How to scan cheaply and annoy people

I recently purchased Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people for the kindle.

Of course when I made my purchase I only saw the $4.80 version, not the copies for $5.99, $0.80, or $0.96.

So my commentary really only applies to the "How to Win Friends and Influence People (With easy click Table of Contents)", and unlike most of my posts I'm not really harping on the fact that Amazon is selling the same book for $0.80, $0.96, $4.80, and $5.99 (although it is bullshit).

I got an easy click table of contents with my extra $4.00 after all (you know, the kind that come with every digital book). It was like the scene in Arthur 2 when the apartment came with AOL - automatic on lighting. My joy could only be contained by drink.

No, today's post is about the really lousy job they did converting the book to digital format. Who is this famous 'dark Gable' Mr. Carnegie keeps referring too? Oh, maybe it's Clark Gable.

How does Clark Gable become dark Gable?

My guess is it starts with a cheap blurry reference text and a scanner. But even a blurry 'Cl' doesn't look much like a 'd'. It does look like an O, but Oark isn't a word. So they must have spell checked the text after scanning. So Olark became Dark. Of course Dark shouldn't be capitalized in the middle of a sentence. So through a scanner, spell checker, and grammar checker 'Clark Gable' becomes 'dark Gable'.

You know what we don't have in this scenario? A proof reader.

There's also a half dozen sentences with that make sense if you replace 'tune' with 'time'.

Selling books without reading them first - kindle fail!

The magnificent seven

There will soon be 7 major ebook readers on the market.

How long will Amazon try and be like Apple before they remember that they are a bookstore and seize control of the content market instead of trying to hold on against hardware makers?

The best way to make money in a gold rush is to sell shovels. Selling kindles is nice but the money is in selling books.

Free books you probably don't want to read.

Getting back to the title count war, I found a link to dozens of free kindle books (unfortunately I lost the source of the link - I owe someone credit).

Most of these are books you've never heard of and won't want to read, but they do increase the kindle's title count - and isn't that all that matters?

Although "The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton" by Defoe Daniel (1661-1731) sounded interesting enough for me to queue up.

Free books from Amazon itself - Success!

Pricing protest

Wired is covering a protest over kindle book pricing.

It takes a lot more effort to get people back on your side than it does to keep them there in the first place.

Amazon needs to stop looking at the kindle as a lock-in device and remember that they are a book store.

Having to police Amazon.com against a self organizing protest? - kindle fail!

Curiously bad idea

Curious George has come to the kindle.

I'm curiously unable to decide which is worse - looking at colorful drawings in 4 scale gray or the idea of handing my kindle to a child.




The images don't look too bad (and I have the original kindle, not the new 16 colors of gray, super shinny kindle). Enough to evoke the monkey of my childhood, but probably not enough to enchant a new generation.

I once let my nephew play with my cell phone for a minute. He managed to get his finger into the case, pull it apart and dislodge the keypad. Cell phones are a lot more rugged than the flimsy buttons on the side of the kindle.

He's 3 now, so maybe the kindle would last a whole minute before the sides come off.

By coincidence, I sent my nephew a complete Curious George book set for his birthday, I highly recommend it.

Putting kindle's in the hands of toddlers - kindle fail!

Thundergod

I've been working on a post about how some books are available in multiple kindle editions for different prices.

The time machine is available in 16 versions with 9 prices, from $0.80 to $3.95. Of course it's also available for free from feedbooks. Pretty silly, maybe kinda sad that so many of Amazon's books are duplicates. Especially as the title count war kicks off.

But it's not really funny, and no one is going to read it if it's not funny.

But today's kindle post found the funny.

All I can think is - Thunderdome! Two bibles enter, one god leaves!

Igniting translation wars - kindle fail!