Hello my dear blogger buddies!
Long time no talk. How are you? What’s new with you? Me? I’m fine… enjoying the last week of my winter break before school starts up again. Hopefully this semester is a little bit easier. I’m taking a light load of 3 math classes and a graphics design class. I’m going into it with a 4.0 GPA and hoping to keep it that way.

All things Kindlicious

The “big” news of late? Kindle now has a lending feature. Big news is a relative term as it pretty limited, just like the nook lending feature. Both devices now allow book lending between devices and apps following these restrictions:

• A book may be lent once, and only once.
• A book is lent out for 14 days only and during that time is inaccessible on the owner’s device
• Not all books are available for lending and which books are available depend upon publisher restrictions. Currently Barnes & Nobles has about 30% of its ebook stock, which includes public domain free books, as lendable. I have yet to see a number for Amazon.

I was hoping that Amazon would be a little more lenient and allow it to be lent more than once, it would have been a great selling point for those who are in book clubs, but I didn’t expect it.

IReaderReview.com had a slew of really good posts over the last month. A few of my favorites:

• The Race to Zero – a good look at ebook pricing after the installment of agency pricing.
• $55,500 for Indie Author in 31 Days – 5 Independent authors earned over $15,000 and 25 independent authors sold more than 2,500 ebooks in December.
• What else can you do with the kindle besides read? – a great list!

Something that seems to have gone almost unnoticed but I think is far cooler than the lending feature is the ability to side-load your kindle formatted books onto your iphone/ipad/itouch devices. You are no longer restricted to only books in your amazon account while using the Kindle app on your iDevice. Through iTunes you can add mobipocket/prc/azw books onto your device and read them in the Kindle app. This is especially useful for book reviews who don’t have a kindle but like ebooks.

Entirely random but I ran across this graphic from Newsweek and thought it was an interesting comparison. I’d love to see the sourcing but can’t seem to locate it.

Author News

Rachel Vincent announced the details her new adult series. The first book in the Unbound series will be Blood Bound and have a stronger romance theme than the early shifter books. It sounds like a unique world and I am definitely looking forward to it!

The first book in Keri Arthur’s new Dark Angel series, Darkness Unbound is now up for preorder on Amazon.com.

Richelle Mead posted an excerpt from Iron Crowned, the third book in the Dark Swan series, here. I miss Eugenie, can’t wait for this release.

Moira Rogers has the coolest post ever here. I’ve been trying to be better about taking notes and keeping a notebook of series I love and their characters. I appreciate this post so much. Also. Andrew is still mine.

Books Read in December & January so far

• Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews – 5 stars
• Alpha by Rachel Vincent – review coming
• Total Eclipse by Rachel Caine – review coming
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

Books Added to Kindle This Week…

Music listening to while writing this blog entry…Back in Your Head by Tegan and Sara