Amazon Prime members will now get video entertainment as well as free shipping for their $79 annual fee with the launch of Prime Instant Videos, which offers unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of more than 5,000 movies and TV shows.
Fast Company noted the "ramped up benefits might be enough to pull Amazon users over to Amazon Prime. But will it be enough to sway users into canceling their Netflx and Hulu subscriptions? It's too early to say."
Engadget
gave the new option a test drive and wrote that "you can't be too harsh
on a service that comes for 'free' and just makes an already tempting
offering even more appealing, but ultimately Prime Instant Videos is
actually quite good. No, the quality isn't quite as good as Netflix and
you're going to have a hard time finding anything here that hasn't
already been served up there, but now Amazon has another nice bonus to
go along with all that two-day shipping."
---
On a "Date with Dickens" yesterday, Oprah Winfrey played host to special guest Jane Smiley for an Oprah's Book Club webcast, where they discussed the most recent selections--A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. The webcast was recorded before an audience of book club readers.
--- 
A new Amazon Kindle commercial takes another shot at Apple's iPad and its glare issue, but SlashGear expressed reservations about the ongoing campaign: "You can't blame them though for really emphasizing glare as it may be the only thing it can still compete on. With all the new tablets coming on the market that can consume media and perform a whole slew of other tasks along with higher resolution displays for more comfortable viewing and reading, it's less and less likely that consumers would choose to buy a separate device just for reading. It will be interesting to see what happens, should an anti-glare display ever be implemented on an iPad or other tablet device."
TechCrunch observed that a noteworthy aspect of the commercial "is that all of the actors appear to be in their twenties and thirties, which shows that Amazon is clearly trying to target a younger demographic in the spot. And the tagline 'The Book Lives On,' appears to be a new one."
---
OverDrive Inc., the distributor of e-books for libraries, recently released the OverDrive Media Console for the iPad, a free app that allows readers to wirelessly download electronic books from their local libraries using the Apple iPad or an Android tablet, the Wall Street Journal reported.
--- 
The L Magazine spoke with Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-owner of Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y., about the shop's experience with Google's eBookstore.
While noting that Greenlight has sold a limited number of e-books thus far, she expressed optimism about the possibilities: "The margin varies wildly from publisher to publisher and from book to book. The way I see it though, all of it is essentially free money for us--because we don't have to invest in the book inventory up front! Every e-book sale, even if we see only pennies from it, is a sale we didn't have to devote shelf space or inventory dollars to--so for us it's a net win. It's probably never going to be the core of what we do--that will continue to be our curated in-store inventory, and the community space we offer for human-scale connection over literature. But in the sense that it offers us an additional revenue stream, a seat at the digital table, and a chance to offer our loyal customers more of what they want--that is, books in any and all formats--it's a great opportunity for us, and for all independent stores."
---
Operating on the logical theory that "in most cases, there is an independent bookstore within ten miles from a closed Borders," Edward Champion compiled a list of independent alternatives and observed that these shops "are run not by faceless corporations, but passionate book lovers who very often read the books they stock."
--- 
"The day before Borders declared bankruptcy, I was in Dallas," author Melanie Benjamin wrote in the Huffington Post. She was on a book tour for her most recent novel, Alice I Have Been, and her media escort took her "to several Borders and Barnes and Noble stores to sign stock. There was no getting around the fact that in the Borders stores there was uncertainty in the air, bare tables, and employees putting on a brave face. I thanked them all profusely, and when we were back in the car, driving to the next bookstore, my media escort and I kept checking our e-mail for any news concerning these nice employees' fates.
"The day that Borders declared bankruptcy, I was in Austin. My media escort decided not to drive me to any Borders to sign stock, which meant I went to about half the places I had the day before. I signed half the books, shook half the hands. And tried not to think about what this meant not only for those nice employees, but for my future as an author....
"The night following the day that Borders declared bankruptcy, I was in an independent bookstore called BookPeople, where I talked about and signed copies of my book. BookPeople was packed.... In such an environment, I could almost forget about the news of the day and indeed, I think I did. For an hour, anyway....
"The night after the day Borders declared bankruptcy, I paid full price for two wonderful books. And as I did, I offered up a little prayer that others were doing the same. It seemed the only thing to do, under the circumstances."
--- 
Jan Owens, who has owned the Millrace Bookshop, Farmington, Conn., for nearly 40 years, told the Farmington Patch that her recent addition of Google eBooks is part of the natural evolution of the business: "I have always been open to trying new ways to bring people in to the store, like participating in Think Farmington First, a buy local promotion. My approach has been to be a community resource. I have a unique section of books on Farmington. I have always tried to promote Millrace as a destination bookstore. People love it when they find it."
---
"This Is Why Your Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You" was the provocative headline for a trip down bookseller memory lane by Michael Leaverton in SF Weekly, where he "relived some moments of quiet desperation" under the categories:
You're Spending Too Much Time in the Erotica Section
You Camp Out in the Self-Help Section
You're Asleep
You Were Our Favorite English Professor
You Smell, Sir
You Don't Check Your Bag
You Check Everything You Own
You Ask for a Discount--Every Time
You're Selling Us Books
You Want to Know if We Sell Calendars
---
The grammar police have been harassing U.K. indie Horatios Bookshop for two years about the lack of an apostrophe in the bookstore's name. Now, owners Robert and Sue Batt have put the dilemma up for vote, Bedford Today reported.
"When we opened the shop we were a bit undecided whether to use an apostrophe or not, but in the end we decided not to because we thought it looked neater without," said Robert. "But over the last year we just haven't heard the end of it. People are always asking us why there is no apostrophe, so we've given in and are now holding a referendum all through this month so people can vote."
Thus far, the voters are evenly split. "I didn't quite realize people's love of the English language and how irate they would get about a little apostrophe, it's caused us no end of trouble," Robert added.
---
Of the 100 most borrowed titles from libraries in the U.K. last year, "close to two-thirds are crime novels or thrillers, including all the top 10, and others (such as Stephenie Meyer's crime-laden vampire romances) are in related genres," the Guardian reported. You can find separate charts for authors and books here. The top 10 most borrowed titles, according to data released by Public Lending Right (PLR), covering the period from mid-2009 to mid-2010, were:
- Swimsuit by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
- 8th Confession by James Patterson
- Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
- The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
- Run for Your Life by James Patterson
- Doors Open by Ian Rankin
- The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
- Genesis by Karin Slaughter
- Cross Country by James Patterson
- The Complaints by Ian Rankin
---
Literary Lost & Found Dept., Part 1: Ann Willmore, a bookseller in Daphne du Maurier's home town of Fowey in Cornwall, has discovered five lost stories by the author. The Guardian reported that Willmore "has been scouring other booksellers' catalogues for years to find lost stories, which Du Maurier published regularly in women's magazines in the U.K. and U.S. throughout her career."
"I try to make all things Du Maurier available and I'm also a major collector," said Willmore, who took the stories to Kits Browning, Du Maurier's son. They will be published May 5 by Virago, along with another eight other early stories originally published in the '50s, in a collection titled The Doll.
---
Literary Lost & Found Dept., Part 2: The New York Times reported that researchers from the Jefferson Library at Monticello discovered "a trove of books that were among the last ones that Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s most bibliophilic president, collected and read in the decade before he died.... The 28 titles in 74 volumes were discovered recently in the collection of Washington University in St. Louis, immediately elevating its library to the third largest repository of books belonging to Jefferson after the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia."
--- 
"Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas" was the World War II motto for the Council on Books in Wartime's Armed Services Editions, "a unique collaboration between government and private industry launched an effort to distribute almost 1.3 million books to American GI's. These books, the Armed Services Editions, were eagerly read by men in submarines, battleships, foxholes, and hospital beds, and not only served as a source of entertainment and solace during the war, but also turned many men into lifelong readers when they returned home," according to the Art of Manliness blog (via Boing Boing).
---
What was Toni Morrison's name at birth? The Guardian celebrated the author's recent birthday with this Toni Morrison at 80 quiz.
---
Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy" would have to be on Hamlet's literary mixtape, wouldn't it? Flavorwire noted that on his iPod, the Prince of Denmark, "depressive, grieving borderline-psychotic that he is, wouldn't listen to anything other than intense, dark songs, though they might run the gamut of negative emotions. Here are the songs we think he'd plot, give monologues, and pull back the bloody curtains to."
---
Bibliophile's video of the day: "Organizing the Bookcase."
---
Book trailer of the day: The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable by Dan Gutman (HarperCollins).