We’ll soon see if Oprah Winfrey’s influence on book sales has the same effect on some of the book world’s newest technology.
Amazon got some free publicity thanks to Oprah Winfrey’s ringing endorsement of the Kindle e-book reader. She’s even offering a $50 discount off the pricy readers at her Web site.
Her Web site acknowledges the initial price is pretty steep for many of her viewers. “Although the Amazon Kindle costs $359, Oprah looks at it as an environmentally friendly investment. ‘I know it’s expensive in these times, but it’s not frivolous because it will pay for itself,’ she says. ‘The books are much cheaper, and you’re saving paper.’ New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases are $9.99 or less, unless otherwise marked.”

For more information, CLICK HERE.

To see the Kindle  cl.ass, CLICK HERE.

To some observers, the merger was inevitable. Amazon.com has acquired the book lovers’ social network Shelfari.

Shelfari said in a message to its fans:

“It’s an exciting week here at Shelfari. You may have already heard, but we were acquired by Amazon yesterday. Yeah!

To some other observers, it’s not such a great fit. To read more, CLICK HERE.

Research scientist and bona fide musician Daniel J. Levitin is out with a new book, “The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature.” VeryShortList wonders out loud, “So ‘Baby Got Back’ is in the Love category? Comfort? Knowledge?”

Those would be three of the six categories. The others are Friendship (”Can’t We Still Be Friends”), Joy (um, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”?) and Religion (”God Save the Queen”). But seriously, Levitin takes an earnest look at condensing the human experience with music into understandable stanzas, so to speak.
Reviewer Theodore Rushton writes at Amazon.com:

“Exquisitely written, it is really about ourselves because we are such a musical species. It makes me wonder: What if humans had never learned to talk, but merely communicate through music? It seems far more reasonable than merely talking without understanding — at which we’re all too expert.”

Getting back to the headline above: There have been some profoundly angry songs over the years: “Four Dead in Ohio” (About the 1970 Kent State shootings, which anger an entire generation to this day), “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” (Massacre in Northern Ireland), “Horse to Water” (from REM’s most recent CD, “Accelerate”). Maybe the next edition will include a seventh category.

For more, CLICK HERE.

Kindle is testing the market for interest in Mitch Albom’s “Commencement Speech To His Nephew’s Graduating Class: May 30, 2008, Nice, France.” First question: Was it in English, and could the class understand it? (True, Europeans tend to be bilingual, unlike most Americans.)
Priced at bargain-basement 99 cents, the Kindle file clocks in at fewer than 4,000 words.

Amazon pitches it: “Albom created a memorable testament to what we know and what we need to learn. In his passionate, touching and frequently funny address, he warned the class of 2008 of the many things they should watch out for in life, from sushi at airports to religions that advertise in the back of magazines.”
At 99 cents, there’s not much risk in that investment — except for the $400 machine it comes in.
For more information CLICK HERE.