October 2, 2011

Kindle Superuser by Gary McLaren


In case you don't know, Gary McLaren runs the always helpful and insightful Publish Your Own Ebooks, which is a great resource for self-publishers. For people looking to self-publish on Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, Lulu, and others, I highly recommend checking out his free self-publishing reference card that focuses on royalties, formats, and other information about the big eBook distributors. McLaren wrote a useful primer for readers looking to make the jump from dead tree to eBooks called The Beginner's Guide to Ebooks, and he has a new eBook out about tips and tricks for the Kindle (specifically the Kindle 3).

Here is my 5-star review of Kindle Superuser - 101 Ways to Get More from Your Kindle at Amazon.com:

In the new world of cheap, and sometimes free, eBooks and low-cost eReaders, there is a significant amount of information available to publishing houses and self-publishers alike to create, distribute, market, and promote eBooks. Unfortunately, the brave new digital world has neglected the most important group of people during the world-wide transition from print books to eBooks: the consumer.

Guides on how to properly utilize your Kindle can be terse at best and affiliate marketing scams at worst. That is why McLaren's Kindle Superuser is a handy reference for all Kindle lovers who want to maximize use of their eReading device. This guide is a nice follow-up to The Beginner's Guide to Ebooks, which helps readers understand more about eBooks.

As the product description implies, Kindle Superuser highlights a number of features that I had no idea existed on a Kindle 3. This includes basic energy saving tips, accessing content that is free at the Kindle store, and even the more uncommon feature of using natural logarithm functions on the built-in calculator. Probably the most important tidbit of information is how to get eBooks and files in non-Amazon formats onto your Kindle 3. This process is not well-explained by the powers that be (obviously because they want you to buy different versions of the same content), so McLaren's guide is indispensable as a money saver.

Kudos to McLaren for creating this useful guide with the reader in mind, and I hope that he creates a similar eBook once the Kindle Fire starts to proliferate.
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