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Thursday, July 5, 2012

$3 Instant Amazon MP3 Credit

This offer is displayed on my Kindle with Special Offers (which is just an Kindle with Ads, lately), but is not limited to those with a KSO or any Kindle device. Instead, you can either order this one direct from your KSO or just go online to AmazonLocal and grab it there:

Free Voucher for $3 to Spend at Amazon MP3

You will need one-click turned on for your Amazon account AND you must have a credit card registered for one-click (even though you won't be charged). You can turn this off and remove the card (do this by choosing to supply a new payment type, then just clicking on your address without entering any other info), once you've signed up. Sign-up for this offer expires at midnight (PT) or when supplies are exhausted (check other cities if yours is out).

You'll receive the promo code on your KSO home page and can retrieve it from the Vouchers link at AmazonLocal (you should also get an email telling you when it is ready) and will need to load the credit onto your account (which you can redeem HERE), just like a gift card, before going shopping. Once you have entered the promotional code(s), you have until midnight, July 11, 2012 to complete your purchases. I'd recommend that you apply the credit right away, since it works on any MP3 purchase - then you can shop on the web OR from your Kindle Fire and it will be used automatically.

If you were holding off on any of yesterday's bargain albums, now's the time to grab one (the credit will buy an entire Soundtrack!).

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Life From Scratch ($1.99), by Melissa Ford. It looks like I picked this one up early last year, when it was briefly free on Kindle.
Book Description
Divorced, heartbroken and living in a lonely New York apartment with a tiny kitchen, Rachel Goldman realizes she doesn't even know how to cook the simplest meal for herself. Can learning to fry an egg help her understand where her life went wrong? She dives into the culinary basics. Then she launches a blog to vent her misery about love, life and her goal of an unburnt casserole.

To her amazement, the blog's a hit. She becomes a minor celebrity. Next, a sexy Spaniard enters her life. Will her souffles stop falling? Will she finally forget about the husband she still loves? And how can she explain to her readers that she still hasn't learned how to cook up a happy life from scratch?

Paper Towns ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by John Green, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $9.99).
Book Description
Who is the real Margo? Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. She has disappeared. Q soon learns that there are clues in her disappearance . . . and they are for him. Trailing Margo's disconnected path across the USA, the closer Q gets, the less sure he is of who he is looking for.

The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (Wold Newton) ($1.59 Kindle, B&N), by Philip Jose Farmer, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle. I think I'd have to buy this one based on the story line, even if it weren't one of my favorite authors (now, to find it a place in the TBR list).
Book Description
In a delicious slice of sci-fi whimsy that sits cleverly alongside Verne's original tale, Phileas Fogg's epic global journey is not the product of a daft wager but, in fact, a covert mission to chase down the elusive Captain Nemo - who is none other than Professor Moriarty.

A secret alien war has raged on Earth for years and is about to culminate in this epic race.

A novel in the Wold Newton universe, in which characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Flash Gordon, Doc Savage, James Bond and Jack the Ripper are all mysteriously connected.

Birdie's Big-Girl Shoes ($11.67 Hardcover; no Kindle edition, $3.99 B&N), by Sujean Rim, is the Nook Daily Find for Families (requires NOOK Color or NOOK Tablet).
Book Description
Birdie carefully slipped her little toes into one shoe,
then slid into the other.

She looked at herself in the mirror...
and gasped.

Birdie can't wait to be just like her mom. She loves wearing jewelry, spritzing perfume bottles, and dressing up in front of the mirror. But more than anything, Birdie fantasizes about her mother's fancy high-heels. She can't wait to try them on and do all the things she likes to do wearing beautiful "big-girl shoes."

Little girls will love walking with Birdie as she spends a day in her mother's shoes, but in the end they may find that, like Birdie, they like their "barefoot shoes" best of all.

With playful watercolors and clever textured cut-paper designs, this precious picture book will speak to every little girl who longs to be a "big-girl".

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Amazon Summer Music Deals

I was looking thru the MP3 music at Amazon, trying to decide how to spend my $1 credit and stumbled upon a few good deals. First, today's album deal is Bob Marley's Legend for only $2.99.

Also today only, The Most Spectacular Fireworks Music In The Universe, which features some great classical music, is only 99 cents! Amazon says there are supposed to be two 99 cent albums for today, but they only linked in this one. I looked at the Classical Bestsellers page, where this albums is currently #1, and found several other 99 cent albums, but can't really tell if any of them are the one-day special selection. Not really on sale, but in the Top Hot Releases category are 50 Patriotic Songs Music for the 4th of July ($8.49) and 40 Most Beautiful American Classics ($3.99), which are on theme, as well as Pleasure & Pain - Sexy Classical Music Inspired By Fifty Shades of Grey (which isn't, but is only 99 cents). St. Mark's Philharmonic Orchestra's 4th Of July Celebration and the All-American Patriotic Ensemble's 4th of July - The Essential American Patriotic Music Collection are close, though, at only $1.99 each.

Edit to add: Amazon fixed their links. The Most Relaxing Beethoven In The Universe is the second 99 cent album for today!

If you are planning a summer wedding, be sure to put The 99 Most Essential Wedding Classics on your play list.

This week's $2.99 MP3 Albums theme is Soundtracks and there are 25 albums included in the sale, including a couple guaranteed to set your feet to dancing.

The big promotion they are running though, is the Essential Summer Jams Playlist, featuring 20 of their favorite songs of summer for 25 cents apiece or only $5 for the entire playlist. There were a couple I had been considering already and only a couple that I already had (one from the Legend album above and another from The Very Best Of Otis Redding album, which on sale for $5). Personally, I think they could have included all the songs from David Lee Roth's Crazy From The Heat ($3.22) EP, but that could just be because of the recent heat wave (and the great cover image).

$1.29 MP3 Credit from @Pepsi using #PepsiMusicNow

Follow @PEPSI on Twitter.com and tweet to them using hashtag #PepsiMusicNow and you could get a DM back with an promo code good for a $1.29 MP3 credit at Amazon. They aren't sending the codes to everyone, but should be giving away quite a few today.

If you use Fandango for movie tickets, be sure to take advantage of their deal, too, and get $2 in MP3 credits to go with your tickets. It appears to be one credit per purchase, but it's unclear if you can get multiple credits with additional purchases throughout the month.

It appears that if you buy select Android apps (including at least today's free app), Amazon is automatically adding a $1 MP3 credit to your account. I just checked my account and a new credit was there that wasn't there a day or so ago, when I last checked (you can check it by clicking the redeem button from the link below). If you don't have an Android device, you can use Virtual Box (see this Help Page) to create a virtual Android device that can be used to allow purchase of Android Apps from Amazon.

Once you have your code, click HERE to redeem and you can then purchase online or from your Kindle Fire.

Today's Deals

Today's MP3 is an Exclusive Amazon Sampler titled Relaxation & Meditation which features 60 minutes of relaxing music that you can play in the background while reading.

Cemetary Dance is offering 44% off using promo code 44JULY4TH this week: "Save 44% off everything in our online store this week: Limited Editions, Lettered Editions, Trade Editions, eBooks, magazines, comics, slipcases, DJs, artwork, other items, preorders, in-stock titles, and even forthcoming and in-stock books from other publishers qualify!" (exp July 6, 2012). If using on ebooks, it only applies to those purchased direct from the site, not thru Amazon, Kobo or other stores.

Get 30% off your entire order at Samhain using coupon code 4JULY12 (today only).

Smashwords is having a their "July Summer/Winter Sale Specials for July 1–31", which features books anywhere from 25% to 100% off using coupon codes SSWIN (100% off), SSW75 (75% off), SSW50 (50% off) and SSW25 (25% off) and has some simply free to download. You can select to view the sale by length of work, which coupon works and still pick the genre, to narrow down your selections. Books purchased with coupons will stay in your library, but those that say "free" will need to be backed up at your end, as they won't be accessible later if the author removes them from the store or raises the price.

Diane Duane and Peter Morwood have brought back their 60% off sale for books purchased direct from their store, using coupon code JUNEJULY. It's tricky to shop there (you enter the code AFTER you set up payment, explained on this help page), but it's a great way to pick up the 9-volume Young Wizards International Edition complete set for $16 (the individual titles at amazon are $5-$6). Their books are DRM-free and you might as well pick the EPUB/MOBI bundle, so you'll have both formats on hand, in case you change ereaders in the future. Amongst the high fantasy selections, you'll also discover a St. Patrick's Day cookbook, which claims to have been "tested in real Irish kitchens on real Irish neighbors", which is $4.99 at Amazon (no reviews yet, but you can get a sample to preview).

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free ($1.99), by John Ferling. This looks like it should be required reading for every US politician, if not for every American (and those to want to become one).
Book Description
No event in American history was more pivotal-or more furiously contested-than Congress's decision to declare independence in July 1776. Even months after American blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord, many colonists remained loyal to Britain. John Adams, a leader of the revolutionary effort, said bringing the fractious colonies together was like getting "thirteen clocks to strike at once."

Other books have been written about the Declaration, but no author has traced the political journey from protest to Revolution with the narrative scope and flair of John Ferling. Independence takes readers from the cobblestones of Philadelphia into the halls of Parliament, where many sympathized with the Americans and furious debate erupted over how to deal with the rebellion. Independence is not only the story of how freedom was won, but how an empire was lost.

At this remarkable moment in history, high-stakes politics was intertwined with a profound debate about democracy, governance, and justice. John Ferling, drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, brings this passionate struggle to life as no other historian could. Independence will be hailed as the finest work yet from the author Michael Beschloss calls "a national resource."

Inflight Science: A Guide to the World from Your Airplane Window ($1.55 / £0.99 UK), by Brian Clegg, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $8.39).
Book Description
There are few times that science is so immediate as when you're in a plane. Acclaimed science writer Brian Clegg shows how you stay up there – but that’s only the beginning. Inflight Science explains the ever-changing view, whether it’s crop circles or clouds, mountains or river deltas, and describes easy-to-do experiments, from showing how a wing provides lift to calculating the population of the towns you fly over. You’ll learn why the coastline is infinite in length, the cause of thunderstorms and the true impact of volcanic ash on aircraft engines. Fascinating facts to discover include:
  • The jet stream winds are so fast that a plane traveling west to east within them can fly beyond the speed of sound.
  • The wingspan of a 747 is around twice the distance flown by the Wright Flyer on its maiden flight.
  • With good visibility and total darkness, the human eye is so sensitive that you could see a single candle from the cruising height of a plane.
Packed full of amazing insights from physics, chemistry, engineering, geography and more, Inflight Science is a voyage of scientific discovery perfect for any journey – even if it’s just in your armchair.

Revolution: A Manifesto ($9.99 Kindle, $2.99 B&N), by Ron Paul, is the Nook Daily Find. Now priced matched on Kindle! Apparently they are having a pricing revolution there, as this is an Agency published book, which is supposed to guarantee the same price everywhere, but it hasn't dropped at Amazon. I don't know if this one will drop today, but you can get The Case for Gold , which features a preface by Ron Paul, for just a penny in the Kindle store.
Book Description
This Much Is True:
You Have Been Lied To.
The government is expanding.
Taxes are increasing.
More senseless wars are being planned.
Inflation is ballooning.
Our basic freedoms are disappearing.

The Founding Fathers didn't want any of this. In fact, they said so quite clearly in the Constitution of the United States of America. Unfortunately, that beautiful, ingenious, and revolutionary document is being ignored more and more in Washington. If we are to enjoy peace, freedom, and prosperity once again, we absolutely must return to the principles upon which America was founded. But finally, there is hope...

In THE REVOLUTION, Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has exposed the core truths behind everything threatening America, from the real reasons behind the collapse of the dollar and the looming financial crisis, to terrorism and the loss of our precious civil liberties. In this book, Ron Paul provides answers to questions that few even dare to ask.

The 1943 Newbery Medal Winner Johnny Tremain ($1.99 Kindle, B&N), by Esther Hoskins Forbes, is the Nook Daily Find for Families, price matched on Kindle. It's too bad that her adult novel, Paul Revere and the World He lived In, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1942, isn't available as an ebook, but this is title is an excellent start in making her work more available.
Book Description
Johnny Tremain is one of the finest historical novels ever written for children. As compelling today as it was fifty years ago, to read this riveting novel is to live through the defining events leading up to the American Revolutionary War. Fourteen-year old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future ahead of him, injures his hand in a tragic accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper, the Boston Observer, and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Soon Johnny is involved in the pivotal events shaping the American Revolution from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at Lexington. Powerful illustrations by American artist Michael McCurdy, bring to life Esther Forbes' quintessential novel of the American Revolution.

Grade Level: 4 and up