Kindle News: 5 Mystery-Thriller series for Kindle Daily Deal Sunday. Kindle Fire rumors, how solid are they? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Jeff Bezos to present mobile learning initiative Wednesday, Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, Ofc Pro KFire app for 99c ended tonight.

Goldbox-Kindle Daily Deal today: all novels from five mystery and thriller series, $0.99 each

Amazon is showcasing today "the world-class work of D.M. Annechino, Scott Nicholson, Blair S. Walker, Traci Hohenstein, and Rex Kusler.  With settings ranging from Kusler's gritty, Great Recession-era Las Vegas to rural America and Nicholson's harrowing Monkey House drug trials, these suspenseful books promise to keep you reading into the night."
  The up to 80% discount ends at Sunday night.

Reminder - The Kindle Fire app, Office Suite Professional 6  discounted price from $14.99 to $0.99 also ends tonight (Sunday night, June 17) ended already.  Thanks to Andy for alerting us about the discounted price ending earlier than stated.  It may have been 'Midnight, Sunday,' which would have been last night but I don't have the reference.

The usual rumors
Almost every news site is repeating the latest rumors from Digitimes which has been about 60% accurate when it comes to details, in the past, and usually over-optimistic about delivery dates, even when they're naming suppliers and talking about actual orders.   They're not naming suppliers nor talking about orders at this point, so the sourcing given by them is vaguer than most of their reports.

.  Still, what they predict is likely to happen eventually because all these companies do upgrade their models, at which point they price the earlier model lower (as has been done with the Kindle 3 AKA Kindle Keyboard).

  Their latest article, linked above, written by Max Wang and Joseph Tsai, says that "reportedly" Amazon "may" drop the 7" Kindle Fire price when they release another model, which Digitimes writes, "Amazon is SAID to be 'considering' doing "at the beginning of the third quarter.  This release uses more conditional wording than I've seen from them in the past.

  It makes sense to me that one would be ready sometime in the third quarter though, so I'd be surprised if a new, 2nd model wasn't added to the 'tablet family' in July or August.

  We know that a lighted e-Ink model is likely around that time as well, but the wording in this report is that it's third quarter at the earliest" and they even err in saying "backlight" which isn't possible with e-Ink.   The earlier 'leak' from a reporter who saw it (months ago when it wasn't ready) said it was front-lighted, as is the Nook's.

  Also, if Amazon wants to expand its tablet market share (it doesn't sell Kindle Fires overseas yet), it'd be smart to have one tablet with added features and one which would be the economy version (the current Kindle Fire).  Apple has 16/32/64 gigs of storage options available on each iPad.  They're also selling the iPad 2 for $100 less than the $500 it went for the year before, now that they've boosting the display resolution of the iPad 3 with the Retina display.

  Digitimes' "sources from the upstream supply chain" say they "expect Amazon to release a new 7" Kindle Fire, which would have a screen resolution of 1280 by 800 vs the current 1024 by 600 (and I would imagine more storage and memory) while lowering the price of the current one to $149 once they ever release a more fully featured model.

 Contrary to their earlier reports, Digitimes  now say there is no 8.9" tablet coming (the 'development' of one has been "halted", they say),  but as of this week, their "latest information" is that a 10" one is planned for the end of this year OR the beginning of next year.

Other rumors
Microsoft is said to be announcing something along with Nokia on Monday.
People are expecting a tablet from Microsoft too.

That State Dept Contract
Hillary Clinton and Jeff Bezos are set to announce Kindle Mobile Learning Initiative next Wednesday.
  This is another report by Laura Hazard Owen on the State Dept contract negotiations in connection with the no-bid contract for up to $16.5 million for Amazon Kindles, operations management, service and support, including a 24/7 help desk, and quick non-questioned free replacements as needed.

Earlier blog articles with detail on this are:
  .  http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2012/06/amazons-contract-with-us-state-dept-for.html
  .  http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2012/06/kindle-news-kindle-touch-with-front.html

  It was said Friday that the contract isn't signed yet, but the wording left it as a formality.  Amazon needs to 'respond' to the contract stipulations and the two sides need to work out the details.  That is pretty common.  Do we think Amazon will turn down the $16.5 million potential?

 Also, the joint appearance by Secretary of State Clinton and Amazon's CEO Bezos to announce the global launch of the Kindle Mobile Learning Initiative June 20 at a press conference would seem quite strange if things weren't expected to be in place.  They are calling it a 'pilot program' at this point.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
The winners of the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award were named by Amazon, Penguin Group (USA) and CreateSpace today:  Alan Averill and Regina Sirois. The link has all the details.

' Alan Averill is the Grand Prize winner in the general fiction category for his novel, "The Beautiful Land," while Regina Sirois was awarded the Grand Prize in the young adult fiction group for her novel, "On Little Wings."  Both authors have received a publishing contract from Penguin Group (USA) that includes a $15,000 advance.  "The Beautiful Land" and "On Little Wings" will be published by Berkley Books and Viking Books for Young Readers, respectively.  The novels are now available for pre-order on Amazon.com at www.amazon.com/abna. '

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US: Kindle Fire  7" tablet - $199 Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109 Kindle Touch, WiFi - $99/$139 Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow web

UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89 Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169 Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

OTHER International Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109 Kindle Touch WiFi - $139 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189   Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

  For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics USA: by:    Publication Date      Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular The Kindle Daily Deal What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle Keyboard(U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

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Kindle News: Waterstone, soft rumors, Paramount movies to Prime

Kindle News: Bits and pieces - I'm on vacation this week and the news is mostly very soft rumors, most of them conflicting so until they firm up I don't tend to report them, but a bit on that further on down.

Waterstones in the UK has signed an agreement with Amazon to sell Kindles in the UK, although Waterstones had been said to be in talks with Barnes and Noble for international sales.  However, managing director James Daunt said in a statement. “The best digital readers, the Kindle family, will be married to the singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop. With the combination of “We asked ourselves, ‘what do our customers want?’; the answer was the Kindle. Once we’d done that this was self-evidently the best deal,” Daunt told The Bookseller...
...
paidContent's article by Laura Hazard Owen ends with what what looks like a quote from The Bookseller:
"Daunt said the two businesses had started talking only ‘relatively recently,’ admitting that he had looked at other options but rejected them. ‘Ultimately, when we thought about it, we had to give the customers what they wanted. And the best device on the market is the Kindle.’ "

They have about 300 stores, so it is a real plus for Amazon and of course bad news for Barnes and Noble.

Rumors
The Kindle Fire rumor a couple of weeks ago was that they were working on an 8.9" tablet to be ready for the holidays, end of 2012 but that while some orders were underaway, there were no named companies as there were when rumors were stronger in the past.

Now it's a 10" model, others say but with no basis for the rumors. I think it's a slow newscycle and these articles invariably end with "What do you think will happen?"

We'll see.

Hundreds of Paramount movies being added to Prime
See TechCrunch for details.

More later... 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. )
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Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!