Here’s a quick reminder – if I or anyone else tells you about a book being offered for free or discounted on the Amazon Kindle website and you are interested, please jump on it immediately. Don’t wait a few days or even a couple of hours, or you may see the book being offered for sale vs. what you thought was free! I’ve seen it happen many times over the years.

Why does that happen? Sometimes there is a glitch to the Amazon system, an author may have forgot to set the book’s promotion on the Amazon website, or who knows?

Bottom line here is don’t wait – log on to the website frequently (www.fkbt.com) or check your email shortly after 8:00 a.m. Central time for the daily digest if you are subscribed to the free daily email. Grab them now as once the book is yours, no matter if you paid nothing or $100 for a book, it is yours forever!

I should say something similar about books discounted to 99 cents: the author, for example, has told me their book(s) will be discounted for a particular day and I set the posts up in advance. The same issue that can cause titles to not be free can also apply to the discounting for a particular day. Please make sure you verify the pricing on the Amazon website before you click the “buy” button.

Have a great weekend-

Michael

It’s been a while since I have sent out a tip – in this case, I didn’t think of this one but it was sent to me by long-time reader Penny Parker.  Here is what she had to say about how to protect your Kindle if it is lost or stolen where you can provide the information prominently with the hope that whoever finds it will consider returning it:

I created a “collection” called “00 please read this if you find this Kindle”. By putting “00” in the front of this title it will automatically go to the first item in the list of contents. Then I sent myself a personal document called “read this” to the email address for my Kindle Paperwhite and had it converted to Kindle format (by putting “convert” in the email subject line). The message simply said that I own this Kindle, my name, how to reach me by email or mobile phone, and that I would gladly pay a reward for its return. And I close with “thank you.”

Thank you, Penny for passing this on!  If you have a tip you think others would find helpful, please send it on to me (michael at fkbt dot com) and it may appear here on the blog!

Michael

Have you ever had your Kindle (or Fire) screen “freeze” or become unresponsive? It can happen for a variety of reasons, but the probable cause is a low battery.

If this happens to you, try the simple step of plugging it into your charger for a few minutes; although it may sound obvious, please make sure the charging indicator light is on. That should do it but, if it doesn’t, there is one more thing you can do before you break down and either smack your Kindle or call Amazon’s Kindle Customer Service: try resetting it. To reset it at this point, slide (or press, as appropriate for your Kindle or Fire) and hold the power switch for 30 seconds or longer then release it.

Your Kindle should then spend a little bit of time resetting, and you should be back in business! If not, unfortunately, it is probably worth a call to Amazon’s Kindle Customer Service department.

A friend of mine’s Paperwhite recently had a screen freeze and it was fairly frustrating as she was in the middle of a book, and a simple reset as described above fixed the issue. Yes, I was the customer service phone call in this case….

Hope that helps!

Michael

Are you receiving the blog’s posts by email? You can if you click here or type in https://fkbt.com/subscribe into your web browser – just fill in your email address, smack the “Subscribe” button, and make sure you click the link within the confirmation email!

Have you ever had your Kindle screen “freeze” or become unresponsive? It can happen for a variety of reasons, but the probable cause is a low battery.

If this happens to you, try the simple step of plugging it into your charger for a few minutes (although it may sound obvious, please make sure the charging indicator light is on). That should do it but, if it doesn’t, there is one more thing you can do before you break down and either smack your Kindle or call Amazon’s Kindle Customer Service: try resetting it. To reset it at this point, slide (or press, as appropriate for your Kindle or Fire) and hold the power switch for 30 seconds or longer then release it.

Your Kindle should then spend a little bit of time resetting, and you should be back in business! If not, unfortunately, it is probably worth a call to Amazon’s Kindle Customer Service department.

A friend of mine’s Paperwhite recently had a screen freeze and it was fairly frustrating as she was in the middle of a book, and a simple reset as described above fixed the issue. Yes, I was the customer service phone call in this case….

Hope that helps!

Michael

Are you receiving the blog’s posts by email? You can if you click here or type in https://fkbt.com/subscribe into your web browser – just fill in your email address, smack the “Subscribe” button, and make sure you click the link within the confirmation email!

I thought it was an appropriate time to remind you of the free sample option Amazon has with the Kindle program: consider it like going to the bookstore (well, that is if there are many of them still open these days) and turning a few pages before buying it. You can get a free sample of a Kindle book – usually a few chapters to just a couple of pages – to try out and see if the book is something you are interested in prior to buying. I use the feature quite a bit, as I get extremely annoyed in shelling out money for a book and realizing about 10% of the way through it I think it’s not for me.

If I am interested in the book, I will do one of two things:

• If it is a free book and I am even remotely interested in it, I will download the whole thing. What do I have to lose? Nothing (e.g., it’s free!). Should I complain because I don’t like it or the genre? No. Again, it’s free – why the sense of entitlement? Over the past several years I get complaints emailed to me from time-to-time about too much of one genre or the other being available for free. Why? I don’t know – a publisher or independent author is making it available for free which sounds great to me. Like I said before, you don’t have anything to lose! Maybe these folks should redirect their energies and complain directly to the dysfunctional US Congress – both parties – about getting their act together and behaving as adults…but that’s another blog post for another venue.
• If it is not a free book (gasp!), I usually will download the sample in order to see if I like the first couple of pages, then I will make my buying decision. Why waste money sight unseen when I can have a sample downloaded to my Kindle for free?

I bring this up as I don’t want any of you to forget about the free sample option. I have a separate folder / category devoted to samples on my Paperwhite, and I select and download 3-4 samples at a time when I see something after trolling through the Amazon store, but I may not check the sample out until later. Why wait so long? Usually, it is because I am in the middle of another book – I’m not one of those people who can multitask between three and four books at the same time. When I’m reading a book, I’m usually pretty absorbed and get deep into the story, characters, etc. and can look up at the clock and realize three hours have quickly passed.

So, how do you find / download the free Kindle sample? Go to any Kindle book available on Amazon’s website and on the right-hand side of the page you will see another icon titled “Send a free sample.” Click that button – if you have multiple Kindles, please make sure you have the correct Kindle listed in the drop-down menu. If you are looking at a book via shopping directly on your Kindle, one of the options is to check out the free sample, click that item and the sample will be delivered to you.

With the free samples, plus the books on my Kindle now, I should be set for a long time…

Hope that helps!

Michael

Are you receiving the blog’s posts by email? You can if you click here or type in https://fkbt.com/subscribe into your web browser – just fill in your email address, smack the “Subscribe” button, and make sure you reply to the confirmation email!

Here’s a quick reminder – if I or anyone else tells you about a book being offered for free or discounted on the Amazon Kindle website and you are interested, please jump on it immediately. Don’t wait a few days or even a couple of hours, or you may see the book being offered for sale vs. what you thought was free! I’ve seen it happen many times over the years.

Why does that happen? Sometimes there is a glitch to the Amazon system, an author may have forgot to set the book’s promotion on the Amazon website, or who knows?

Bottom line here is don’t wait – log on to the website frequently (www.fkbt.com) or check your email shortly after 8:00 a.m. Central time for the daily digest if you are subscribed to the free daily email. Grab them now as once the book is yours, no matter if you paid nothing or $100 for a book, it is yours forever!

I should say something similar about books discounted to 99 cents: the author, for example, has told me their book(s) will be discounted for a particular day and I set the posts up in advance. The same issue that can cause titles to not be free can also apply to the discounting for a particular day. Please make sure you verify the pricing on the Amazon website before you click the “buy” button.

Have a great rest of your week-

Michael

Here’s a quick reminder – if I or anyone else tells you about a book being offered for free or discounted on the Amazon Kindle website and you are interested, please jump on it immediately. Don’t wait a few days or even a couple of hours, or you may see the book being offered for sale vs. what you thought was free! I’ve seen it happen many times over the years.

Why does that happen? Sometimes there is a glitch to the Amazon system, an author may have forgot to set the book’s promotion on the Amazon website, or who knows?

Bottom line here is don’t wait – log on to the website frequently (www.fkbt.com) or check your email shortly after 8:00 a.m. Central time for the daily digest if you are subscribed to the free daily email. Grab them now as once the book is yours, no matter if you paid nothing or $100 for a book, it is yours forever!

I should say something similar about books discounted to 99 cents: the author, for example, has told me their book(s) will be discounted for a particular day and I set the posts up in advance. The same issue that can cause titles to not be free can also apply to the discounting for a particular day. Please make sure you verify the pricing on the Amazon website before you click the “buy” button.

Have a great rest of your week-

Michael