Oprah To Flog Abominable Kindle?!
This is probably the most disturbing tweet I’ve received:
Of course I clicked the link: Oprah’s Favorite Gadget – Oprah’s Kindle crush will boost Kindle sales
There are screensnaps there.
I did my own investigation.
Although he mentions Amazon video, I couldn’t find that.
So, I ripped the video from Oprah’s site (sue me!). I had to convert it due to my crappy PC. Then I carefully went through it. It’s ambiguous for the most part, but I think I did catch a glimpse of white plastic near the bottom edge of the screen as she was handling it:
Best snap I could get.
I’ve posted about Oprah here before:
Today’s Oprah: Women And Money Is Repeating!
Oprah Uses Skype
Reminder: Free Suze Orman eBook
Today’s Oprah: Women And Money
Today’s Oprah Is Worth Watching
The key one being this: Oprah, Get A Sony Reader!
I even wrote to my then-contact at Sony at the time, telling him to get a Sony Reader into Oprah’s hands. I was told:
We have tried many times with her. We will continue.
Apparently, it was all FAIL.
Now Oprah is going with the abominable Kindle!
All of you Oprah fans who are going to be hitting this site, read this post.
And hey, when all your eBooks go south on you due to DRM issues or Amazon switching to a different file format, remember that Oprah told you to buy it.
Enjoy The Lockdown!
Mike Cane 2008 
October 23, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Gah, I hate DRM. That’s part and parcel of Kindle isn’t it?
October 23, 2008 at 3:20 pm
[…] accompanied by an anti-Kindle tweet. And then somone picks it up and adds a DRM rant – hahaha. Kudos to Mike Cane for being such a strong Sony fanboy. And I can’t believe he totally missed the HUGE picture […]
October 23, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Yes. No writer can put an eBook up for sale on the Kindle Store without DRM being slapped on it. (There is also a criminal 65-35 split on money. Writer gets the shaft from Bezos.)
OTOH, Pan Macmillan has already published *six* eBooks in ePub *without* DRM that can be read on the Sony Reader.
February 22, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I hate DRM and I love my Kindle. Love it. I’ve bought maybe five books under DRM. The rest of the time I read free texts, or self-converted PDFs. No problem. I also like checking my e-mail or jumping online for free wherever I am. I’m taking a risk assuming Amazon won’t pull a Walmart or Apple with the DRM, but don’t think a company would invite the now-established PR nightmare those companies did.
February 22, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Sorry, I also meant to add that I am an established author with two books in print internationally and would have loved to have gotten 35% of those sales. Granted 50/50 would have been nice, but what makes you think 65/35 is criminal? This is from the Independent Book Publishers Association website:
“If the publisher publishes its own electronic books and products, the royalty rate is negotiable, with between 25% (e.g., Warner Books) and 50% (e.g., Random House) of net receipts going to the author.”
That’s independent of an advance, but the model is different here and there’s no grappling for 6% royalties on some vague back end.
February 23, 2009 at 9:22 am
>>>Granted 50/50 would have been nice, but what makes you think 65/35 is criminal?
Because it’s the exact opposite of Apple’s take. And creating a Kindle format eBook is not as onerous as creating an ePub one.