#Amazon/Kindle Unlimited

[the-novel-approach-reviews]

Review: Christmas on Stardust Lane by Garrett Leigh

Title: Christmas on Stardust Lane Author: Garrett Leigh Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited Length: 246 Pages Category: Holiday Romance, Contemporary Romance Rating: 5 Stars At a Glance: Christmas on Stardust Lane is a magical, radically tender and heart-felt, a genuinely beautiful romance. Reviewed By: Lisa Blurb: Tam Dubois is used to being alone. With a body that bears the marks of his…

[brooke-hart]

Humans Are Weird: Weird Pain

I can't be the only that can handle a migraine or nearly breaking a limb with a wince but am rolling on the floor if I stub my toe...right (please validate me in the comments 😅). I can only imagine what an alien species would think... Human *coming back from cliffdiving because of course they never sit still*: Nah, I'll be fine.

Alien *seeing human holding his nose and...bleeding?*: what happened?

Human *shrugs*: I think there was a rock or something. Must have broken my nose.

Alien *is horrified*: we must take you to the medical wing-

Other human: Nah, this is like the rib thing.

Alien *eye witches*: Your nose heals on its own too?

Human: Yeah, I'll be all goo- Fuck! Shit!

Alien *rushing forward*: what's wrong?

Human *shifting onto one leg*: I hit my fucking shin on this table. Son of a bitch, that hurts.

Alien *staring*: does your...shin not heal?

Human *glaring*: it's not fucking broken.

Alien *barely processing*: Your broken bone...is fine but your non broken bone is too much pain?

Human *hisses in pain*: Yes!

***

If you want to check out “the rib thing” that is on my page! If you like this scene and want to see it as a full book (free with KU!) you can find those pinned to my page as well!

[mommyclairemommylove]

Brainwashed

[mostlysignssomeportents]

2600’s amazing Hackers on Planet Earth con may go down under enshittification

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

It's been 40 years since Emmanuel Goldstein launched the seminal, essential, world-changing 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. 2600 wasn't the first phreak/hacker zine, but it was the most important, spawning a global subculture dedicated to the noble pursuit of technological self-determination:

https://www.2600.com/

2600 has published hundreds of issues in which digital spelunkers report eagerly on the things they've discovered by peering intently at the things no one was supposed to even glance at (I'm proud to be one of those writers!). They've fought legal battles, including one that almost went to the Supreme Court:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

They created a global network of meetups where some of technology's most durable friendships and important collaborations were born. These continue to this day:

https://www.2600.com/meetings

And they've hosted a weekly radio show on NYC's WBAI, Off the Hook:

https://wbai.org/program.php?program=76

When WBAI management lost their minds and locked the station's most beloved hosts out of the studio, Off the Hook (naturally) led the rebellion, taking back the station for its audience, rescuing it from a managerial coup:

https://twitter.com/2600/status/1181423565389942786

But best of all, 2600 gave us HOPE – both in the metaphorical sense of "hope for a better technological tomorrow" and in the literal sense, with its biannual Hackers On Planet Earth con:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_on_Planet_Earth

For decades HOPE had an incredible venue, the Hotel Pennsylvania (memorialized in the phreak anthem "PEnnsylvania 6-5000"), a crumbling pile in midtown Manhattan that was biannually transformed into a rollicking, multi-day festival of forbidden technology, improbable feats, and incredible presentations. I was privileged to keynote HOPE in 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1D7APjmVbk

But after the 2018 HOPE, the Hotel Pennsylvania was demolished to make way for the Penn15 (no, really) skyscraper, a vaporware mega-tower planned as a holding pen for luxury shopping and empty million-dollar condos sold to offshore war-criminals as safe-deposit boxes in the sky. The developer, Vornado (no, really) hasn't actually done all that – after demo'ing the Hotel Pennsylvania, they noped out, leave a large, unusable scar across midtown.

But HOPE wasn't lost. In 2022, the ever-resilient 2600 crew relocated to Queens, hosted by St John's University – a venue that was less glamorous that the Hotel Pennsylvania, but the event was still fantastic. Attendance fell from 2,000 to 1,000, but that was something they could work with, and reviews from attendees were stellar.

Good thing, too. 2600 is, first and foremost, a magazine publisher, and these have been hard years for magazines. First there was the mass die-off of indie bookstores and newsracks (I used to sell 2600 when I was a bookseller, and in the years after, I always took the presence of 2600 on a store's newsrack as an unimpeachable mark of quality).

Thankfully for 2600, their audience is (unsurprisingly) a tech-savvy one, so they were able to substitute digital subscriptions for physical ones:

https://www.2600.com/Magazine/DigitalEditions

Of course, many of those subscriptions came through Amazon's Kindle, because nerds were early Amazon adopters, and because the Kindle magazine publishing platform offered DRM-free distribution to subscribers along with a fair payout to publishers.

But then Amazon enshittified its magazine system. Having locked publishers to its platform, it rugged them and killed the monthly subscription fees that allowed publishers to plan for a steady output. Publishers were given a choice: leave Amazon (and all the readers locked inside its walled garden) or put your magazine into the Kindle Unlimited system:

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/arp/B0BWPTCP4K?deviceType=A1FG5NAKX0MRJL

Kindle Unlimited is an all-you-can-eat program for Kindle, which pays publishers and writers based on a system that is both opaque and easily gamed, with the lion's share of the money going to "publishers" who focus on figuring out how to cheat the algorithm. Revenues for 2600 – and all the other magazines that Amazon had sucked in and sucked dry – fell off a cliff.

Which brings me to the present moment. After 40 years, 2600 is still at it, having survived the bookstorepocalypse, the lunacy of public radio management, the literal demolition of their physical home by an evil real-estate developer, and Amazon's crooked accounting.

This is 2600, circa 2024, and 2024 a HOPE year:

https://www.hope.net/

Once again, HOPE has been scheduled for its new digs in Queens, July 12-14. Last week, HOPE sent out an email blast to their subscribers telling them the news. They expected to sell 500 tickets in the first 24 hours. They didn't even come close:

https://www.2600.com/content/hope-ticket-sales-update

It turns out that Google and the other major mail providers don't like emails with the word "hacker" in them. The cartel that decides which email gets delivered, and which messages go to spam, or get blocked altogether, mass-blocked the HOPE 2024 announcement. Email may be the last federated, open platform we have, but mass concentration has created a system where it's nearly impossible to get your email delivered unless you're willing to play by Gmail's rules:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

For Emmanuel Goldstein, founder of 2600 and tireless toiler for this community, the deafening silence following from that initial email volley was terrifying: "like some kind of a "Twilight Zone" episode where everyone has disappeared."

The enshittification that keeps 2600's emails from being delivered to the people who asked to receive them is even worse on social media. Social media companies routinely defraud their users by letting them subscribe to feeds, then turning around to the people and organizations that run those feeds and saying, "You've got x thousand subscribers on this platform, but we won't put your posts in their feeds unless you pay us to 'boost' your content":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first

Enshittification has been coming at 2600 for decades. Like other forms of oddball media dedicated to challenging corporate power and government oppression, 2600 has always been a ten-years-ahead preview of the way the noose was gonna tighten on all of us. And now, they're on the ropes. HOPE can't sell tickets unless people know about HOPE, and neither email providers nor social media platforms have any interest in making that happen.

A handful of giant corporations now get to decide what we read, who we hear from, and whether and how we can get together in person to make friends, forge community, rabble-rouse and change the world. The idea that "it's not censorship unless the government does it" has always been wrong (not all censorship violates the First Amendment, and censorship can be real without being unconstitutional):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/04/yes-its-censorship/

What can you do about it? Well, for one thing, you can sign up for HOPE. It's gonna be great. They've got sub-$100 hotel rooms! In New York City!

https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-xv

If you can't make it to HOPE, you can sign up for a virtual membership:

https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-hope-xv-virtual-attendee

You can submit a talk to HOPE:

https://www.hope.net/cfp.html

You can subscribe to 2600, in print or electronically (I signed up for the lifetime print subscription and it was a bargain – I devour every issue the day it arrives):

https://store.2600.com/collections/subscriptions-renewals

2600 is living a decade in the future of every other community you care about, weird hobby you enjoy, con you live for, and publication you read from cover to cover. If we can all pull together to save it, it'll be a beacon of hope (and HOPE).

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/19/hope-less/#hack-the-planet

[bear-pattern-hamster]

"Carrie & Grok" in Italy🧸🐹 eBook Kindle

Criceto con motivo orso: Bear pattern hamster Italian version (Paperback📖)

[artemisapollo97]

I don't really post on here, so hi?? What's up? Greetings and salutations! Behold! Etc.

I'm an indie author headbutting a brick wall against ✨algorithms✨ so here I am to pester you lot!

Eyes of Violet will be a seven-part series by the end of 2026. The first three volumes are out now, available on Amazon and Waterstones 🎉 I've added the blurb to the first one in the images with ALT text.

I've gone the traditional way with the covers, hand-drawn and painted with watercolours. I am no van Gogh but I am mighty proud of them! 😁

Magic and mystery, 12 years+/YA typically, although my 82-year-old nan has read and enjoyed them 😂

In order:

Eyes of Violet (purple!)

Eyes of Violet: Damian (blue!)

Eyes of Violet: Finn (green!)

Book 4 will be out in May, so watch this space 😉

Happy reading!

[mayas-reviews]

Amazon is removing our right to download Kindle books onto our computers on Feb 26.

What does this mean? It means, if you buy an ebook from Amazon and you want to use a different ereader, you will not be able to download the file onto your computer, remove its DRM using Calibre, and transfer the book to any device of your choice. After February 26, you’ll be locked to Amazon’s ecosystem indefinitely. Books will only be transferable between Amazon devices and apps. You do not own the ebooks you buy. Amazon can (and has) remove ebooks from your library.

Download them now and use the Calibre to remove the DRM. I highly suggest buying ebooks from other places from now on. Links to resources below.

Video about Amazon removing downloads

Article explaining how to download Calibre and remove DRM

Alternative Ebook/Physical Book Stores

Bookshop.org

ebooks.com

Barnes and Noble

Halfpricebooks.com

Pango

Thrift Books

Betterworldbooks.com

Free Ebooks

Project Gutenberg

Libby/Overdrive (libraries)

The Internet Archive

Alternative Audiobook Apps

Audiobooks.com

Libby/Overdrive

Chirp

Libro.fm

Using a Kindle without Using Amazon

If you’re like me, you have a kindle and you’re not financially in the position to buy a new $130 ereader from a different brand. So what are you to do? The best thing you can do is use Libby/Overdrive. It’s very simple. The Libby app has an option to link your Amazon account to the app and so when you borrow a book from your library, it’ll automatically go to your kindle.

You can also sideload books onto your kindle if the file is compatible and DRM free. Here’s an article listing DRM free book sources.

Edit: or you know… you can just jailbreak it 😏

Supporting Indie Authors

Now this is where things get tricky. Most indie authors make the bulk of their sales on Amazon. It’s awful, but that’s the nature of the beast. Use your own discretion when buying indie books from Amazon. Check and see if that author sells their books on other platforms or buy their book physically (if the option is available) so that you actually own the book you buy.

Edit: To my indie authors out there, I recommend selling a PDF or EPUB version of your book on a website or on Ko-Fi or somewhere similar. That way folk like me who refuse to buy from Amazon and know how to sideload books onto their ereader can buy your book and directly support you :D

[sarnai4]

As per the poll, we actually had a tie between electrokinesis and hydrokinesis. For this week, I went with the former because our main character, Kostas, can do this one whereas a lot of other characters can't. So, it gives me a chance to let him show off. (I'll draw his mom next time!) He's the star of my new action-fantasy trilogy. The first installment is out now! It's called Changing Waters: Jiol.

Synopsis and link to access below!

What rests deep in the ocean? Mermaids? Monsters? Magic? All that and more.

Far below where any human can survive, there is a kingdom called Jiol. Kostas is a 14-year-old sorcerer who resides there with his mother and friends, but it is not their home. A home is filled with love, not fear and death. It is merely where they try to survive while the royal guards, the Patrollers, constantly raid the village. They kill anyone with tails, webbing, or fins—anyone who mutated for this underwater existence.

To protect innocent lives from the unending attacks, Kostas must get stronger even if this involves going behind his mother’s back. Training, sorcery, and seers are the villagers’ only hope against the Patrollers and a royal vizier who is as cruel as he is powerful. If Kostas cannot succeed as a protector of the village, Jiolans like him will be massacred to the point of extinction.

Amazon Link (typed out version: https://a.co/d/819WYr6)

[obelisart]

Volume 14 of The Recloseted Lesbian is now out on Amazon!

[sleepandblog]

kindle unlimited is a scam and it breaks my heart when i see people promoting it. please use the library. you are paying a monthly subscription for what is essentially the libby app. they both have limited availability and you do not get to own the book. only one of them costs money. only one of them is owned by amazon

also you can send your libby books to your kindle and read them on there! there is no reason to be paying for KU

[the-novel-approach-reviews]

Review: Secondhand Skin by Hailey Turner

Title: Secondhand Skin Series: Soulbound Universe: Book Two Author: Hailey Turner Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited Length: 362 Pages Category: Urban Fantasy Rating: 5 Stars At a Glance: Never let it be said that Hailey Turned doesn’t pen breathtaking action and battle sequences. That remains true in a way only a dragon shifter could deliver. Reviewed By: Lisa Blurb: Nothing says you…

[brooke-hart]

Humans Are Weird: Hangovers

Most species learn there is a cause and effect. And if there is a negative effect, they won't do it again. Not humans. We'll wake up, hungover, and hours later, be out drinking poison again and I personally find that such a funny thing about our race. Especially the morning after...

  The next morning, Zork’ak stared at Steve, Kai, and Wren, who were in various states of distress. Steve was facedown on the table, possibly asleep. Kai was drinking and eating with her eyes closed, looking disheveled. And Wren was practically curled in on herself. 

  "This," Adam said as he slid into the seat beside Zork’ak, "is what I was telling you about. Those three are hungover." 

  "Must you talk so loud?" Steve said without lifting his head. He was not asleep then. 

  "Must you drink so much?" Adam smiled as he started to eat. 

  Kai sighed, leaning back with a low noise. "I’m so going to puke."

  "Been there." Wren’s arms were wrapped around her bent legs, her head laid on top of one arm. Her eyes never opened. "All. Morning." 

  "I’m a little shocked." Carrie looked over Steve at Wren. "You are never hungover. These two," she pointed at Kai and Steve, "should form a damn club." 

  "But you are not hungover?" Zork’ak looked at Adam and Carrie. 

  Carrie smiled. "I know my limits." 

  "I know how to drink fucking water." Adam leaned forward and poured a glass of water on Steve as he answered. 

  Steve jerked upright, coughing. "What. The. Fuck?" 

  Adam and Carrie laughed, Jessica smiling as she approached the table. "You looked like you needed some water, man." 

  Steve pushed up from the table. "Fuck you." 

  "More drinks tonight?" Carrie shouted after him. 

  He lifted a hand in response, showing only one finger. That made the three of them laugh again, and Zork’ak looked over to see Wren turning her face into her arms, blocking her eyes. 

  "I’m with Steve right now." Her voice came out small and muffled. 

  Jessica lifted a cup to her mouth, smiling as she looked at Kai and Wren. "You should have just kept drinking. Hair of the dog keeps it all at bay." 

  At her words, Kai was on her feet and running. Adam shook his head. "Guess she wasn’t kidding about puking."

  "And none of this deters you?" Zork’ak asked, his body recoiling from what he just watched. "You do not wish to avoid this?"

  "You’ll learn at some point that very little deters us." 

---

Get Humans Are Weird on Amazon now, in ebook, paperback, or hardback! If you love aliens reacting to human's hilarious and erratic behavior, found family vibes, and a sweet friends to lovers subplot, check it out now!

[artboomboom]

Another Ink drawing from my Dragon book. Each page in this book represents a day or two of my life during the beginning of the pandemic. And you can always buy a copy of it on Amazon whenever you feel an urge to look at so many different kinds of Dragons. And it's a mostly true story and a great fun read for your upcoming summer reading season!

"Dragon my butt around during the pandemic" Only $12

[maze-of-tones]

My new art collection eBook is now available on Amazon with Kindle Unlimited (KU) and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL) for a limited time. You can now have easier access and leave a review.

DRAWING ENERGY: A Collection of Figure Sketches with a Stick Model, Portraits and Drawing Hands (Figure Drawing)

[lunaloves5683]

https://www.amazon.com/Mystic-Realm-Burning-Chelsea-DeGroat-ebook/dp/B0DWRLVMQ7?ref_=litb_stb_nodl&nodl_android=1&dplnkId=6d8d3bf1-bcb9-428c-9023-7ddea99dbe36

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F3KYXQCQ?dplnkId=42a5c695-3d3c-4b78-84c3-d6cd93df6377

[lunarreign24]

The book I wrote is actually on Amazon now! It described issues I've noticed in the pharmacy through the lens of my CS degree

It's also that book I talked about with design decisions specifically to screw with AI models. I'll make a video to describe it for Monday!