Category Archives: News

One of the Best Readers’ LifeHacks Ever?


If eBook Bestseller Prices Are So High, Why Did BookGorilla Readers Get 91 of the Year’s Top 100 Bestsellers at an Average Price of $2.92?

comparison, Features, Kindle Prices, News

by Steve Windwalker – October 13, 2015

Source: BookGorilla’s Annual Analysis of Top 100 Kindle Bestseller Prices

Okay, it’s multiple choice time. Two statements. Please pick one that’s true:

  1. Traditional publishers’ bestseller prices are rising to ridiculous levels, with an average original price of $11.22 for the Top 100 bestsellers in the Kindle store for the calendar year 2014.
  2. Traditional publishers are offering over 90% of their top Kindle bestsellers at huge, BookGorilla-worthy discounts, so that, to date, 91 of those Top 100 bestsellers for 2014 have been featured on BookGorilla, at an average price of $2.92.

The answer? Both statements are true.

More that any time since the 2007 launch of the Kindle, the big publishers are taking advantage of discounting incentives offered by Amazon to ensure that nearly every bestseller, and most other books as well, are offered at some point at the kind of low sub-$4 prices that ebook readers have come to love.

The vast majority of the time, let’s be clear, the prices for those same books are much higher.

Equally clear, there is a large swath of readers who are the readers’ equivalent of early adopters. They are eager, one could even say impatient, to buy bestsellers and their favorite authors’ other books when they first come out. They pay mightily to be part of this “be the first on your block” club; if they had purchased all of the Top 100 Kindle bestsellers of 2014 at their original prices, they would have spent $1,121.55. But pay they do, obviously. Otherwise  — and here’s this week’s tautology — those Top 100 Kindle bestsellers would not have been on the list.

But by putting nearly all of their most popular books on deep discounts averaging about 73% for short periods of time, usually ranging from one day to a month, the traditional publishers have made bargain-hunting an extremely beneficial exercise for a different group of readers: those who balance their love for bestsellers and other quality selections with very conscious price sensitivity.

By waiting for the right moment and pouncing when these books are at their best prices ever, an especially voracious price-sensitive reader could have purchased  the 91 bestsellers featured by BookGorilla for just $265.60. That’s a savings of $731.04 over the $996.44 original cost of these 91 titles. (Some of the other nine books were never offered at a serious discount; some others didn’t make it through BookGorilla’s curating process, in spite of their bestseller status.)

But there’s a catch, of course. Anyone could find those savings on the day they pop up, but you’d have to be looking … and looking … and looking. It would take so much time that there would be little or no time for reading. BookGorilla’s purpose is to find and recognize the best bargains and serve them up to our hundreds of thousands of followers each morning based on subscribers’ selected preferences.

No other ebook bargain alert service has delivered even half of these Top 100 bestseller deals to its subscribers over the past two years, which is why we humbly submit that, along with the Kindle itself, BookGorilla is the one of the greatest lifehacks ever for avid readers. (We also include recommendations for curated 5-star discoveries by indie authors and small or new-media presses, but in stark contrast to other ebook bargain alert services, fewer than 15% of the titles we recommend are ad-supported.)

Who are these price-sensitive readers? Well, we’re not going to give up their names or email addresses, but we’re happy to share some results from our latest BookGorilla 3-Minute Survey on “What Makes an Attractive eBook Bargain?”

We asked the 2,180 readers who have responded during the past week to select the statement that best approximates their approach to this question:

“How important are bargain prices in your decisions about which ebooks to buy?”

Here’s how they responded:

  1. I often pay full retail prices of $9.99 or above, but I also like to find bargain prices on books that I know I want to read.  136 responses – 6.24%
  2. Finding bargain prices is essential to my effort to stay on a budget, and I rarely pay full retail prices of $9.99 or above.  654 responses – 30.03%
  3. I almost never pay more than $2.99 for an ebook purchase.  740 responses – 33.98%
  4. I rarely download any ebook that is not free.  477 responses – 21.90%
  5. None of the above.  171 responses – 7.85%

These survey respondents don’t constitute all readers, of course. But they’re our readers, and it’s our mission to make them happy.  We wouldn’t want it any other way!

Coming in our next column: Okay, so price-sensitive readers get great deals, and everybody else seems willing to pay through the roof? Is it really such a win-win situation? We’ll take a closer look at why those $12 to $15 “regular” prices are unsustainable for even the largest publishers.

 

Kindle Store eBook Prices Are Rising … Or Are They?

Kindle Prices, News

by Steve Windwalker

October 5, 2015

There has been a steady drumbeat of complaints lately that Kindle Store prices are going up, up and away now that several major publishers have written “agency model pricing” into their latest ebook contracts with Amazon.

Is it really the case? Well, yes and no.

First, let’s take a look at a positively eerie case of the ebook price planets being in alignment. The chart below shows a price breakdown of the Top 100 bestsellers in the Kindle store. You can see that 27% of the Top 100 were priced under $3;  55% were priced between $3 and $9.99; and 18% were priced at $10 and up:

Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 4.25.46 PM

Swell, you say, but when was this? And it’s the answer to that question that’s kind of amazing, because the above chart is an exact reflection of the price breakdown on Kindle bestsellers for three very different date ranges:

  • a snapshot of the Top 100 bestsellers on January 18, 2013;
  • a snapshot of the Top 100 bestsellers this past weekend, on October 4, 2015; and
  • Amazon’s calendar year list of the Top 100 bestsellers cumulatively from January 1, 2015 through October 4, 2015.

How can this possibly be? Well, we all know that figures lie and liars figure, so let’s put aside the YTD figures for now and take a closer look at the two single-day snapshots, using this comparative analysis from BookGorilla. Inside those aggregate figures, there are some fascinating trends:

  • There have been significant increases at both extremes of the pricing spectrum. On the low end, the number of 99-cent bestsellers increased from 15% to 24%. At the high end, the number of bestsellers priced at $13 and up has increased from 5% to 14%.
  • The clearest indication that the big publishers are raising their prices precipitously comes when one compares that increase at $13 and up with a dramatic change over the same period in the number of bestsellers priced from $9.99 to $12.99. 22% of the Top 100 bestsellers were in that price range back in January 2013, but only 6% fell in that range this weekend. Most eye-popping is the fact that, as of October 4, 2015, none of the books in the Top 100 bestsellers were priced at $9.99, which not so long ago was Amazon’s preferred price for bestsellers and new releases on Kindle.

One might conclude, therefore, that with the latest round of big publisher contracts, the publishers have soundly defeated Amazon.

But one would be wrong.

That’s where our most significant statistical comparison comes in:

In our January 2013 analysis, 58% of the Top 50 bestsellers were published by the big traditional publishers, and that figure has since declined to 38%. Conversely, 42% of the Top 50 bestsellers were published by indie authors or by Amazon’s own publishing imprints in January 2013, compared with 62% this past weekend.

In other words, what the big publishers have won in their latest round of contract “victories” over Amazon is the right to price themselves right off the bestseller list.  

And just in case you think that all of the least expensive books are self-published dreck, we’ll get into that in greater detail in the future, but the somewhat tautological truth is that these bestselling non-traditional titles are very popular, well-written books by authors with huge followings, including many who have left traditional publishers to go indie and others who have signed contracts and hit the bestseller lists with Amazon’s ever-expanding group of successful publishing imprints.

We’ll look further into the consequences of these trends for readers, authors, and publishers in future posts, and also look more closely at the meaning of the discrepancy between the snapshot sales rankings and the calendar year bestsellers. But let’s stop there for now and remember that bargains, like beauty, are often in the eye of the beholder.

With that in mind, we would love it if you would take 3 minutes to answer 3 questions about what constitutes a bargain in today’s ebook market, the importance of bargains, and how you find your best ebook buys.

Please? It will really help us drill down on how we can best serve you at BookGorilla. And thanks in advance!

Create your own user feedback survey

Here’s something brand new: BookGorilla Author Pages!

Author Pages, Features, News
Screen Shot 2015-03-28 at 5.09.57 PM
A screenshot of novelist Debbie Macomber’s BookGorilla Author Page.

We never tire of working on the kinds of improvements that have made BookGorilla a big favorite with readers who want to find the best-ever deals on books they’ve been wanting to read, and it’s in that spirit that we share the news of a brand new beta feature on our website: BookGorilla Author Pages!

Whether you arrive at one of these author pages from a link in your daily BookGorilla alert, as a result of a blog post like this one, a web search, or a tweet or other mention from an author whom you follow, we think you’ll find that BookGorilla Author Pages provide a great way to drill down on books by your favorite authors.

And since we know that our readers cover the waterfront from bestsellers to indie discoveries across all genres, we’re committed to building a totally inclusive array of BookGorilla Author Pages from favorite indie authors like Suzanne Jenkins to hybrid stars like Noel Hynd to top-tier bestsellers like Harper Lee, Lee Child, and Mary Higgins Clark.

As we grow from a hundred or so prototype pages to thousands and beyond over the coming weeks, we’ll also be introducing additional features like a follow or subscribe button for individual authors, title sorting by price, links to audiobook listings, and more … so please stay tuned!

–Steve Windwalker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few thoughts behind our recent comparisons of BookBub and BookGorilla daily book recommendations

News

Earlier this week we shared a picture that may have surprised some of our readers: a side-by-side comparison of Wednesday’s top ebook recommendations from our BookGorilla service and another popular service called BookBub. If you were looking for great deals on titles that most readers have heard of (which is certainly not the only worthwhile measuring stick), it was clear that you’d be far more likely to find them on BookGorilla than on BookBub.

If we say so ourselves. And we do.

Of course there are plenty of good reasons why avid readers may want to subscribe to both services — after all, both are totally free. And there are other ways in which BookBub has a clear edge, including:

  • If price-per-unit is your main consideration in acquiring books for your Kindle library, you may well want to go with BookBub. In today’s comparison, for example, BookBub’s top book recommendations were available for an average price of $1.45 in the Kindle store, while the average price for BookGorilla’s top recommendations was $1.91.
  • If you participate in a Kindle author fantasy league and you want to know which previously unknown book is most likely to vault from a sales ranking of 688,529 to the Top 100 Kindle bestsellers in the next 24 hours, BookBub’s also your best bet. It’s true that several books featured on BookGorilla make Amazon’s Movers and Shakers list each day, but they generally don’t have as far to go to make that list. And subject to check, BookBub has approximately a gazillion subscribers, many of whom still open each day’s BookBub alert. Numbers like that are sure to move just about any needle, no?
  • Finally, among authors and publishers for whom money is no object when it comes to their marketing budgets, BookBub’s a clear choice. You may spend as much as $1,975 for a single promotion on BookBub, but you’re likely to get a bigger bump than you will get for $40 to $200 with BookGorilla or similar amounts with other well-managed services such as eReader News Today.

We could probably go on, but of course we’re not here to do BookBub’s work; they are very effective on their own behalf.

And as we will try to explain in a new post this weekend, there are about 9.5 million great reasons why BookBub wants readers to focus on the books that it includes in its daily ebook alert, even if you’ve never heard of them before.

Happy Reading!

-Steve Windwalker

 

 

 

Are you getting the most out of your ebook recommendation service?

News

Different people want different things when it comes to ebooks….

Comparison 3-18-2015 PicMonkey CollageSo different readers may come to different conclusions after checking out this side-by-side comparison of the day’s Top Book Recommendations for Wednesday, March 18, 2015 from BookBub and BookGorilla.

Depending on what you’re looking for, we hope you’ll sign up for a FREE subscription to your choice today, if you haven’t done so already:

And while a picture can be worth a thousand words, it’s rarely as simple as a picture might suggest … so we’ll be back later this week to take a closer look at what’s really going on here.

Happy Reading!

-Steve Windwalker

 

A $99 Kindle Fire HD Tablet Leads the Way As Amazon Unveils Dazzling Array of New Kindle Models, Services

News, , , , ,

Screen shot 2014-09-17 at 9.53.43 PM

By Steve Windwalker

Amazon announced an impressive array of new hardware and services at small-group briefings last week, but the big news is the company’s introduction of the all-new Kindle Fire 6 tablet at just $99 — with a price, features, and hardware that allows the company to call it “the most powerful tablet under $100.” All of these models are available for pre-order right now, and all will begin shipping in October.

But that wasn’t all. The Kindle briefings also rocked some major new offerings in the all-important Kindle ecosystem for kids, in new eInk ereader hardware and software, in high-end Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 enhancements, and in family- or household-friendly features for most kinds of Amazon digital content across the full array of Kindle and Kindle-compatible devices:

  • Amazon announced a new-generation of eInk Kindles, including its “thinnest, most advanced Kindle ever” — a Paperwhite model that is now called the Kindle Voyage — at $199 and, in a continuation of its strategy of offering highly affordable entry devices, a new $79 basic Kindle with a touchscreen interface (for the first time) and a 20% faster processor and twice the storage of its $69 predecessor.
  • For children, Amazon is now offering what amounts to a dedicated kids’ Kindle that includes, for $149, a Kindle Fire 6, a molded rubber kid-friendly case, over 5,000 books, movies, TV shows, games and educational apps via a free one-year subscription to Free Time Unlimited as well as a quad-core processor, a vivid HD display, fron- and rear-facing cameras, Dolby Digital audio, and “an unprecedented 2-year worry-free guarantee.”
  • At the higher end, Amazon has held its $379 price for a new-model Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 featuring a quad core 2.5 GHz processor, a 70% faster graphics engine, 339 ppi display, exclusive new Dolby Atmos audio and a brand-new Fire OS 4 “Sangria” operating system that “adds hundreds of new features and platform enhancements, incluidng Firefly, ASAP, Smart Suspend, and other Amazon-exclusive features.

We had a chance to test drive all of these models today and it’s a strong array that should help Amazon continue its dominance in the ereader and ebook markets while gradually carving out a larger slice of the tablet market. As impressive as the new hardware is, a lot of what Amazon rolled out today involved nice, incremental enhancements in ease of use and performance that will make a more gradual, but very positive impression on customers. Among these are free unlimited storage for photos taken on Fire devices, a Smart Suspend power-saving system, “ASAP” for time-saving predictive streaming, and a new “Family Library” feature that allows family members to easily share apps, games, audiobooks, ebooks, and Prime Instant Video content, even if they use different Amazon accounts.

We’ll have more to share about all of this in the coming weeks and months, but we wanted to give an idea of what we all have to look forward to.

Amazon Announces the Biggest Game-Changer Yet in the eBook World:

READ FOR FREE with Kindle Unlimited

News

 

By Steve Windwalker
 
Amazon has done it again, and as usual, the winners are readers.

This morning the company launched Kindle Unlimited, which after a very nice 30-day free trial will allow readers unlimited reading or listening from among over 639,000 Kindle Books and over 2,000 Audible.com audiobooks. The service will cost $9.99 a month after the free trial, and one easy way to understand what’s being offered is that it’s like “Netflix for ebooks.”

While we expect the catalog of books, author and publishers participating in Kindle Unlimited to blow past the million-title mark this year and continue to expand, the selection even at launch is pretty dazzling. This morning we selected seven titles to include in our daily BookGorilla email alert, just to give our readers a taste of the kind of top-tier, A-list bestsellers that are available absolutely FREE during the free trial:

  • The Hunger Games By Suzanne Collins
  • Capital in the Twenty-First Century By Thomas Piketty
  • War Brides By Helen Bryan
  • Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt By Michael Lewis
  • That Summer Night (Callaways #6) By Barbara Freethy
  • Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel By Jonathan Safran Foer
  • The Best Medicine (A Bell Harbor Novel) By Tracy Brogan

Winners and Losers

We’ll be watching closely to see what new titles become available, but based on what we see already it seems likely that Kindle Unlimited will be as big a disruptive force for “business as usual” in the publishing world as the Kindle itself has been. We will no doubt continue to see misguided analyses claiming that Amazon will be competing with this, that and the other existing service, but any such “competition” will likely be akin to the centuries-old competition between the hammer and the nail: usually, one doesn’t even get to hear the nail say “ouch.” Nobody is in a position to compete with Amazon on this terrain.

Amazon seems committed to a pretty generous royalty structure for enrolled titles, which we think will ultimately amount to about $2 a copy for authors who participate in its KDP Select program. Given recent negotiations — and the Hachette stalemate — between Amazon and some large publishers, we wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what share those publishers and their associated authors might receive, but publishers who stay on the sidelines may find themselves in an untenable position — both with their authors and with their own corporate bean-counters — as the Kindle Unlimited catalog grows.

For people who read a lot, Kindle Unlimited is going to be awesome. We won’t talk ourselves blue in the face trying to persuade you beyond noting that the seven very popular titles listed above would currently cost you $66.15 in the Kindle Store without Kindle Unlimited. After all, we think all of us will make better use of our time looking for great books to download FREE.

It’s probably silly of us to take any pleasure in having predicted this program almost exactly six years ago on pages 90-91 of the paperback edition of The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle, and we didn’t get it exactly right, anyway. We called it Kindle Buffet, said it would be a Kindle reading subscription plan “on steroids,” and we were way off on how such an offering would be priced: we said it could cost as much as $50 a month. My, how things have changed!

Start your free 30-day trial today here.

Here’s the guts of Amazon’s press release from earlier today:

Introducing Kindle Unlimited: Unlimited Reading and Listening on Any Device–Just $9.99 a Month

Date(s): 18-Jul-2014 7:30 AM

Read freely from over 600,000 books–available on Kindle devices, as well as free Kindle reading apps for iOS, Android and more

Listen to thousands of audiobooks from Audible, or switch easily between reading and listening with Whispersync for Voice

Enjoy best sellers including the Harry Potter series, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Hunger Games trilogy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and Flash Boys

The most cost-effective way to enjoy audiobooks such as The Handmaid’s Tale, Life of Pi, and Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Start a free 30-day trial today

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul. 18, 2014— (NASDAQ:AMZN)–Amazon.com today introduced Kindle Unlimited–a new subscription service which allows customers to freely read as much as they want from over 600,000 Kindle books, and listen as much as they want to thousands of Audible audiobooks, all for only $9.99 a month. Finding a great book is easy, and there are never any due dates–just look for the Kindle Unlimited logo on eligible titles and click “Read for Free.” Customers can choose from best sellers like The Hunger Games, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and The Lord of the Rings, and with thousands of professionally narrated audiobooks from Audible, like The Handmaid’s Tale and Water for Elephants, the story can continue in the car or on the go. Kindle Unlimited subscribers also get the additional benefit of a complimentary three-month Audible membership, with access to the full selection of Audible titles. Kindle Unlimited is available starting today and is accessible from Kindle devices or with Amazon’s free Kindle reading apps. Start your free 30-day trial today here.

“With Kindle Unlimited, you won’t have to think twice before you try a new author or genre–you can just start reading and listening,” said Russ Grandinetti, Senior Vice President, Kindle. “In addition to offering over 600,000 eBooks, Kindle Unlimited is also by far the most cost-effective way to enjoy audiobooks and eBooks together. With thousands of Whispersync for Voice-enabled audiobooks to choose from, you can easily switch between reading and listening to a book, allowing the story to continue even when your eyes are busy. We hope you take advantage of the 30-day free trial and try it for yourself.”

Kindle Unlimited features include:

  • Unlimited reading: Access over 600,000 books including best sellers like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, Water for Elephants, Oh Myyy! – There Goes The Internet, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, All the King’s Men, Wonder Boys, Ask for It, The Princess Bride, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts, The Atlantis Gene, Kitchen Confidential, The Sisterhood, Crazy Little Thing, The Blind Side, and The Giver, plus thousands of classics such as Animal Farm, To the Lighthouse, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cat’s Cradle, and The Good Earth, as well as books featuring beloved children’s characters from Sesame Street, and useful reference titles including books from the For Dummies series and Lonely Planet travel guides.
  • Unlimited listening: Keep the story going with unlimited access to more than 2,000 audiobooks from Audible with Whispersync for Voice, and switch seamlessly between reading and listening to customer favorites like the Hunger Games trilogy, Life of Pi, The Handmaid’s Tale, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, The Great Santini, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Winter’s Tale, Boardwalk Empire, El Narco, Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies, Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, The Finisher, Johnny Carson, The Stranger I Married, and Life Code.
  • Kindle exclusives: Choose from hundreds of thousands of books only found on Kindle, including Brilliance by Marcus Sakey, The Hangman’s Daughter series by Oliver Pötzsch, War Brides by Helen Bryan, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct and Matthew Hope books, When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Whiskey Sour by J.A. Konrath, Chasing Shadows by CJ Lyons, and Sick by Brett Battles.
  • Short Reads: For a quick escape, select from thousands of books that are 100 pages or less, including Kindle Singles from Stephen King, Andy Borowitz, and Nelson DeMille, and short fiction from Amazon Publishing’s StoryFront imprint.
  • Free three-month Audible membership: In addition to the thousands of professionally narrated audiobooks from Audible included in Kindle Unlimited, subscribers get a complimentary three-month Audible membership, with access to more than 150,000 titles.
  • Popular Kindle features: Enjoy all the great Kindle features customers love such as Whispersync, Popular Highlights, X-Ray, customer reviews, and Goodreads integration.
  • Read and listen everywhere: Access across Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps for iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and phones, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, PC, Mac and Windows 8–so you always have your library with you and never lose your place.

Amazon unveils the Fire Phone!

News

By Len Edgerly and Steve Windwalker

Thousands of media, developers and real, live Amazon customers gathered in Seattle today to see Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos launch the company’s latest product, and BookGorilla was there with live coverage from our friend Len Edgerly.

The product, as you already know, is Amazon’s brand new Fire Phone.

Screen Shot 2014-06-18 at 1.52.27 PMBezos described it, in a word, as “gorgeous,” and it is definitely going to be a game changer in all kinds of ways. We are all trying to keep up, to take in these new ways of looking at a screen and navigating a smart phone, reports Len. Make that “brilliant phone,” a new category is being presented to us today.

Indeed, the Fire Phone is going to seem magical to most of us, at least for the next few months, but it’s also amazing to think that there are kids who will grow up taking all of this for granted.

Here are the details from Amazon:

Introducing Fire, the First Smartphone Designed by Amazon

New breakthrough innovations—Dynamic Perspective, Firefly button, and more

Seamless integration with Amazon’s vast ecosystem—over 33 million songs, apps, games, movies,

TV shows, books, and more

Only smartphone with Mayday, ASAP, X-Ray, and Second Screen

Dynamic Perspective SDK and Firefly SDK now available

Fire is available exclusively on AT&T, the nation’s most reliable 4G LTE network

Limited time, introductory offer—12 months of Prime included

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jun. 18, 2014– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon today unveiled Fire, the first smartphone designed by Amazon. Fire is the only smartphone with Dynamic Perspective and Firefly, two new breakthrough technologies that allow you to see and interact with the world through a whole new lens. Dynamic Perspective uses a new sensor system to respond to the way you hold, view, and move Fire, enabling experiences not possible on other smartphones. Firefly quickly recognizes things in the real world—web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, movies, music, and millions of products, and lets you take action in seconds—all with the simple press of the Firefly button.

Fire, the First Smartphone Designed by Amazon (Photo: Business Wire)

Fire, the First Smartphone Designed by Amazon (Photo: Business Wire)

“Fire Phone puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand—instant access to Amazon’s vast content ecosystem and exclusive features like the Mayday button, ASAP, Second Screen, X-Ray, free unlimited photo storage, and more,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “The Firefly button lets you identify printed web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, artwork, and over 100 million items, including songs, movies, TV shows, and products—and take action in seconds. We invented a new sensor system called Dynamic Perspective that recognizes where a user’s head is relative to the device—we use it to offer customers a more immersive experience, one-handed navigation, and gestures that actually work. And this is only the beginning—the most powerful inventions are the ones that empower others to unleash their creativity—that’s why today we are launching the Dynamic Perspective SDK and the Firefly SDK—we can’t wait to see how developers surprise us.”

Dynamic Perspective—Immersive Smartphone Experience

Dynamic Perspective uses four ultra-low power specialized cameras and four infrared LEDs built into the front face of Fire, a dedicated custom processor, sophisticated real-time computer vision algorithms, and a new high-performing and power-efficient graphics rendering engine. Dynamic Perspective features include:

  • One-handed gestures: Auto-scroll, tilt, swivel and peek for quicker, easier navigation and a better media and entertainment experience. For example, with auto-scroll, customers can read a long web page or a book without ever having to touch the screen; tilt in Amazon Music shows song lyrics; swivel instantly reveals quick actions; peek in Maps shows layered information like Yelp ratings and reviews.
  • Immersive apps and games: Dynamic Perspective enables a new class of apps and games that are more immersive, and make it quicker and easier for the user to access information. For example, peek to instantly see close-up front and back views of a dress in the new Amazon Shopping app for Fire. In games like Lili, take on the character’s viewpoint and move your head to look around corners, obstacles, and other objects.
  • Enhanced Carousel: Stay productive with real-time updates and take action right from the home screen—triage email, find recent photos, access most visited websites, return missed calls, view appointments, and more. Developers can customize the contents of their dynamic app and how it responds to user actions. For example, Zillow’s app in the carousel shows property information based on the location, so customers can access search results on nearby homes from the carousel without having to launch the Zillow app. USA TODAY shows headlines most relevant to customer’s interest—someone who frequents football in the Sports section will see those related headlines appear in the carousel.

Starting today, Amazon is introducing the Dynamic Perspective SDK that enables developers to build new experiences with this groundbreaking technology.

Firefly Technology–Illuminate Your World

Firefly combines Amazon’s deep catalog of physical and digital content with multiple image, text and audio recognition technologies to quickly identify web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, plus over 100 million items, including movies, TV episodes, songs, and products. Simply press and hold the dedicated Firefly button to discover helpful information and take action in seconds.

  • Printed phone numbers, email, web addresses, QR, and bar codes: Firefly identifies printed text on signs, posters, magazines and business cards—make a call, send an email, save as a contact, or go to the website without typing out long URLs or email addresses.
  • 245,000 movies and TV episodes, and 160 live TV channels: Firefly recognizes movies and TV episodes, and uses IMDb for X-Ray to show actors, plot synopses, and related content—add titles to Watch List or download and start watching immediately.
  • 35 million songs: Firefly recognizes music and uses Amazon Music’s rich catalog to show information about the artist—play more songs, add them to your Wish List, or download instantly to your Fire. Developers, such as iHeartRadio and StubHub, used the SDK to build Firefly-enabled apps, so customers can create a new radio station based on the song or find concert tickets for the artist.
  • 70 million products, including household items, books, DVDs, CDs, video games, and more: Access product details, add items to your Wish List, or order on Amazon.com.

The Firefly SDK is available starting today so developers can invent new ways to use this advanced technology. Later this year, Firefly will include artwork recognition, foreign language translation, and wine label recognition powered by Vivino.

Amazon Exclusive Features and Vast Digital Ecosystem—All Deeply Integrated

Fire seamlessly integrates Amazon’s vast digital ecosystem for instant access to over 33 million songs, apps, games, movies, TV shows, books, audiobooks, and magazines, including thousands of exclusives. Plus, Prime members get unlimited streaming of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes at no additional cost with Prime Instant Video, over 500,000 books to borrow with the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and the all-new Prime Music—unlimited streaming and download of more than a million songs and hundreds of expert-programmed playlists—all at no additional cost.

Fire deeply integrates Amazon exclusive services:

  • Mayday is now available over 3G and 4G, in addition to Wi-Fi—simply hit the Mayday button in quick actions and an Amazon expert will appear via live video to co-pilot you through any feature on the device. Amazon experts are able to draw on the screen, talk you through how to do a task, or do it for you—whatever works best. Mayday is available 24×7, 365 days a year, and it’s free. Amazon’s response time goal for Mayday is 15 seconds or less—since launch, the average response time has been 9.75 seconds.
  • ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) predicts which movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and prepares them for instant playback before you even hit play.
  • X-Ray helps you get more from books, music, movies, and TV shows. Explore the bones of a book, including characters, ideas and background with a single tap on the screen; bring the power of IMDb right to Fire for trivia on movies and TV shows; plus, with X-Ray for Music, see synchronized lyrics display while you listen to your favorite song.
  • Second Screen lets you fling TV shows and movies from Fire phone to your Fire TV, PlayStation or any other Miracast-enabled device. Second Screen turns your TV into the primary screen and frees up Fire phone to provide playback controls and a customized display for X-Ray, all without leaving the TV show or movie you’re watching.
  • Free unlimited cloud storage of photos taken with Fire, automatically backed-up wirelessly and available across Amazon devices and Cloud Drive apps so you have access anywhere.

Beautiful Industrial Design & Powerful Hardware

Built using premium materials, including Gorilla Glass 3 for the rear and front, aluminum buttons, stainless steel details and a rubberized polyurethane grip area, Fire is optimized for beauty, hand comfort and powerful performance:

  • Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 2.2 GHz processor and 2GB RAM for excellent fluidity and image rendering.
  • 4.7-inch HD display with an ambient light sensor and Dynamic Image Contrast that delivers better outdoor viewing.
  • Global LTE and connectivity with nine bands of LTE, four bands of GSM, five bands of UMTS for better voice coverage and faster data speeds, 802.11ac support, Wi-Fi channel bonding, NFC, and Bluetooth.
  • Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus for a virtual surround sound experience.
  • Advanced imaging system with custom-tuned 13MP rear-facing camera with backside illumination, LED flash, 5-element f/2.0 lens, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), and high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities for beautiful, crisp photos, even in low-light conditions. Fire also includes a 2.1MP front-facing camera. Both front and rear-facing cameras record smooth 1080p HD videos.
  • Reliable backup and restore leveraging the experience and operational excellence of Amazon Web Services and its cloud technology. Fire customers can automatically back up device settings, notes, bookmarks, messages, and installed applications—no need to manually configure or connect to a computer.

Availability & Exclusive Network Partner

Fire ships on July 25 and is available exclusively on AT&T—the nation’s most reliable 4G LTE network. Starting today, customers can pre-order Fire at http://bit.ly/32GBFirePhone. Fire with 32GB is available for $199 with a two-year contract—that’s an extra 16GB of memory for the same price as many other premium smartphones—or zero money down for as little as $27.09 a month from AT&T on Next 18. Fire is also available with 64GB for $299 with a two-year contract or starting at $31.25/month from AT&T on Next 18.

Limited Time, Introductory Offer

Starting today, customers can take advantage of an introductory, limited time offer—buy Fire and get 12 months of Amazon Prime included—FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Instant Video, unlimited, ad-free streaming and downloading of over a million songs and hundreds of playlists, and over 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Existing Prime members get an additional 12 months added to their account.