ENTRIES TAGGED "publisher settlement"

Publishing News: Are free Kindles on deck?

Rumors abound ahead of Amazon's press conference, publishers settle with states, and a strategy to survive the "End of Print."

Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the publishing space this week.

Is Amazon ready to give away the Kindle?

Amazon is scheduled to hold a press conference next week, and though, as Reuters reports, Amazon officials have not revealed what will be announced, there are no shortage of Kindle rumors flying about. Adding fuel to the rumor fire, Amazon announced this week that its supply of Kindle Fire devices has run dry.

Leslie Horn at Gizmodo pulled together a rumor roundup, including intel from a Staples executive that “Amazon was prepping ‘five or six’ new tablets,” that 4G might be in the picture, and that the new Fire devices might include a front-facing camera for video chats.

The Verge got its hands on a photo from an anonymous sender who claimed it to be a shot of the next Kindle Fire. The exact model isn’t clear, and one commenter claimed he’d held the new Fire and this was not it. Verge writer Chris Ziegler reports that the photo was confirmed as authentic “and is part of a larger set of images depicting a new Kindle device.”

One of the more interesting speculations has to do with device price. Most analysts and industry writers are conservatively speculating that the price points will remain close to the same as the previous Kindle line, with the (predicted) larger tablet costing a bit more. Farhad Manjoo at Slate has a more bold, insightful prediction on this point (one that I happen to lean toward):

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