Kindle News: 1-day sale: Basic Kindle eReader $49, Today-Only. Amazon's Prime shipping delivery before Christmas for orders thru' Dec 22. A couple of Amazon drone reactions. Kindle Fire HDX shares top of PC World list of Top 5 products for 2013.

ONE-Day Sale. $20 off the Basic Kindle and a delivery guarantee before Christmas for Prime purchases thru' the night of the 22nd.


 The $49 price for the basic Kindle eReader is for TODAY Only (Tuesday), effective through midnight.  $20 off the Basic e-Ink Kindle - $49.00.

The e-Ink Basic Kindle is for basic e-book reading and it's NOT a touch screen device.  Any searches are done with an alphabetically-arranged keyboard which you navigate with a 5-way controller button, clicking it for each alpha character needed.  But it has good customer feedback from those who just want to read books and who don't take many notes or do many searches and it has features not found on e-Ink devices from other makers, especially for $49.
  Furthermore, it has the physical side buttons for Previous and Next page, a feature some e-Ink eReader users miss.  (Me, I'd miss the normal touch keyboard, but many rarely want to type or do searches.)

  Note that once you add a night light, it can still be $70 total for one, but it's still not close to the price of a Paperwhite 2 with built-in light.  It's lighter and if you don't need a night light for it, you get two of these eReaders for less than the cost of a Paperwhite 2 (which is currently $119).


Amazon Prime offers Free Shipping through Dec. 22.
Also announced today was Amazon's Free Holiday Shipping for Prime members through Sunday, December 22 for delivery before Christmas.  That's 5 days and nights remaining.
  "[Prime] Customers can order as late as midnight EST, Sunday, Dec. 22, to receive delivery before Christmas with Free Two-Day Shipping"

  Prime Program members do have free two-day shipping on most Amazon-sold and shipped orders year round, but the emphasis is that the packages will arrive before Christmas Day on Prime members' purchases made as late as Sunday night on the 22nd.
  They draw attention to "incredible deals" still findable on the Top Holiday Deals page.

They add that "Amazon Prime members can order gifts as late as midnight EST on Sunday, Dec. 22, for free delivery before Christmas and the media release has a reminder that if you're not a Prime member you can sign up to take advantage of the free shipping offer by visiting Amazon's Prime page with detailed information and FAQs.

  Also, they have a special price for ONE-day delivery for Prime members also, which I hadn't noticed, thinking it was $1 higher.  But that's available for $2.99 an order.


Speaking of fast delivery offers
Everyone's had fun with Jeff Bezos' announcement of a future Amazon drone delivery vehicle that will fly the apparently cluttered skies with your package for 30-minute delivery time if you live near an Amazon warehouse.  I saw a couple of fun takes on this that others might enjoy.   One muses on a type of item the drone might drop through mechanical error.

  It was at least a way to get a lot of buzz on Amazon on Cyber Monday when "the futuristic concept got 200,000 Google searches that day (later, on Thursday, there were at least 2 million queries for Amazon)..."

  Privacy concerns
  And there was a dire warning that was irony at its best from Google's Chairman, who wants a ban on Amazon's drones, according to a quote in The Guardian reported by CNN's Philip Elmer-DeWitt.

  Also interesting is Apple's statement on the differences between its business model and that of other businesses when it comes to privacy concerns.


Kindle Fire HDX shares the top of PC World's list for "Best of 2013"
PC World's headline caught my eye because the Surface Pro 2, which is my newish and addicting laptop tablet and now main computer, shared top billing with the Kindle Fire HDX 7" tablet in the Top 5 products cited by them among 50 that they're highlighting.  But more on the reception of the HDX line in the next blog entry.

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Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links.

US: New Kindle Fire HD 7" 2nd Gen - $139/169 Kindle Fire HDX 7" 16-64GB - $229/269/309 Kindle Fire HDX 8.9" 16-64GB - $379/429/479 - with 4G added: $479/529/579 Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 16GB - 1st Gen $229 - 32GB w/ no special-offers: $314 Kindle NoTouch (Basic) - $69/$89 Kindle Touch WiFi - $99 Kindle Paperwhite 2, WiFi - $119/$139 Kindle Paperwhite 2, WiFi+3G - $189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $139/$159, Free web Kindle DX - $379 $169 (*Temp* price)

UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £69 Kindle Paperwhite 2, WiFi - £109 Kindle Paperwhite2 3G, UK - £169 Kindle Fire Basic HD 8/16GB, UK -  from £119 Kindle Fire HDX 7" 16-64GB, UK - from £199. 4G/3G Kindle Fire HDX 8.9" 16-64GB, UK - from £329. 4G/3G CANADA - Kindlestore, CDN-$ Kindle Basic, NoTouch - $79 Kindle Paperwhite 2 - $139 Kindle Paperwhite 2, 3G - $209 KFire HD Yr 2012 7" $214,  8.9" $244. Yr 2013 KFires: HD Gen2, HDX line

*OTHER Int'l pages* Kindle NoTouch Basic - $89 Paperwhite 2 WiFi $139, 3G/Wifi $209 KFire HD Yr 2012: 7" $214,  8.9" $244 Yr 2013: HD Gen2 + HDX line Australia Kindlestore France Boutique Kindle Deutschland - Kindle Store Italia - Kindle Store Spain - Tienda Kindle Brazil - Amazon Brazil China - Amazon China [?] Japan - Amazon Japan

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Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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Kindle News: Amazon's new 'Add-on' Item shipping option. Flipboard on Kindle Fire gets nicely formatted NY Times articles

Amazon's new Add-On Item shipping option

These new items "ship with orders that include $25 or more of items shipped by Amazon, excluding gift cards."

I noticed that some low-priced items ($3 to $6 or so), EVEN when shipped from and sold by Amazon.com (normally eligible for Prime shipping), currently carry the label "Add-on Item."

  I also noted that, even for Prime members, these lower-cost items are not shippable for Prime shipping benefits of FREE Two-Day Shipping," until they can be combined with an Amazon Prime order of "$25 or more" -- in which case it THEN arrives with free two-day shipping.

  They add that "Non-Prime members can combine Add-on Items with other items to take advantage of FREE Super Saver Shipping."

  One of the advantages of Prime shipping at $79/year (the Instant Video and Kindle Lending Library perks are added to the basic shipping benefits) has been that you did not have to wait until you had an order of $25 or more to get two-day shipping.

  On these, though, if I'm reading it correctly, they would either require a wait until you could add them to either a $25+ Amazon Prime order to get Prime's 2-day shipping or combine them "with other items" but somehow NOT get that 2-day shipping feature.

  It looks, at first read, like a cutting back of that particular, important Prime benefit (no minimum order) for items such as:
  1. a $5.99 bottle of Jarrow Formulas lozenges, shipped from and sold by Amazon.com itself, or
  2. a $3.49 card with Clover beading needles

The explanation you see in the image that heads this blog article is that

"This item is available because of the new Add-on program," which allows Amazon "to offer thousands of low-priced items that would be cost-prohibitive to ship on their own."
  They ship with "qualifying orders over $25" and are eligible for Free shipping (2 days on Prime or longer on Super Saver Shipping).

A question I have then: Why can't one of these, "shipped from and sold by Amazon.com," be added to a PRIME order of UNDER $25 and given free 2-day shipping along with that Prime order that's under $25?  It would be shipped from Amazon and not shipped "on its own" -- so why is it 2-day-shippable only for Prime orders OVER $25?
  When did we have $25 minimums on Prime shipping?

At the "About Amazon Prime page," I don't see descriptions anymore about not having to bunch your orders to reach $25, but at the same time they don't say there that a Prime order has to be $25 or more.

  But here's a Prime benefit listed that I've not seen before nor seen as an option when buying items.  I've italicized some of it.

' FREE No Rush Shipping for typical delivery one week after placing an order.

Note: You may receive promotional credit for selecting No-Rush Shipping.  Credit will be automatically applied to your Amazon.com account once the first package from a No-Rush Shipping-eligible order ships.  You'll receive an e-mail as soon as the credit is available.  You may select No-Rush Shipping as many times as it's offered to you, but you won't be eligible for the credit if you cancel your No-Rush Shipping order or return items from it. '

So, it looks to me as if the Prime Shipping program may be costing Amazon more than anticipated.  Again, this is my immediate take.  If you've other thoughts on it, please add your thoughts to the comments area or to the Facebook page, which is easier for some.

  If true, the "fixes" involved keep a "free" shipping of an item available while adding a minimum-$ order when needing, in Prime, the 2-day shipment on an "Add-on" item.   The two-day shipping on even smaller items has been a boon and seems still available for some Prime orders.

I think that on any yearly program purchases, if any benefits are somewhat changed, these should be spelled out.
  If the program is not working for them that well in the way they began it, or they are working with less-flexible agreements with shippers (and maybe all the new Agreements on Instant Video fare which is part of Prime have raised costs quite a bit), they should just say so.  There are still benefits to the program.


The Flipboard Kindle Fire and Android App now has some very nicely formatted features from The New York Times.  From a Business Wire release:

' The New York Times (NYTimes.com) today launched The New York Times on Flipboard for Android and Kindle Fire, which delivers the latest news and award-winning journalism of The New York Times, designed and formatted for optimal reading on Flipboard’s apps for Android phone and tablet devices and the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.
  . . .
Following authentication within Flipboard, existing Times subscribers will have full access to all content on both Android and Kindle Fire. As with other New York Times news applications, the Top News section is free. '

Details and pricing for the various subscription plans are available at The NY Times site.

TechnologyTell's Juli Monroe likes it better on her Android (Nexus 7) than on the iPad.  In the Apple iOS version there is an ad with each article, she writes, which she doesn't mind, but she's not seen them yet in the Android version, except for a "quick ad between articles reminding me to subscribe to the digital version of the Times for full access)."  As with many of us (I already have a newspaper subscription and I've been enjoying the NY Times Latest News blog stream about 5 times a day on the Paperwhite, at $1.99/mo.), she has the free account and receives only "Top Stories" (there are quite a few).

  And also like many of us who use the Flipboard app, it's her favorite news reader on all her devices.  I think it's a beautiful news app, full of surprises, though there are some who prefer all-text and other layouts, as described in this blog's earlier story on Flipboard.  Flipboard was introduced in the this blog story 5 days before that.


Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!