Monday, February 7, 2011

Breaking News From Amazon Posted Today On Facebook, and In The Kindle Community On Amazon.com--Page Numbers! Public Notes! New Magazine And Newspaper Layouts!


This "Amazon Official" announcement came to our attention via Facebook.  The following was posted in the Amazon Kindle Community ( click here to see it ) at 1:42 PM PST.   It has not appeared in the usual official "News Release" location where all of Amazon's press releases are posted ( see that place here ).


As to exactly which features work with all "Read Anywhere" devices we'll just have to test that out as the week moves along.  


Here's the full text of the information posted in the Amazon Kindle Community:


We're excited to tell you about some new features coming to the latest generation Kindle and Kindle 3G:

-- Public Notes - This feature lets Kindle users choose to make their book notes and highlights available for others to see. Any Kindle user - including authors, their fans, book reviewers, professors and passionate readers everywhere - can opt-in to share their thoughts on book passages and ideas with friends, family members, colleagues, and the greater Kindle community of people who love to read. This is a new way for readers to share their excitement and knowledge about books and get more from the books they read. To review and turn on Public Notes in your own books, view the Public Notes of people you follow, track your reading activities, see Popular Highlights and your annotations, and view your full library of books, go to http://kindle.amazon.com. 

-- Real Page Numbers - Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class. Rather than add page numbers that don't correspond to print books, which is how page numbers have been added to e-books in the past, we're adding real page numbers that correspond directly to a book's print edition. We've already added real page numbers to tens of thousands of Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle Store that have matching print editions and thousands more of the most popular books. Page numbers will also be available on our free "Buy Once, Read Everywhere" Kindle apps in the coming months.

-- Before You Go... - When you reach the end of the book, we will now offer a seamless experience that lets you immediately rate the book, share a message about the book with your social network, get personalized recommendations for what to read next, and see more books by the same author. 

-- New Newspaper and Magazine Layout - We're introducing a new and improved layout for newspapers and magazines. This new layout gives you a quick snapshot of the news and helps you decide what you want to read first. 

Latest generation Kindle and Kindle 3G customers who want to try an Early Preview of these new features can manually download the software update here 

All latest generation Kindle and Kindle 3G customers will receive this software update automatically via Wi-Fi once it becomes available. We will update this forum when we complete the Early Preview and begin to automatically deliver the update.

1 comment:

  1. The Before You Go... feature is going to be brilliant for those of us trying to promote our ebooks. Reviews and ratings are hard to come by for independent authors but make a huge difference to sales. Asking readers by default if they would mind leaving feedback is an exciting development for authors.

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