News – Voices of BookExpo America: Joshua Tallent of eBook Architects (which is hiring – contact them if you are an eBook developer interested in a position with a growing business based in scenic Austin, Texas) and the eBook Ninjas podcast; Jon Land, author of Strong Vengeance, a Caitlin Strong Novel, on Digital Rights Management, and Benjamin Schrager, an independent book sales representative from the Bronx who has attended every BEA meeting and their predecessors except one since 1968.
Tech Tips - Allen MacDiarmid tips me off to a free or inexpensive (if you donate $10 to support it) Microsoft alternative for creating documents that can be converted to Kindle format via Calibre for transfer from your Macintosh to your Kindle. It’s NeoOffice. The $79 Kindle gets a software update, to Version 4.1.0.
Interview (Starts at 23:38) – Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s VP of Kindle Content, met with me at BEA for a wide-ranging discussion of eBook pricing, Digital Rights Management, Kindle Singles, social reading, and how much longer there will be a Kindle Keyboard in the lineup. He made no newsworthy predictions on the last item but did assert that he, too, has heard from customers who really love the Kindle 3. “I really, really do appreciate that feedback from people,” he told me. “We’ve heard it.”
Content – Instapaper is now available for your Kindle Fire, for $2.99. So is HBO Go, making its first appearance on an Android tablet via the Fire. Theresa Ragan, who will be my guest for next week’s show, is the author of Abducted and Dead Weight, the first two books of the Lizzy Gardner series. Also, James McQuivey of Forrester Research has published his highly original mix of survey data and personal essay, titled Why We Need Dad, available for $2.99 on Kindle just in time for Father’s Day.