Kindle First

Here's some great news for owners of Kindle devices who also subscribe to Amazon's Prime program.  I'm sure you already knew about the Kindle Owners Lending Library program Amazon runs, where you can "borrow" one book a month out of a selection on offer but Amazon also has a program that allows Prime members access to pre-release Kindle books.  It's called Kindle First, and here's what you need to know:

• If you're a Prime member, you automatically have access to Kindle First.
• You can choose one of four picks for each month to download prior to its official release and read for free on any Kindle device or Kindle reading app.
• The book you choose is yours to keep.
• You can opt in to a monthly email letting you know when new picks are available.

So far, Kindle First is open to US subscribers only.  You can check out this month's Kindle First picks here.  Happy Reading!

Street Shot, Texas Book Festival in Austin

Loading Penguin's FirstToRead Galleys on a Kindle Fire

If you're anything like me, you were a bit dismayed to discover that the Penguin FirstToRead program doesn't offer Kindle formatted e-galleys.  You probably also couldn't get anywhere with the instructions provided on how to get the books to work on a third-party app.  Relax.  I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do to get your book up and running on your Fire, without any confusion.

1.  First of all, as the program tells you, you will need the Aldiko app.  It's not available as of this posting through Amazon's app store, but you can change the settings on your Kindle Fire to allow you to load outside apps just long enough to download it from their site and install it (they have instructions, I'll skip ahead presuming you're already at that point to tell you how to get over the final hurdle they don't.)

2. You need to have Aldiko authorized for Adobe Digital Editions with an Adobe ID.  If you're an Overdrive user through your public library, you already use ADE so all you need is your current Adobe ID and password to set up in Aldiko.  If you're not, you need to get an Adobe ID, but it's really easy (and free!) to do.

3.  Here's the important part, that none of the other directions I've found make clear.  Everyone else says, "open ADE on your computer, load your .acsm file, and then copy that PDF to your device".  DON'T DO THAT.  I tried it countless times, and it doesn't work.  Here's what does.  What you want to transfer onto your device is the original .acsm file downloadable from FirstToRead.  It won't want to work using the browser on your device (on mine it tries to open the file using Overdrive, which doesn't support PDFs), so you'll need to download it onto your computer first, then hook your Fire up to your computer using the USB cable and transfer the .acsm into the Digital Editions folder.  Once that's done, go into Files on Aldiko's main screen, open the Digital Editions folder, click the file and choose Import.  The book itself should now appear on your bookshelf.

Now you're ready to read!  This should also work with any other DRM protected PDF books you may download.

Texas Book Festival - Authors announced!

The Texas Book Festival is one of my favorite annual activities, and they've just recently released a full list of the authors who will be in attendance this year. Mark your calendars for the final weekend in October! The festival has created a handy list of every author separated by genre in a downloadable, printable PDF here. Stay tuned for news on the full schedule release. As you may or may not know, they have also released the festival poster for this year!

(image via Texas Book Festival Facebook)

From the Texas Book Festival Facebook page:
"The 2013 Texas Book Festival poster art is by Randal Ford of Randal Ford Photography, a photograph that he shot for "The Amazing Faith of Texas," a book featuring images of people and churches all over Texas. This photo was taken on Highway 67 near Ruidosa, Texas (population 43)."

Giving this another go...

It's been a while since I attempted this, and I didn't do such a great job.  Whoops!  Anyway, here I am, back to give this book blogging thing another go.  In the meantime, while I haven't been so great at keeping my resolution to post here, I have been very active on goodreads, my current favorite review platform.  You can catch up on what I've been reading over there, and in the meantime I'm working on some new exciting stuff!