Kindle Tips

Josh Quittner at TIME Newsweek’s Kindle Survival Guide and Love/Hate list (Thanks, TDS)

(interestingly, the Survival Guide is only in the magazine; the Love/Hate list is only online.)

A Kindle Survivor Guide:

1.  Sleep mode drains the battery too quickly. Stick with the on/off button.

2.  If the elastic strap – used to keep the leather cover closed – is positioned just so, it holds the device in place while reading.

3.  Avoid the unpredictable Back button.

4.  Remind yourself that being able to get books wirelessly is worth the frustration.

LOVE HATE Corner braces hold the device O.K. but look like they were made in a head shop

LOVE The carrying case’s creamy leather and suede rival the feel of a well-made book

LOVE Despite the gray background, the screen is easy to read, even in bright sun

LOVE The lengthy page-forward bar works a little too well. It’s easy to lose your place

LOVE The cursor is a “smart” navigator that knows what options you need at any given time

Quittner also quotes an unnamed Amazon executive in saying Kindle’ed books now accoutn for 12% of all books sold in both digital and print versions on Amazon.  That figure has doubled in just two months — impressive!

I read a great Kindle tip today at Kindleville, which I’d like to share with you:

The other day I found myself on a 4-hour flight at 30,000 feet or so with a locked-up Kindle. This is at least the 5th time I’ve had to reset my Kindle but this one was a bit trickier. It’s amazing how hard it is to find a paperclip when you’re up in the friendly skies. I checked my bag. No go. Even my handy folder full of various business papers came up empty. Fortunately I was sitting next to a guy who had one and he let me borrow it for the job.

As I removed the back cover to resurrect my lifeless e-reader I had an idea: Why not just tape a small paperclip in the recess of the back of the device, under the removable cover? It looks like there’s enough clearance for this and it would save me the headache of looking for yet another paperclip the next time my Kindle freezes. I’m going to give it a shot as soon as I get home tonight.

I wish i could organize my books into folders on my Kindle!  If it truly can hold 200 books, I’d think we could organize them in a better way than just “date added to kindle/date last looked at” or by title.

Ideally, what I’d LIKE to do is file them in folders:  pleasure reading, work reading — or two or three separate work folders, proposals and full manuscripts, and current clients’ new material.

Since I do show my Kindle off, I like to turn to something that a friend (or random stranger in the doctor’s office, like last night) might have heard of;  i don’t want to show them my manuscripts, or submissions that I’m considering … or that don’t think much of.   But if I’ve handed it to them, they can flip around my books all they want — which is fine, of course, but it changes the order I’ve been looking at all these books or proposals, so my material gets lost in page 3 or 4.

So when will I be able to keep my submissions and already published books in different folders?

So I was reading a not-so-great self-help proposal on my Kindle the other day, and was about to pass, but decided to give it one more chance.   Sometimes I feel differently about a submission on second glance, and boy, was this was one of those times.   My first thought was “You know, this is pretty well written…”.    A few pages later: “Hey, this is *REALLY* interesting stuff…”

Oops.   It turned out I was reading the free sample of Daniel Pink’s A WHOLE NEW MIND that I’d downloaded from the Kindle Store.    Which, by the way, is pretty well written, and really interesting stuff!

Thanks to prodding from KindleTips, another member of the Agents’ Lunch Group has gone Kindle.   (see here)  Welcome, Miriam!