Amazon loosens free-shipping restrictions. More on Family Library Sharing feature. Free and low-cost Kindle book - Search-link options for February for contemporary, non-classics + other bargain pages (US, UK, Canada) + Kindle discount-alerts by customers + Kindle Unlimited Audible w/ Whispersync. UPDATED March 2, 2015)

FIRST, a couple of news stories that should be of interest to Amazon's customers

Amazon now allows items from multiple merchants to be combined to qualify for free shipping on orders of $35 and above.

  Until late January, all items in the cart didn't qualify unless they were all being purchased from the same seller.

  Now, eligible items from multiple merchants -- including those that don't ship through Amazon -- can be combined to qualify for the free shipping minimum.   You'll see "Free Shipping" as a label on the product pages for 'qualifying' items

  Consumerist offers detailed definitions for "Sold by Amazon" - "Fulfilled by Amazon" and Fulfilled by Seller."

  How the new system works:

' This week’s change affects items that are “fulfilled by seller,” but the seller doesn’t charge separate shipping.  Let’s say, for example, that you’re buying two toys: one is shipped from Amazon and costs $9, and the other is shipped directly from the seller’s warehouse and costs $27. Even though Amazon isn’t involved in shipping the more expensive item, it still counts toward your total for free shipping. '

David Pogue explains How to Set up Amazon's Family Library
Pogue's instructions were written for Yahoo! Tech.
  His first article was on how the new Family Sharing feature "could save you 50% on your ebooks, apps, movies, music, and TV shows."

  The older method of sharing Kindle books has been to have people share one Amazon account, and up to 6 people could share access to a Kindle book, but there was no way to keep your separate last-page-read nor your own annotations.  (Parental controls in more recent models help with the older problem of children having access to the parents' books credit card purchasing.)  Pogue adds, re the new Family feature:

' This feature lets you share your online purchases with other people, even if they have their own separate accounts.  In theory, these other people are your family members, but there’s nothing to stop you from filling those slots with, say, your friends or roommates.

[ Kindleworld note: See Pogue's caution about this at the end of the set-up instructions in the 2nd article. ]

. . .   Amazon lets you share only Kindle ebooks, audiobooks, and apps.  You can’t share TV shows, movies, or music with this feature. (Amazon says that, later this year, you’ll also be able to share Prime Instant Videos, if you’re a Prime member.)

  Furthermore, only two people (adults, each with a different Amazon account) can see each other’s stuff everywhere Kindle books can be read: not just on Kindle e-readers, but also in the Kindle apps on tablets, phones, and computers, and even on the Amazon website. '

  There's more detail about sharing books with children, in a more limited way, and on fewer devices.

  He also mentions the older feature of publishers' tightly-controlled Lending capability for only certain Kindle books and for only 14 days maximum, to be used only ONCE, ever, for a given book.  Needless to say, this was not a very popular feature, since the publishers haven't approved many of their more popular Kindle books for this type of lending.

  Again, Pogue's second article is on How to set up Family Library.  It's very well illustrated.  Note that he adds this caution:

' By the way: Don’t try to get clever.  You can’t use the Family Library feature to let lots of different people read your books for free.  If you delete your partner from the “household” you’ve set up (so that a new person can read your books, for example), then neither you nor your partner is allowed to join a Family Sharing arrangement again for six months. '

All right. March's Kindle book deals - Updated from earlier February entry
    February 2015  March 2015.
    Also, all currently free non-classics sorted by:
    Publication Date   Bestselling    High ratings

  There are only a few shown on the first few days of any month, and these include pre-orders due that month -- most of these are listed as "free preview" of whatever chapters chosen, some are short stories, and a few (overnight) not-entirely-family-safe titles may show up.


[The below monthly book deals entry was updated from February to March selections.]
The special monthly book deals for March 2015 -- where to find them, etc.

MARCH 2015's monthly Kindle Books deal, for $3.99 or less (See UK listing here.)

For those who want to quickly look first at only the ones that are star-rated at 4 or above, here is Amazon's page for that.  These details are for people new to the monthly feature or to this blog.

  On the main monthly Kindle book deals page, separate categories are highlighted, using Amazon's usual horizontally-scrolling pick-lists, for the following topics highlighted on the main page. They link to "See all" at the bottom of each horizontally-scrolled category row [ I'm adding direct links to the full category listings ]:

  1. History and by Avg Customer Rating
  2. Science Fiction & Fantasy and by Avg Customer Rating
  3. Biography and Memoirs and by Avg Customer Rating
  4. Literary Fiction Deals and by Avg Customer Rating
  5. Religion and Spirituality and by Avg Customer Rating

  6. Whispersync for Voice and by Avg Customer Rating     Audible book with Kindle book

        The Whispersync category has sometimes shown up with an explanation that the corresponding audio book is also sold at the monthly-deal price, if wanted.

  ' Now you can seamlessly switch between reading featured Kindle books and listening to them without ever losing your place...
  First, purchase the Kindle book for $3.99 or less. Then add the narration from Audible for $3.99 or less to enable the feature. '

  The Whispersync category is always listed in the left column of the main Monthly Deals page (there are about 53 of these Whispersync-ready books in March's deals).  They're also included in the overall scrolled monthly deals that can be sorted by several options at the bottom of that main page.

  Note that the newish Kindle Unlimited subscription program includes many of these as part of Kindle Unlimited so that there's no added charge for the Audible book, for KU subscribers.

The main monthly deals page also tends to show, on the right, two vertically-scrolling categories:
  1. A list of Bestsellers
  2. Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense highlighted + more in the linked full list w/ sorting options)
      Here's that fuller listing by Avg Customer Rating

THEN, at the bottom of the new main monthly Kindle book-deals page, they offer the FULL current monthly listing, defaulting to sorting by "New and Popular" and there are 117 in all today, currently, but the number may vary.

  Here's a direct link to that Full-listing (US), sorted by "New and Popular" for the month, so
    it's a good one to bookmark if you just want to jump to that) and
    you can choose another sort option for this full listing, such as
        Avg Customer Rating or by Price: Low to High

These options should make it easier to find books of interest to you.

The pricing for March's group of Kindle books include 99c books to $3.99 (there were no 99-cent ones for December's monthly deal.

  The Kindle books you'll see on this special monthly-deals page  (UK version here) are new for March.

(US Link: amzn.to/mkbooks-1to4,  UK Link: amzn.to/100kbooks-1to4uk)

The ongoing Kindle Daily Deals page
for any given day usually shows a lot of books since it includes children's books, a couple of genre-specific deals, and the monthly daily deals as well.

Also:
    Highly rated, under $1

    In addition, Amazon still quietly carries: "Mostly 99c Kindle Books" page, which is a different Amazon listing from the one for highly rated Kindle books under $1.

    Amazon Top 100   (Also, UK-only)

    Amazon's own Limited Time Free Promos.

    NEWer are 50 Kindle Book Deals for $2 Each.  These are all labeled Kindle Unlimited and are from the subscription set of 700,000+ Kindle books. This particular set of discounts is valid through the end of the month, March 31, 2015.

    Also, there's a recently added umbrella page, Kindle Book Deals, for the many types of Kindle book deals available at any given time, so it's another good one to bookmark, along with the page you're reading :-)

    for students (and their parents), there is a special page for eTextbooks you can "Rent, Buy or Try eTextbooks for Free."
  They point out that "you can save up to 80% off the print list price when you rent and up to 60% off the print list price when you buy eTextbooks."

Two ongoing pages you may want to bookmark
1. Free Kindle Non-Classics - includes the above bargain links among other ones.
2. KINDLE SUPPORT info
  This has an "Often Asked" section which has a lot of good info in it. Updated 7/2/14.

---

DISCOUNTED / Price Dropped Kindle eBooks III - the ongoing Kindle Forum message thread
  This is an ongoing message thread in which Kindle owners share information on recent drops in pricing on specific Kindle books, often with some added info by the person posting it.


The below is for February and NOT updated for March
  For March, go to the first link for the message thread ending Feb. 2 and then click at top right to go to the Last Post and then work backwards to get applicable discount-alerts for the last couple of days (the discounts are only temporary).

  - Not-updated portion below
  Here's a link to the thread, which includes many books with large price drops.  I'm starting at a January 30 posting page that includes books that are still on sale today, Feb. 2.  On that beginning page is a very topical book, "The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear" by Seth Mnookin, which was $9.99 but is $2.99 on Kindle today (and will probably end tonight).
  From the product description: "In 1998 Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist with a history of self-promotion, published a paper with a shocking allegation: the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine might cause autism. The media seized hold of the story and, in the process, helped to launch one of the most devastating health scares ever. In the years to come Wakefield would be revealed as a profiteer in league with class-action lawyers, and he would eventually lose his medical license.  Meanwhile one study after another failed to find any link between childhood vaccines and autism." (Actually, it's more complicated than that.)

  I didn't look any further.   The books discussed in this forum thread tend to be very short-term discounts.

  That forum topic link is to a specific post to start, in this case, a book alert on Jan. 30, as mentioned.  You can browse previous posts or days, or keep up with ongoing alerts after that, because Amazon keeps track of the last message# that you read, so that you can start from there next time.

  While many of the better deals seem to be around $1.99-$4.99, there usually are a decent number of larger-publishing house deals included (primarily price-matching) that tend to end in a DAY, so you'd need to double-check the current pricing of ANY Kindle books that interest you to see if the discounts are still active.

  Again, Kindle book prices are discounted for only a very short time, too often, and are promos, and that's another reason to watch the list.  Most of the large-publisher discounts last only one or two days even when they originate the discount.


DISCOUNTS ON ACCESSORIES Amazon's current pages (some, ongoing) on accessories for Kindle e-Reader and Kindle Fire
  1. Up to 50% (higher discount than usual) on cases for Kindle eReaders
  2. Up to 50% on cases for Kindle Fire (Gen 2) and Kindle Fire HD tablets but NOT HDX tablets
  3. Accessories for all Kindles, with some discounted.


For larger discounts, there are the ongoing pages:
  For US
Goldbox and Lightning Deals which sometimes include bigger one-day sales and
Select-Outlet Deals
Warehouse Deals
Other warehouse deals - more gift oriented
Your Amazon coupons


  For UK and Canada:
UK - Today's Deals
Clearance and Overstocks - UK
Warehouse Deals - UK
  (Includes "Deep Discounts on used and open-box iPads and tablets")

Canada - The Deals Store


Recently-built Kindle Outlet Store - US
A few months ago, Amazon put together a Kindle Outlet Store to feature their certified refurbished Kindle devices at a somewhat lower cost.


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Amazon's PRIME MUSIC feature launches with more than a million songs for unlimited streaming by Prime members at no additional cost. Update2: Prime Music apps are ready for Android and iOS

Update2 - Amazon sent out an email today that said the iOS and Android apps are ready.
  Go to the new Prime Music apps page for these.

  Also, apparently, per the email just now, the software updates for the Kindle Fire HDX and HD 2nd Gen tablets also include the Prime Music capabiility, although the software pages linked to in this morning's blog article on the software updates did not say that.

[Blog article posted yesterday]

---

Amazon's new banner alert today explains it pretty well.  To see the listing of some of the artists, songs, and works included in the newly launched Prime Music program's free, unlimited streaming, see the separate blog page I made for the info on artist and recommended playlists (we can of course create our own and add to existing ones):
  Prime Music - What and who's included in that Million plus?

The Prime Music feature is included at no added cost under the Prime program (free 2-day shipping is the basic feature, and Amazon's no-added-cost streaming Instant Video (over 40,000 movies and TV episodes) was added on top of that along with free rentals (one per calendar month) from an Amazon library of over 593,000 Kindle books -- no waiting-periods, no due dates -- and the new "free" music feature is, furthermore, ad-free, even with a base of over 1 million songs and "hundreds of playlists" with unlimited listening.  Negotiations with music publishers must have been interesting.

Amazon's press release is printed on several news sites this morning.  Included is this:

' Prime members can choose exactly which songs and albums to listen to, or they can sit back and listen to hundreds of expert-programmed Prime Playlists.

  Discovering music is easy thanks to Amazon’s personalized recommendations.  Music fans will find tons of music they’ll love, from Grammy winners to indie breakout singers, along with a huge music catalog that can easily be combined with their own collection.

  Prime members can also download songs from the Prime Music catalog to their mobile devices for offline playback on planes, trains and anywhere they’re without an internet connection. '

The new Prime Music streaming service is available only in the U.S. and Puerto Rico though.

Amazon adds examples of how this would be used.  I updated the blog to include the points below]:

' What Prime Music means for Prime members:

* Your music collection just got a lot bigger—for free with Prime: Over a million songs from artists like Daft Punk, P!nk, Bruno Mars, Blake Shelton, The Lumineers, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, and hundreds of Prime Playlists, are now available for streaming and offline playback at no additional cost to your Prime membership, with new music added all the time.
* Your mix. Your music: Mix Prime Music songs with your own personal music collection to create the library you’ve always wanted.
* You be the DJ or let us be the DJ -- it’s your choice: Build the perfect playlist by choosing songs you already love or songs you just discovered through Amazon’s personalized recommendations. Or, just sit back and listen to one of our hundreds of Prime Playlists designed for all types of genres, occasions, artists, moods and activities, like “Feel Good Country,” “Bad Boy Rock,” “Beards & Baristas: Indie Beats,” “Hip-Hop Workout,” “'90s One-Hit Wonders,” and many others.
* No interruptions from ads: Enjoy an ad-free listening experience with unlimited skips and repeat plays.
* Listen where you want: Enjoy Prime Music on Kindle Fire HD/HDX, iOS, Android, PC, Mac and any Web browser.
* Take it offline: Download your favorite songs and Prime Playlists for offline playback on mobile devices.  With offline playback, you can enjoy your music wherever you are—and you can avoid costly data plan charges.

Prime members in the U.S. can start listening to Prime Music today at http://www.primemusic.com (Kindle Fire HD/HDX devices will get Prime Music in an automatic, over-the-air update
  [Note from ab:I don't know if this was included in the June 6 Kindle Fire software update.]

  Customers can [will be able to] also download the latest Amazon Music app in the Android and iOS app stores.  Eligible customers who are not already Prime members can try Prime Music with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime by visiting www.amazon.com/prime. '

The first mentions I saw of Amazon's new Prime feature were from ZDNet and AppleInsider sites last night.

ZDNet's Matthew Miller writes:

' Until the iOS and Android Amazon Music apps (currently known as Amazon MP3) are updated you can log in through your web browser and stream music.  You will see buttons to add songs to your library, which can take a while to build up your library.  It is easier to go through their created playlists and add and enjoy these titles.  The mobile apps should be released soon.
  . . .
Amazon lets you upload just 250 of your own songs for free or pay $24.99/year for up to 250,000 songs...
  . . .
  . . .with today's release of Amazon Prime Music, I can now stop paying monthly for Google Music All Access and stream and download all the songs I want from Amazon's server.  I also like that I can access Prime Music and my own uploaded collection of songs from multiple devices and computers. '

He mentions that that now he's saving $95/year, as he no longer feels he needs the Google Music subscription, although Google has more songs available.

From AppleInsider:

' A mix between existing free services like Pandora and for-pay options like the Apple-owned Beats Music, Amazon's solution takes a middle-of-the-road approach by focusing on ad-free playback, loosely curated playlists and manual track searching.
  . . .
' Playlists range from 20 to 30 songs, are curated by "Amazon's Music Experts" and come with titles like "Pop to Make You Feel Better," "Boss, Not Bossy" and "Bedford Ave. Hipster Hits."  More generic collections include hits from popular bands and artists, while single tracks can be found by searching the Prime Music library.
. . .
Users can add to a Prime Music library, which is accessible on Macs and PCs via Amazon's CloudPlayer, while smartphone playback is handled by the Amazon Music app.

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Seneca Grade School Library and its Kindle program

Kathy Parker, school librarian for 33 years for Seneca (IL) Grade School, is active on Twitter (@MariansLibrary) and reads on a Kindle—and now so do many of her seventh and eighth graders who use the Amazon Kindle in a language arts program she helped launch last year.

  The school bought six Kindles in 2009 and downloaded some titles that summer.

' By the fall, seventh and eighth graders were sharing 18 devices and reading novels, ranging from Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars (Clarion, 2007) to Lisa Graff's The Things About Georgie (HarperCollins, 2007), for class assignments. Within six months, older students were bringing the devices home.

 The pilot program, which cost about $2,800, proved so successful that after a presentation to the Board of Education in December, Seneca CCSD 170 Superintendent Eric Misener helped secure funds to buy Kindles for every eighth-grade student, along with enough devices for one seventh-grade class to use this year. '

The article cites support from Twitter followers like Will DeLameter who runs the Edukindle website.  He alerted others, including M-Edge Accessories, which is donating covers for all the Kindles.

  Parker pointed out that her budget takes into account that each book can be downloaded onto up to six devices for the cost of the one book.

' She says it's well worth the investment as she's seen firsthand how students respond to being able to change fonts, using the text-to-speech feature, and even having the devices display what percentage of the book they've completed.

  "The bottom line for me is the Kindles have generated a love of reading among those students who would not have otherwise picked up a book," she says. '

---

 See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
  Check often: Latest free non-classics, shortcut http://bit.ly/latestfreenonclassics.) Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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TKC interviews "Library w/o Books" headmaster Tracy

UPDATE: 9/11/09 6:48PM PDT - Podcast 60 is ready.
UPDATE2: midnight - Podcast Extra: Library tour and actual plans
A bit of nostalgia in the image to the left... Note the laptops on the tables of course :-)
  Clicking on the image or on the next link takes you to a brief story on the surging use of the New York City Library though it's not due to the best of reasons -- but it's a good and welcome resource for those who need to find a job in a world requiring wired access.  The article's actual title is "The Library Renaissance."

The article also links back to an article in March on the library's efforts to help jobseekers and points out that "...with Web sites largely having replaced newspapers as the most common job-listing venues, finding work without Internet access has become increasingly difficult."

In connection with the recent story on "A Library Without Books," the Boston Globe article, had said that Cushing Academy had "...decided to give their collection - aside from a few hundred children’s books and valuable antiquarian works - to local schools and libraries," although the Globe's writer, David Abel, mentioned, in another paragraph, that the school's administrators had "decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks " -- many have been disbelieving that a school would do this.

 Others, as I mentioned in the Comments area, had seen this as understandable for a school library as opposed to a public library, because in a college-preparatory school like this, the library is used mainly for a quiet and WIRED place for students to go with their laptops.  Students are focused on specifically-assigned books, and the Net gives speedier search access to additional information on those assigned topics -- while a public library acts as a physical database of materials the general public can browse at leisure, though they also have considerable wired access now and terrific online-resources, generally.

  Also, most junior high and high school libraries don't have 20,000+ books in them.
 Cushing Academy has only a few hundred students and the annual fee for attending the school is between $31,200 and $42,850 -- not your average college-prep school.

The reaction has been quite divided, and Len Edgerly of the popular podcast, The Kindle Chronicles, decided to interview the apparent driving force behind the changes, headmaster James Tracy, on the school's library plan.  Many are concerned about the precedent.

  Edgerly has said on Twitter that "Globe's got it wrong" and expanded a little in an email when I asked him about this before we are able to hear the interview when it is uploaded Friday night 9/11/09 (tonight) to the Kindle Chronicles site.  He gave me permission to quote him.

' The TVs are essentially computer monitors, available for kids to work collaboratively on, with controls somehow at their seats.  Also, the Globe got it wrong - the school library will have 10k books of the 20k there now, and several other thousand are being distributed to departments. So actual reduction in volumes is about 7K or 8k...

Any volume which was donated to the school as a memorial is being retained in the collection.   They see the new library becoming the epicenter of the school for students and faculty, compared with its former reality as a little-used collection of traditional books infrequently visited by anyone...

Slide 4 caption includes this: "Cushing Junior Tia Alliy shelved a heavy volume onto a shelf holding the spared books." In fact, that shelf is one of half the original shelves still in the library." '

 That last caption is reassuring when the Boston Globe titled another caption with the contradicting "The school's new "learning center" will have no books -- they have been donated or discarded." -- unless they mean the 'spared' books will be available where they are donated.  All in all, it was a very confusing article, as it turns out.

A look at the full range of Dr. Tracy's approach to the topic can be seen in a talk he gave at a symposium, "Libraries Beyond Books: A Call for New Paradigms."  It's an interesting read, but his choice of words is not always helpful for his case, which can sound 'extreme' when he writes: "This is why, at Cushing Academy, where we are dedicated to forging the most far-sighted pedagogies for twenty-first century education, we have decided to be bookless within a year."

So, in light of all of the above, I recommend that all interested tune in to The Kindle Chronicles Podcast sometime Friday night to hear or download Len Edgerly's interview with headmaster Tracy.  There's now the podcast Extra of a tour of the library and a look at the mockup of their actual plans, with Bruce Lemieux, Director of Technology, and Susie Carlisle, Dean of Faculty and Academics.

  The weekly podcasts are also available as a free-subscription at iTunes and will remain available at the podcast site. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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A Library Without Books

As a Kindle enthusiast, I found the following news not only jarring but very sad, since I imagine that most Kindle users will be people who love books.
  At first I thought the story couldn't be true, but a sample statistic they give of actual usage of the library was also grim.

The Boston Globe's David Abel reports on the mind-boggling decision by Cushing Academy administrators to discard all their books in favor of a digital future.  James Tracy, headmaster, sees books as "an outdated technology, like scrolls before books."

The academy will spend $500,000 to instead create a 'learning center' -- with reading stacks replaced by "three large flat-screen TVs" projecting Internet data and by "special laptop-friendly study carrels."

In place of the rejected books will be "18 electronic readers made by Amazon and Sony," which will be stocked with digital material.  Those with no access to e-readers will be expected to do research and read assigned text on their own computers.

' Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we’re building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books," said Tracy, whose office shelves remain lined with books.  “We see this as a model for the 21st-century school."

  The feeling is not universal there.  Librarian Liz Vezina says she never imagined being the director of a library without books. And ...

' Alexander Coyle, chairman of the history department, is a self-described "gadget freak" who enjoys reading on Amazon’s Kindle, but he has always seen libraries and their hallowed content as "secular cathedrals." ... A lot us are wondering how this changes the dignity of the library, and why we can’t move to increase digital resources while keeping the books. "

But there are others who are in step with headmaster Tracy:

' "We see the gain as greater than the loss," said Gisele Zangari, chairwoman of the math department, who like other teachers has plans for all her students to do their class reading on electronic books by next year.  "This is the start of a new era." '

Others lament the decision, of course.   But here are other views that were also surprising, and the sample statistic I mentioned is also shocking to me:

' Yet students at Cushing say they look forward to the new equipment, and the brave new world they’re ushering in.

Tia Alliy, a 16-year-old junior, said she visits the library nearly every day, but only once looked for a book in the stacks.  She’s not alone.  School officials said when they checked library records one day last spring only 48 books had been checked out, and 30 of those were children’s books.

"When you hear the word ‘library,’ you think of books," Alliy said. "But very few students actually read them. And the more we use e-books, the fewer books we have to carry around."

Jemmel Billingslea, an 18-year-old senior, thought about the prospect of a school without books. It didn’t bother him.

"It’s a little strange," he said. "But this is the future." '

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