The Kindle Chronicles - podcast cover

The Kindle Chronicles

A weekly podcast about the Kindle and eBooks with in-depth conversations with guests--authors, technology experts, book industry analysts, Amazon execs, educators, agents, readers, and more.
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Episodes

TKC 342 Patti Thorn of Blue Ink Review

Co-founder of Blue Ink Review Interview starts at 17:15 and ends at 43:24 The people who are putting out quality books in self-publishing are actually investing quite a lot, because most books really do need editing, no matter whether you self-publish or you don’t. Self-publishers usually can’t afford the level of editing that maybe you’d get […]

Feb 21, 201545 min

TKC 341 Christopher Weyant and Anna Kang

Illustrator and Author of You Are (Not) Small Interview starts at 14:32 and ends at 37:56. Chris: Anyone with kids who watches someone read for the first time—I never would have realized how magical—it is one of the greatest experiences that I’ve ever seen, because the world opens up. News “Amazon launches its ebook subscription […]

Feb 14, 201545 min

TKC 340 Thad McIlroy

Author of Mobile Strategies for Digital Publishing Interview starts at 13:21 and ends at 37:37. There may not be a lot of new readers coming into the eReader space, but it’s a device that’s got legs still, despite its apparently sort of old-fashioned and monochrome presence. News Kindle Convert for PC at Amazon.com ($19) “Amazon Echo […]

Feb 07, 201545 min

TKC 339 Seth Godin at Digital Book World

Author, entrepreneur, maker of ruckuses Interview starts at 4:33 and ends at 14:50. Paper books are going to gradually and painfully and very, very slowly disappear. They’re going to become like LP’s. One by one the bookstores are going to go away, and then one by one the kids that grow up reading all the […]

Jan 30, 201545 min

TKC 338 Andy Weir

Author of The Martian Interview starts at 11:39 and ends at 38:29 More people bought it from Amazon than downloaded it for free from my site, which just goes to show you how deep into the market Amazon reaches and how good they are at selling books. That got it up into the Top Sellers […]

Jan 24, 201545 min

TKC 337 Russ Grandinetti at Digital Book World

Amazon’s senior vice president for Kindle We can all observe the fact that in every single digital media category subscriptions is playing an important role—in music, in movies, in newspapers—you cannot find a digital medium where subscription isn’t a model that succeeds at some level, and I don’t think books will be immune to this. […]

Jan 15, 201545 min

TKC 336 John Ashbery

Author of 17 poetry collections recently formatted for eBook readers Interview starts at 12:49 and ends at 37:24. The Internet seems to have changed things for the better. You can’t stop people from looking things up these days. They’re usually doing it in front of you while they’re talking to you. So, even though it’s cheating, it’s resulted […]

Jan 10, 201545 min

TKC 335 Gregg Levoy

Author of Vital Signs: The Nature and Nurture of Passion Interview starts at 9:20 and ends at 41:50. It takes courage and vigilance and diligence to ask this question of yourself repeatedly: Where am I losing energy? Why am I losing energy? Why do I not feel engaged in life? Which is a lot of what passion […]

Jan 03, 201545 min

TKC 334 Jeffery Deaver

Author of The Starling Project Interview starts at 12:16 and ends at 44:00. I don’t have any issue aesthetically with the eBooks like some people do. For me, whatever gets people to read is fantastic. News “eReaders Can Disrupt Your Sleep, and Other Nonsense” by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader – December 23, 2014 […]

Dec 26, 201445 min

TKC 333 Richard Hollick

Author of the Making Book blog Interview starts at 21:05 What I’ve decided is going on in publishing is that genre fiction, however widely you want to define that, sort of entertainment books, are basically going to go down the eBook/indie author road. Of course the big publishers won’t want to give it up, and […]

Dec 20, 201445 min

TKC 332 Pamela Paul

Editor of The New York Times Book Review Interview starts at 11:41 Many people who bought an eReader of some kind or another will use it for some things and not for others. Some people use it to travel, but at home they like to read a book. Some people use it for genre fiction […]

Dec 13, 201445 min

TKC 331 Peter Hudson

Co-founder and CEO of BitLit.com Interview starts at 14:02 We do continue to see growth [in eBooks reading] amongst more of the older generation, the Boomer generation, on font size, on convenience. As Boomers retire they do more traveling. They want to travel light, to downsize their houses, they want simplification in their lives. News Moody’s […]

Dec 06, 201445 min

TKC 330 Otis Chandler

Co-founder and CEO of Goodreads Interview starts at 22:02 The world is really moving fast towards mobile, and Goodreads is no exception. We’ve seen huge adoption of our mobile products this year, and we’ve innovated a lot on our mobile web, particularly our iOS app. Intro The music and blog of my talented niece, Fran Betlyon News […]

Nov 29, 201445 min

TKC 329 Sara Nelson

Editorial Director at Amazon.com Interview starts at 11:43 There are all kinds of books in the world, and there are all kinds of people in the world, and there are all kinds of things that people would love to judge you for. We all do it, to some extent I suppose. We judge somebody by […]

Nov 22, 201445 min

TKC 328 Scott McNulty

Author of The Amazon Fire Phone Interview starts at 23:07 I read an interview where some Amazon exec in Europe talked about how they are learning from it, and they’re going to take their lessons and apply it to their next iteration. So that seems to me that there will be another Fire phone out there—and […]

Nov 15, 201445 min

TKC 327 Mike Langlois

Author of Reset: Psychotherapy & Video Games, 2nd Edition Interview starts at 14:24 I think that kids that don’t get to play video games are missing out on whole strata of ways to negotiate a 21st century high tech world as well as peer relationships. And I don’t think it needs to be a “versus.” I love reading. And I think one of the things that’s really cool about the Kindle […]

Nov 08, 201445 min

TKC 326 Aaron Goldfarb

Author of The Guide for a Single Man and The Guide for a Single Woman Interview starts at 19:11 It’s a lot of effort to get one book, but two simultaneous books, where you’re timing and syncing everything. It was just a huge challenge for the entire FG Press team, even beyond me writing the books. Show Notes […]

Nov 01, 201445 min

TKC 325 Donald Katz

Founder and CEO of Audible, Inc. Interview starts at 8:05 I think we’ve done a lot to change the quality of the performances, and the perception of the performances in the entertainment, and the learning and the retention values and everything that causes people to want to read. Show Notes and Links: News “Amazon Closes Muliti-Year […]

Oct 25, 201445 min

TKC 324 Peter Heller

Author of The Dog Stars and The Painter Interview starts at 13:42 Nobody, not even artists, understood art. What speed has to do with it. How much work it takes, year after year, building the skills, the trust in the process, more work probably than any Olympic athlete ever puts in because it is twenty-four hours […]

Oct 18, 201445 min

TKC 323 Maik Maurer & Frank Waldman

Co-Founders of Spritz Interview starts at 10:52 We see this as a technology where people are reading on the go. I have the Kindle app on my iPhone, and I read my books on my iPhone that way. I’d love of course to make that Spritzable, and then I would just hold it at times when […]

Oct 10, 201445 min

TKC 322 Paul Biba

Twitter Curator of eBook/ePublishing/eLibrary news Interview starts at 14:25 Many of the things that the authors and the publishers complain about are normal, everyday behavior in the chemical industry, in the auto industry, in the telecom industry, and the construction industry, which are industries which I’ve worked on—this is the way business works. The publishing industry […]

Oct 04, 201445 min

TKC 321 Joshua Tallent

Chief eBook Architect at Firebrand Technologies Interview starts at 14:14 I think that, because self-publishing has gotten easier, because the tools have gotten easier to use and there are so many more services available to self-published authors, you can compete directly with the work that’s coming out of these major publishing houses. Show Notes […]

Sep 26, 201445 min

TKC 320 Amazon’s NYC Briefing on New Devices

Show Notes and Links: If you use these links to purchase one of the new devices, it will provide Amazon Associates commission revenue to support the podcast without adding to your purchase price. Thanks in advance! – Len Kindle Voyage WiFi – $199 New Kindle – $79 Fire HD6 8 GB – $99 Fire HD7 8 GB – $139 Fire […]

Sep 19, 201445 min

TKC 319 Jim Duncan

Executive Director of the Colorado Library Consortium Interview starts at 16:26 We could go back as a group of libraries, hundreds of libraries across Colorado, to a Big Five publisher and say, “We’re ready to buy your content directly, and here’s the way it looks: You make your content exposed and available in our marketplace. The […]

Sep 13, 201445 min

TKC 318 Sara Nelson

Editorial Director of Amazon.com Interview starts at 20:43 On the Amazon book team’s pick for September’s spotlight debut title, Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre: “Books about the war, any war, certainly a war that is current are very, very hard sells to customers. I think people often feel like they don’t want to read it, because they’re […]

Sep 06, 201445 min

TKC 317 Julie Blattberg

Open Road Media’s executive director of consumer engagement Interview starts at 15:13 Who put the “social” in social media? That’s one human being making a connection with another human being—so Bill Gates read someone else’s copy of the book [Business Adventures by John Brooks] a million years ago, and it made an impression. That’s what social media […]

Aug 30, 201445 min

TKC 316 Ripley MacDonald

Amazon’s Director of Student Programs Interview starts at 15:59 Everything that’s available on Amazon is available at the Purdue Student Store. The way to think about it is, once you’ve activated the co-branding or entered Purdue mode, you are really experiencing a personalized version of the Amazon site. But the products, selection, and pricing are […]

Aug 22, 201445 min

TKC 315 Jason Boog

Author of Born Reading (with daughter Olive) Interview starts at 11:27 I knew then that I had come up with a pretty good mix. I knew she had a print book that she liked, and I knew she had an audiobook that she liked, and I knew she had something on the iPad that she could do […]

Aug 16, 201445 min

TKC 314 Juli Monroe

Editor of TeleRead Interview starts at 18:34 I think Amazon has done a better PR job. I think that they’re going to end up getting what they want, because I think Hachette needs them more than Amazon needs Hachette. Show Notes and Links: News “Safari Begins Next Chapter as an O’Reilly Media Company” by Andrew Savikas […]

Aug 09, 201445 min

TKC 313 Andrew Savikas

CEO of Safari Books Online Interview starts at 20:55 I don’t have any firsthand knowledge about how things have looked on the Kindle Unlimited side, though it’s certainly notable that for now, at least, I don’t think any of the Big Five trade publishers are participating. Show Notes and Links: News “ComiXology now offers DRM-free […]

Aug 02, 201445 min
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