Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

Posts Tagged ‘Kindle’

USA TODAY to include Amazon Kindle on best-seller list

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

McLean, Va. (July 22, 2009) – Beginning tomorrow USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books List will include Amazon Kindle book sales in overall sales rankings. USA TODAY is the first major book list to include Kindle book sales and in doing so will provide a much more robust ranking for our bestseller list. This list will run in Thursday’s edition of USA TODAY and online at booklist.usatoday.com.

“Since October of 1993, USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books List has provided our readers with a complete picture of sales in the publishing industry,” said Susan Weiss, managing editor of the Life section. “With the addition of sales figures from Kindle, we have created a more robust list which reflects the new platforms consumers and readers are using to purchase books.”

“We are thrilled to be contributing Kindle book sales information to USA TODAY for their comprehensive bestseller list for books customers,” said Laura Porco, director of Kindle books. “Given the great overlap of taste between Kindle customers and physical book buyers, the USA TODAY Best-Selling Books List is truly reflective of what customers are buying regardless of format.”

Rankings for USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books List are based on retail sales data collected each week that include more than 2.5 million volumes from about 7,000 physical retail outlets in addition to books sold online. USA TODAY’s list ranks titles regardless of genre or format, providing one of the best assessments of which books are most popular among readers and consumers each week. USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list has been published each Thursday in the newspaper’s Life section since October 28, 1993.

USA TODAY was founded in 1982 with a mission to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Through its flagship newspaper and popular Web site, USA TODAY engages the national conversation and connects readers online through social media applications. USA TODAY, the nation’s top-selling newspaper with a total average daily circulation of more than 2.1 million, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper Web site which launched in 1995, reach a combined 5.8 million readers daily. The USA TODAY news and information brand also includes: USA TODAY Education, USA TODAY LIVE, USA TODAY Mobile, Open Air magazine and USA TODAY Sports Weekly. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).

Tags: Kindle
Posted in SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

Amazon Kindle Contract Review and Annotation

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

by members of the Contract Committee

This .pdf document is an annotation of the Amazon Kindle contract as it was posted on Amazon’s Web site (downloaded in February, 2008). Members of the SFWA Contract Committee compiled these annotations solely as an educational service to SFWA members. It is not legal advice and may not be relied on as such.

Our annotations consist of yellow-highlighting particular passages, then describing issues raised by the passage (using blue indented text). In a few cases we present new language (in blue highlight) that is relevant to an issue we raise.

We welcome comments or suggestions, particularly if Amazon amends the Kindle contract.

Tags: Amazon, business, contracts, internet, Kindle, online
Posted in Contracts and Copyrights, Information Center, SFWA Blog, Sample Contracts, The Business of Writing | 5 Comments »

Kindle limits the number of downloads?

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

This report from Gear Diary paints a unpleasant picture for Amazon’s download policy for Kindle. It seems that there’s a limit to how many times you can download a book, but that limit isn’t posted anywhere.

Here’s an excerpt of the article, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

The customer rep asked me to send every one of the books in my Amazon library to my iPhone. Most of them gave the message that they were sent but a number of them returned the message “Cannot be sent to selected device”.

“Oh that’s the problem,” he said “if some of the books will download and the others won’t it means that you’ve reached the maximum number of times you can download the book.”

I asked him what that meant since the books I needed to download weren’t currently on any device because I had wiped those devices clean and simply wanted to reinstall. He proceeded to tell me that there is always a limit to the number of times you can download a given book. Sometimes, he said, it’s five or six times but at other times it may only be once or twice. And, here’s the kicker folks, once you reach the cap you need to repurchase the book if you want to download it again.

Tags: Amazon, Kindle
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off