book there, click/tap/eye gaze (although I haven’t actually tried this specific thing in Virtual Reality, I know I can buy books from Amazon there) the Actions ellipsis (…) and you’ll see a choice to “Gift Now”. You can also now delay the delivery of  gift, or print it out to give whenever you want…that lets you take advantage of the constant sales at Amazon to get something at a discount
  2. Loan someone the book…this is quite limited, and up to the publishers. Not all books can be loaned, and when they are loaned, it is only for fourteen days (and you can only loan any given book once…ever. Not once to two different people)
  3. Review/rate the book: you can do this on the book’s Amazon product page, at the Amazon-owned Goodreads, or even from within the book itself when you are finishing it. This is an extremely powerful way to aid a book’s audience growth. It’s so powerful that people cheat, and they get caught at it. I used to write some reviews in this blog, but after polling my readers, I’ve largely stopped doing that. I do review books at Goodreads, but quite inconsistently. I read several books at once, and I may finish one while I am out. I just don’t find it convenient to review every single book I finish…and honestly, I don’t always think it’s useful for me to do. When I write a review, I want it to be good writing, not just an opinion. I want it to give an insight into the book. It’s not something I just dash off without thinking, and I don’t prioritize writing them very highly, compared to other writing I’m doing. Perhaps I should…
  4. Share that you are reading/have finished/have bought a book: while you can add a comment, that’s more of just a statement of fact. 🙂 It does, though, really encourage other people. When we are eventually shopping in virtual bookstores, it will still have a very big impact on people to see others’ avatars buying a book. One new way Amazon has made that available is through Amazon Spark: Amazon Spark: a new social network (and product discovery) for iOS. It’s sort of like Instagram for Amazon products. I’ve dabbled, but it’s too limited for me to use it much at this point
  5. Amazon Giveaways: this is different from giving a gift to a particular person…it’s more like having a lottery, although there are several ways to structure it: Amazon Giveaways: so fun I’m running four (update: 5!) right now 🙂. I was doing these a lot and enjoying it. Personal circumstances have me not doing it the same way right now, but I highly recommend it if you can and you want to promote (that doesn’t have to mean for financial gain) a book. Just make sure to make the giveaway public, so people can discover it

Even though that’s already five, I’ll also mention Amazon Gift Cards. That lets you share your love of books (as would gifting Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)) in a more general way. 🙂 What I’m going to do next is an example of a way to use gift cards.

I’m going to give a $5 Amazon gift card to someone who comments on this post today (by 11:59 PM Eastern time)…I’d like you to mention the title of a book, but I won’t require that. If you don’t want the gift card, please mention that. I’ll randomly select someone (not including people who say they don’t want it) from commenters on this post during that period. I will use the e-mail address you use to post, which won’t be public to anyone else…don’t include your e-mail address in your comment. 🙂 Just my way of sharing the love of books with book lovers.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! 🙂 

Alexa Voice Shopping for Prime Day…and a chance to win $5000

July 6, 2017

Alexa Voice Shopping for Prime Day…and a chance to win $5000

This year’s Amazon

Prime Day (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

is July 11th, but it starts on July 10th at 6:00 PM Pacific…unless you are voice shopping on an Alexa device, in which case you’ll be able to start at 4:00 PM Pacific!

Actually, there are Alexa deals right now…and today (July 5th) a sweepstakes starts where you can win $5,000 from Amazon.

The easiest way to enter, if you have an Alexa device (I’ll list them), all you have to do between today and July 19th is say to your device, “Alexa, what are your deals?” You can only enter once, but it’s worth checking the deals more than that. 🙂

If you don’t have one, you can go to the

Sweepstakes Entry Page (at AmazonSmile*)

The official rules are there, too.

If you’ve never done Alexa voice shopping before, you can also get $10 off. The details on that one are on the page with the

list of Alexa deals (at AmazonSmile*)

I have to say, they do have some interesting things! Some of them tie directly into the Alexa, like security cameras and wi-fi extenders…but you can also get a dog toy, dog treats, a sewing machine, and the noise-making

Chewbacca Mask (at AmazonSmile*)

as seen in the viral

Chewbacca Mom video

The available items will change…

Here is

press release

The Alexa deals are available on the

Echo Dot (at AmazonSmile*)

Amazon Tap (at AmazonSmile*)

Amazon Echo (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Echo Show (at AmazonSmile*)

Amazon Fire TV (at AmazonSmile*)

Fire TV Stick (at AmazonSmile*) (I assume…it doesn’t explicitly say it)

and Alexa-enabled

Fire tablets (at AmazonSmile*)

I do want to mention that the Echo Show has now become part of our lives. 🙂 I wasn’t sure how it would, but we like doing the videocalls, it hears us very well, and I do like the “headlines” that it displays. For example, our dogs get their monthly medications today. It was the best reminder to just see it on the screen when I came out in the morning (I’m not really a morning person), rather than having to respond to something on my phone or tablet. Their trending topics are also often entertaining.

Right now, only two other people in my contacts have Alexa calling enabled for me, but I know that’s sort of a “chicken and the egg” thing…it will be more useful when more people have it, and more people will get it when it’s more useful. 🙂

I’m expecting this Prime Day to be Amazon’s biggest sales day to date!

Enjoy!

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. :) Shop ’til you help! :) 

Goodreads Giveaways

June 20, 2017

Goodreads Giveaways

How would you like a $14.99 Scott Turow novel for free?

Well, you can enter for a chance to win one at the Goodreads Giveaways:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway?filter=kindle&page=1&sort=ending_soon&utf8=%E2%9C%93

They’ve made entering these giveaways very easy, similar to entering

Amazon Giveaways (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Once you are logged into Goodreads (Amazon’s social reading site…they bought into it a while back), you just click a button to enter into the giveaway, and then acknowledge the terms.

There are thirty-five titles available right now.

I like that they tell you how many people have entered so far. There are 100 “copies” available of each title being given away, and the number of entrants at time of writing ranged from under 200 to at least 1,500.

If you already have an account, I’m not seeing a lot of reasons not to enter. 🙂

Good luck!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. :) Shop ’til you help! :) 

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