Free Book (Kindle/nook) - Helping People Win at Work

Update: Now free from Barnes & Noble.

Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called "Don't Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A", by Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge, is a repeat freebie in the Kindle store. This one is still full price at B&N, as is another of his titles, Leading at a Higher Level, Revised and Expanded Edition: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations, which is $2.69 from Amazon (although B&N has a free "sample" of this one, the Amazon edition appears to be the full book).

Book Description
Ken Blanchard’s Leading at a Higher Level techniques are inspiring thousands of leaders to build high-performing organizations that make life better for everyone. Now, Blanchard and WD-40 Company leader Garry Ridge reveal how WD-40 has used Blanchard’s techniques of Partnering for Performance with every employee--achieving levels of engagement and commitment that have fortified the bottom line.

Ridge introduces WD-40 Company’s year-round performance review system, explaining its goals, features, and the cultural changes it requires. Next, he shares his leadership point of view: what he expects of people, what they can expect of him, and where his beliefs about leadership and motivation come from. Finally, Ken Blanchard explains why WD-40 Company’s Partnering for Performance system works so well--and how to leverage its high-value techniques in your organization.

Get the free ebook from Barnes & Noble.

Today's Deals

Resuscitation ($0.99), by Daniel Annechino, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day.

Book Description
Two years ago, Detective Sami Rizzo narrowly escaped a brush with death at the hands of a serial killer. After apprehending the killer and bringing him to justice, this life-changing event compels her to resign from the police force. In her heart of hearts, however, she struggles with the decision. But a second serial killer—a well-respected doctor gone astray—uses his charm to seduce his victims and then performs horrific surgical experiments on them. In a final act of depravity, he scatters their mutilated bodies throughout San Diego County.

Feeling a sense of duty and obligation, Sami Rizzo appeals to the police chief and mayor, and they reinstate her as a homicide investigator. As the body count grows and the killer’s experiments become more and more brutal, Sami follows one dead-end lead after another, while trying to deal with a sickly mother and a turbulent relationship with her lover. But then the killer makes a crucial mistake: one of his victims survives. Sami does everything to protect the barely alive victim, but the killer has a different plan…

Rip Tide ($2.03 / £1.29 UK), by Stella Rimington, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US Edition is $9.99).

Book Description
When pirates attack a cargo ship off the Somalian coast and one of them is found to be a British-born Pakistani, alarm bells start ringing at London's Thames House. MI5 Intelligence Officer Liz Carlyle is brought in to establish how and why a young British Muslim could go missing from his well-to-do family in Birmingham and end up onboard a pirate skiff in the Indian Ocean, armed with a Kalashnikov.

After an undercover operative connected to the case turns up dead in the shipping office of an NGO in Athens it looks like piracy may be the least of the Service's problems. Liz and her team must unravel the connections between Pakistan, Greece and Somalia, relying on their wits - and the judicious use of force - to get to the truth. And they don't have long, as trouble is brewing closer to home: the kind of explosive trouble that MI5 could do without ...

Stella Rimington, former Director General of MI5, returns with a tense and heart-stopping spy thriller where the secrets are deep, the stakes are high and the enemy is always just out of sight.

The Crimson Petal and the White ($3.49 Kindle, B&N), by Michel Faber, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Meet Sugar, a nineteen-year-old prostitute in nineteenth-century London who yearns for escape to a better life. From the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, she begins her ascent through society, meeting a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters on the way. They begin with William Rackham, an egotistical perfume magnate whose empire is fueled by his lust for Sugar; his unhinged, child-like wife Agnes; his mysteriously hidden-away daughter, Sophie; and his pious brother Henry, foiled in his devotional calling by a persistently less-than-chaste love for the Widow Fox. All this is overseen by assorted preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all stripes and persuasions.

Teeming with life, this is a big, juicy must-read of a novel that has enthralled hundreds of thousands of readers-and will continue to do so for years to come.

Free Book (nook/noDRM) - Manners Made Easy for the Family

Update: 11/22/11 Back to full price at Barnes & Noble, but still free from ChristianBook.
Update: 11/21/11 Now free from Barnes & Noble.

Manners Made Easy for the Family: 365 Timeless Etiquette Tips for Every Occasion ($9.99 Kindle), by June Hines Moore is free from ChristianBook, courtesy of Christian publisher B&H. Although this may end up free on Kindle in a day or two, you can grab the DRM-free EPUB and easily convert it for Kindle, using Calibre.

Book Description
Christian etiquette expert June Hines Moore will improve the quality of life in homes everywhere with Manners Made Easy for the Family. This quintessential page-per-day guide to good manners presents 365 rules–just one or two sentences each–followed by a family application or practice point and example or instruction from the Bible. Parents and children can read and discuss each manner at breakfast or dinner for an entire year, learning about everything from table manners and telephone etiquette to proper church behavior and online “netiquette.” There’s even a helpful index for quick reference and for whenever questions about specific situations arise.

Get the free ebook from ChristianBook.
Get the free ebook from Barnes & Noble.

Today's Deals

If you generally use gift certificates to pay for Kindle books and other items at Amazon and you have the Amazon Rewards Visa Card, you may want to consider using your credit card instead for the rest of the year. Generally, I do recommend using gift cards, as it keeps your credit card statement much cleaner and with some banks, all those tiny charges can get your card closed on a fraud alert, requiring you to keep calling and getting it re-activated. That latter concern has never been a problem with my Amazon Visa card (hmm... I wonder why? LOL!), but reconciling with all the charges is a bit of a pain. However, Amazon has just announced that they are giving 10 points per dollar (rather than the standard 3) for all digital purchases from Amazon thru the end of the year. This deal is only for those in the US and covers more than just Kindle books:

Eligible digital download purchases include Kindle eBooks, Amazon MP3s, Amazon Instant Videos, software downloads, game downloads and purchases made at Audible.com. Digital download purchases at Amazon.com must be made using your Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card as your 1-Click payment method to qualify for this offer.

Speaking of Audible, they are running a couple of deals there, also. Listening Rewards isn't a sale, but a bonus for buying four audible audiobooks between November 1 and November 24, 2011. You'll earn a $10 Listening Reward coupon, deposited to your Audible account by the end of the month (and which expires Dec 26). Since I had four credits remaining on my 6 for $6 Audible subscription, I went ahead and used them (which I needed to do before I could consider canceling, anyway), so should get the credit (presumably even if I cancel the monthly subscription, since this isn't tied to one). Audible is also running their semi-annual sale, with many audiobooks at 50% off (for those paying for each book, rather than using credits). If you have a monthly subscription, that isn't a huge savings (as it isn't half off member price, but list), but it is quite a bit for those who just buy one book now and then. They are also now highlighting new audiobooks the First Friday each month, so you might want to view November's selection.

Some additional formats on free books:

• A Measure of Mercy (Kindle/EPUB/nook)
• The Journey (Kindle/nook)
• Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection (Kindle/nook/iBooks)
• The Everything Potluck Cookbook (Kindle/nook/iBooks)

Today is the last day to take advantage of these KSO deals:

• Get $25 off at endless.com
• Save $50 on select strollers

MetaGame ($0.99), by Sam Landstrom, is today's Kindle Deal of the Day. I've mentioned this book a time or two before and, although I don't have this newer AmazonEncore edition, I do have two earlier editions and recommend it for any SciFi fans.

Book Description
Speculative science fiction at its finest, MetaGame by Sam Landstrom is a ‘future gamers’ field guide and a philosophical cyberpunk adventure. In this original and disturbingly irreverent prospective world, gaming is more than a diversion—and gamers are, literally, in it for life. The OverSoul, an enigmatic, unifying force, offers winners points that add up to currency. Reigning champs are given the gift of immortality—while losers are condemned to aging and death. D_Light is one of the best players in his Family and will do anything to win, even if it means committing murder. When he’s invited to a MetaGame—an exclusive, high-stakes competition—he jumps at the chance. But after the first quest, D_Light’s overly ambitious ways brand him a renegade. With a warped sense of freewill that is needed to prevail, D_Light must either kill someone he’s grown to love—or lose everything.

Sapper Martin ($1.59 / £0.99 UK), by Richard van Emden, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US Edition is $8.32).

Book Description
Albert John ('Jack') Martin was a thirty-two-year-old clerk at the Admiralty when he was called up to serve in the army in September 1916. These diaries, written in secret, hidden from his colleagues and only discovered by his family after his return home, present the Great War with heartbreaking clarity, written in a voice as compelling and distinctive as Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon and all the more extraordinary given that it is not an officer's but that of a private. From his arrival in France and his participation in the Somme, through offensives at Ypres and eventual demobilisation after the Armistice, we see wartime life as it really was for the ordinary Tommy.

In these journals, introduced and edited by bestselling First World War historian Richard van Emden, we witness the cheerful Albert Martin getting to grips with life in the trenches and, together with his comrades in the Royal Engineers, confronting the ever-present threat of injury and death. We also see the mundane reality of life at the front line - the arguments with superiors, the joy brought by the arrival of packages from loved ones at home and the appalling conditions in which that attritional war was fought.

The 7 Day Energy Surge ($9.99 Kindle; $3.25 B&N), by Cynthia Costas Cohen and Jim Karas, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
We all know what it feels like to be "on"—to wake up feeling refreshed and rested, to bound through the day feeling like you can conquer the world as you bounce between work, family, and friends, and go to bed feeling relaxed and satisfied with your accomplishments. What made all the difference during those highly productive days? It’s simple—energy.

You can't buy it at the store, but you can control your energy levels. Here for the first time is a simple program to increase your energy immediately—and keep it up throughout the day, every day. Through his work with more than 500 clients, Jim Karas has identified the 10 components that contribute to your personal balance-of-energy equation—and created the 7-Day Energy Surge to help you put all 10 to work for you. He exposes the bad habits that sabotage energy, lays out the principles for increasing your energy and offers simple strategies that are easily customizable for anyone to use anywhere . . . at any time.

What’s more, energy-positive habits also translate into weight loss. Plus, by maintaining that lower weight, exercising regularly, sleeping well, breathing deeply, and keeping a positive mind-set, you will not only experience a surge of energy but you will fight pain, fatigue, headaches, stress, depression, disease, and aging.

In just a few minutes a day, you can jump-start your weight loss, reduce your stress, and enhance your sex life. Get ready for the 7-Day Energy Surge. It starts now. In no time, you will possess a huge bank of enriching energy—and feel better than you ever have before!

Opting in to Kindle Special Offers

Yesterday, Amazon rolled out a new feature, one that I thought would be coming from the time they started letting you turn off Special Offers on the $79 Kindle (although you have to pay a one-time fee to do so). They now let you add Special Offers to any Kindle 3 (Keyboard or no Keyboard) or Kindle Touch (K4). Those with the K1, K2 or KDX are out of luck on this one and if you are not at the latest version of firmware on your Kindle, you'll see a message like the one above, prompting you to turn on wireless and let you Kindle update. The update generally won't download via 3G (or EDGE), so if you don't have WiFi available, you'll have to follow the instructions (on the Amazon Help pages) to download and install it manually. I turned on my K3 tonight (the first chance I've had to work on this) and (after downloading all my book queue), the update appeared to download for quite a while (although it didn't appear to start for nearly 10 minutes after all the books had downloaded), but I was on a pretty slow connection. It never did install though, even after putting the Kindle to sleep several times and then letting it time out on it's own. It is a pretty big file, but in the meantime, I surfed around, updated a few posts and eventually downloaded the installer to my computer (all on the same wifi connection) and the K3 still had not updated. Eventually, I gave up and installed the update manually (rather than waste hours waiting, this takes less than five minutes, assuming you can find your USB cable).

For those who bought an early Kindle3 (now Kindle Keyboard), then were left out of all the Special Offers, but didn't buy another Kindle just to get the offers (as I did), this lets you now get the offers coming up for the holiday season and you can turn them off again any time you want. In fact, you should be able to turn them on, get the offers, sign up, then turn them off again and leave them off until a new offer grabs your interest. There is the chance, though, that if you do, you'll miss any offers that were new that day (or from past dates, but not yet expired) -- I've had my KSO sometimes skip offers for a couple of days, if I accidentally leave the wireless off.

Here are the other new features you'll get with this update:

• Download your archived Personal Documents on Kindle Keyboard: You can now view and download your archived personal documents to your Kindle Keyboard conveniently anywhere at any time. Your personal documents will be stored in your Kindle library until you delete them from Manage Your Kindle.
• Whispersync for Personal Documents on Kindle Keyboard: Just as with Kindle books, Whispersync automatically synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks and annotations for personal documents (with the exception of PDFs) across the Kindle devices. Learn more about Kindle Personal Document Service on www.amazon.com/kindlepersonaldocuments
• AmazonLocal deals on Kindle Keyboard with Special Offers: Kindle Keyboard with Special Offers users in many regions can now view,purchase, and redeem AmazonLocal deals directly from Kindle Keyboard -- no computer, no printer, no hassle. AmazonLocal offers savings up to 75% off products and services from businesses in your city, national chains and online merchants. Learn more about AmazonLocal on www.amazonlocal.com.
• Voice Guide Shortcut: Kindle Keyboard users can now quickly turn the Voice Guide feature on and off by holding the Shift key and pressing Spacebar. Voice Guide reads aloud menu options, content listings and item descriptions. To learn more about using Voice Guide on Kindle Keyboard, visit Customize Your Reading on Kindle.

Being able to grab your archived personal documents is a nice feature, since I do some book reviews, that prevents me having to manually send to multiple Kindles from the MYK page. AmazonLocal I haven't played with much - there are no local offers for here; although I did have one pop up recently, it's an offer for a national company, from what I can tell, with no local stores (so, I guess the discounted giftcard would be one you used on their website). I also noticed that if you haven't updated to at least 3.1 on your Kindle, you may no longer have free (no login required) access to AT&T hotspots. I ran into one the other day that charged $10/day for access with your notebook, but my Kindle had free access.

Once you have managed to get your Kindle updated (and mine ran thru the install and reboot twice), you'll see this message when you edit the Special Offers column on the MYK page.

You can de-activate special offers at any time on a Kindle that was originally shipped at full price, but if you have one that was originally shipped at a lower cost with Special Offers, you'll end up with a message similar to this one (the amount shown will depend on the unit you bought and how much difference in price there was between the KSO and full Kindle models at the time).

Once you have subscribed to Special Offers on a Kindle, you need to connect via WiFi - but that goes very, very fast. By the time my Kindle had rebooted and restarted the home screen, all the current offers had downloaded and I could pull up the current offers from the Menu, just like one the KSO that shipped with offers installed. There weren't any new offers, so I unsubscribed. The message that displays on this Kindle doesn't mention any payment required to remove special offers (which is what I expected, but it's nice to confirm). Practically the instant that I clicked to unsubscribe, I saw activity from downloading on the Kindle and the advertisement at the bottom of the page was removed in under 15 seconds (and an info box displayed to tell me that Special Offers had been removed).

So, for those that hate setting the ads, but want to take advantage of the occasional $1 book offer, this looks like an ideal method of management (although it does require computer access). The only ones left out are those who bought the Kindle Fire, which doesn't have a SO option and those with what is now aging equipment (K1, K2 and KDX) that Amazon has pretty much quit updating.

Update: It's the next morning and I tried switching my Kindle back to Special Offers again. It's on WiFit and connecting fine, but the special offers are not showing up, even after rebooting it. So, the first time thru, it seems to work fine, but there may be issues if you try switching back and forth often. I had to subscribe twice (unsubscribing in between) and wait a bit after each time (to allow it a chance to download files) before I could see the special offers on it. Since I can only see one offer (and none of the ads), it appears that it deletes the ad files when you unsubscribe and any current offers and ads have to download each time you re-subscribe.