Amazon quadruples Black Friday Kindle sales; doesn't share numbers

Once again, Amazon has made a big to-do about the volume of Kindles sold, without making public any actual sales numbers. "Best Black Friday Ever for Kindle Family: Kindle Sales Increase 4X Over Last Year," its press release proclaims. "Holiday shoppers made Kindle Fire the bestselling product across all of Amazon.com on Black Friday; Kindle Fire now the bestselling product across Amazon for 8 weeks running -- ever since its introduction on September 28."

So, the new Amazon Kindle is selling well, compared to previous Amazon Kindles. How many Kindles have actually been sold? No one knows for sure, but in the release, Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, says: "millions." Our Technology blog writes:

Since the first Kindle eReader was launched in 2007, Amazon has yet to release any specific sales numbers, only ever saying that the Kindle has sold millions.

Likewise, Barnes & Noble has made it a practice of never sharing its specific sale numbers for its eReader or tablet sales thus far. However, the company does say its Nook Color tablet is currently the top-selling Android tablet on the market.

Apple, whose iPad is the top seller in the tablet market, does release its sales figures for top-selling items. Last quarter, Apple said it sold 11.1 million iPads, up 166% from a year earlier. Since the iPad first launched in 2010, Apple has said it has sold more than 39 million tablets.

More Kindles may have been sold because of Black Friday deals being offered on the e-readers and Fire tablet. PC World notes that the Kindle DX was marked down from $379 to $259, a price cut that continues through today, Cyber Monday. Wider availability may also have helped Amazon's devices reach new buyers; in addition to being sold on Amazon, the Kindle can now be found in major retail outlets, including Best Buy and Target.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Amazon's new Kindle, Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire tablet. Credit: Amazon, for the individual images; collage, Carolyn Kellogg / Los Angeles Times

Barnes & Noble's new Nook: A $249 tablet with e-reader bones

On Monday, Barnes & Noble unveiled its new Nook at a news conference in New York. As was widely expected, there is now a Nook Tablet, pictured above. Look closely and you'll see that the demo version was loaded with Netflix, Parents magazine, games, Hulu and the bestselling Steve Jobs biography.

The new Nook Tablet, which retails for $249, is available for pre-order and should begin shipping next week, well in advance of the holiday shopping season. In addition to Barnes & Noble stores, it will be available at major retailers, including Target, Staples, Wal-Mart and Office Max. You may find it in the aisle near the Kindles -- on Tuesday, Amazon announced that its Kindle will be found for sale at 16,000 brick-and-mortar stores, including some of those same retailers, beginning Nov. 15.

Bargain hunters may be drawn to Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, which is $199. But our Technology blog wrote that "for the extra $50, the Nook Tablet offers beefier specs than the Kindle Fire that, Chief Executive William Lynch argued in unveiling the new Barnes & Noble device, will add up to a faster, smoother experience when reading books, playing games or watching movies." The Technology blog detailed those specs, then went on to say: 

Unlike the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet and Nook Color have no built-in storefront for buying movies and music.

Lynch said that while Amazon sells those items, Barnes & Noble is focused on selling digital reading content, while letting others handle the music, TV show and film side of things -- such as Netflix, Hulu and Pandora which all come pre-installed on the Nook Tablet.

"The Kindle Fire is a vending machine for Amazon services, they've said it themselves," he said at the company's flagship store in New York's Union Square during the Nook Tablet reveal. "In one word, we're more open" in allowing users to get their music and video content from wherever they want.

Barnes & Noble was late into the e-reader game, and its entry was full of stumbles -- many shipments of its first Nook failed to arrive in time for Christmas, as promised. Since then, it seems to have gotten its e-reader footing, getting a clearer picture of what its customers want when it comes to reading e-books and getting it into their hands, without delay.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: The new Nook tablet is demonstrated Monday at the Union Square Barnes & Noble store in New York. Credit: Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Harper Lee letter for sale: 'Please don't put this on the internet'

A cache of letters from "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee are being sold online by Nate D. Sanders Auction House. Five items are for sale at a fixed price, and eight of the letters are up for auction. The auction closes Tuesday at 5 p.m.

The 13 letters, all written to a single fan, are being sold separately. They were written over a span of years, from 1960 to to 2009. After reading "To Kill a Mockingbird," fan Don Salter first wrote to Harper Lee, and then maintained a correspondence with the reclusive writer over decades. He sent her a book, which she thanked him for. Later, when she was having trouble with her eyes, he sent her candy. In 2003, she wrote:

Dear Don: You must have your own radar system. The first Christmas I find it difficult to read, you send candy. Thank you ever so, and thank the French Republic for keeping up their standards in a downmarket world! It's delicious. Comparatively recently, I have fetched up with macular degeneration that seems to be galloping whereas it's supposed to go slowly, so I don't even know if I'll be in NYC in April. I'm at the beck + call of several doctors in Mobile, and can't even drive there any more. I'm due to have more cataract surgery (the other eye) and am hopeful that it'll improve things, but when is yet to be revealed to me. Please don't put this on the internet or anything -- I'd dread for it to bring more mail! (She's going blind, so I'll send her a chatty letter…)

That letter is not up for auction; it has a fixed price of $11,000, which includes a signed photograph. The other fixed-price lots the auction house has from Harper Lee are also listed at $11,000. Not all come with pictures.

The letters that are up for auction begin as low as $100; most cost around $500. One that has been bid up further -- currently about $3,000 -- is from 1960 and appears to be replying to a question about the location of geography of Maycomb County, where "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set.

At the end of the short letter, Lee writes "here is your map" with a drawing and the words "Maycomb County" written across it. The auction house writes that this is a map of Monroe County, where Lee grew up, but to me it looks much more like a map of the state of Alabama. But trying to find Maycomb County in the real world would be missing the point, as Lee writes in that same letter.

You ask me where Maycomb County is, where the Landing is - -the only answer I can give you is that Maycomb County is in my heart and the Landing is in my imagination. If, in 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I persuaded you that those places are real, that means I have succeeded in my profession, which is writing fiction.

In May, a signed copy of "To Kill A Mockingbird" sold for $25,000. Since its publication in 1960, Lee has not published another book. She turned 85 in April.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Harper Lee, right, with director Alan Pakula during the filming of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Credit: Associated Press

Anthropologie's $2,175 book set -- and how to get it for $250

What do six books in a custom-made wooden case add up to? A $2,175 price tag at Anthropologie. Just six books. And that's not all -- here's the catalog copy:

A one-of-a-kind set in a custom-made case, curated by Kinsey Marable, who left his job as an investment banker to deal with a more exotic commodity: rare and out-of-print books. His passion to create distinctive libraries led him to select these books; the mahogany-stained Baltic birch bookshelf is custom built for the custom collection.

That's right, the creator of this book set left his job as an investment banker to create a set of books with a small wooden shelf that costs so much it would take a minimum-wage worker almost two months to earn enough to buy it.

Because the set is custom-made for the books included, and the books are used, Anthropologie has just a handful available; each is organized by theme. The $2,175 "society" set is the most expensive. The "drinks" set is several hundred dollars cheaper -- at $1,400, the buyer can afford a few bottles of special edition Dom Perignon, 40-some 12-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon, or anything in between.

After the jump: what those "rare and out-of-print books" are, and how to find them for much, much less. Build your own version of Anthropologie's custom book sets for less than $250!

Man Booker win shoots Julian Barnes to Amazon's top 10

Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize with his novel "The Sense of an Ending" on Tuesday. Just two days later, that success is making itself felt with U.S. book buyers -- "The Sense of an Ending" has leapt up Amazon's bestseller list. On Tuesday, before the awards ceremony began, it was at No. 80; now it's at No. 7.

Barnes was considered to be a favorite for the prize by many, including British betting house Ladbrokes. Then again, Ladbrokes had Bob Dylan as the most likely winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a charming idea but widely off the mark: The Nobel in literature went to Tomas Tranströmer, an 80-year-old Swedish poet. Yet Barnes' history with the Man Booker -- he'd been shortlisted three times before -- made his win seem almost inevitable.

In addition to the sales bump, the Man Booker comes with its own financial reward -- about $80,000.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Julian Barnes at the Man Booker Prize ceremony. Credit: Luke MacGregor / Reuters

Did Leonardo da Vinci draw portrait that sold for just $21,000?

A portrait that sold at Christie's auction house for just $21,000 is thought by some scholars to be a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. The portrait, which surfaced in 1998, appears to have come from a 500-year-old book titled "Sforziad."

That's according to British art historian Martin Kemp, who has made the da Vinci claim. Live Science reports:

The [portrait] appears to have come from a 500-year-old book containing the family history of the Duke of Milan. Art historian Martin Kemp, of the University of Oxford, believes the mystery [work], which appeared in 1998, is a portrait of the duke's daughter, created by da Vinci for her wedding book. ...

The portrait is made on vellum, a specially prepared skin normally used for writing and printing. No work by da Vinci has been found on vellum before, though it was frequently used in books. Researchers believe the portrait came from a book, because three stitch holes are visible on the portrait's left margin. ...

"The chance of identifying the vellum book it came from was pretty small, a needle in the haystack, one would say," Kemp told LiveScience. That was, until American art historian D.R. Edward Wright of the University of South Florida suggested that Kemp look at a set of books titled the "Sforziad."

Of the four copies of "Sfiorziad," one in Warsaw's National Library seemed to be missing this page, Kemp says, which was probably removed during a rebinding. Evidence that it comes from this book include the similarity of the page to the vellum of neighboring pages and the binding holes in the portrait -- and da Vinci was an artist in the duke's residence from 1481-1499.

Other scholars say there is not compelling evidence to attribute the chalk-and-ink portrait to da Vinci. He has no known works on vellum, and a Vienna gallery that examined the piece concluded that it was created in the 19th century.

More about the artwork appears in the revised edition of Martin Kemp's book "Leonardo," coming in November from Oxford University Press.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: The portrait in question. Credit: LiveScience

Signed 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' book sells for $9,000

A signed copy of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey sold for $9,000 in September. It was one of the three most expensive books sold through the site Abebooks, which functions as a portal for hundreds of used booksellers.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was originally published in 1962; it was author Ken Kesey's first book. Kesey would later become a leading countercultural figure of the '60s, whose adventures with the bohemians who called themselves the Merry Pranksters were memorialized in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." Kesey's first book became even more famous after the 1975 film adaptation, starring Jack Nicholson, was released; it won five Academy Awards, including best picture. Plenty of used copies of the book can be found for as low as $1, but copies signed by Kesey, who died in 2001, are much more valuable.

The 1962 first edition of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was not the most expensive book sold through Abebooks last month -- it was the third. First was "Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae," a multi-volume pictorial encyclopedia of classical mythology developed by scholars from 40 nations, which sold for $14,067. An 1871 first edition of "Ueber die chemische Zusammensetzung der Eiterzelle," the account by Swiss scientist Johann Friedrich Miescher of his discovery of what would later become known as DNA, went for $9,500.

Some of Abebooks' biggest book sales in 2010 were a collectible copy of Ian Fleming's James Bond thriller "Casino Royale" ($19,529) and a 1979 art edition of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick; or The Whale," illustrated with wood engravings by Barry Moser ($28,900).

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The most wanted used books, according to Bookfinder

-- Carolyn Kellogg

The most wanted used books, according to Bookfinder

Sex sells. And so does Madonna's "Sex," a book so racy that when it was published in 1992 it came in a foil  wrapper. In 2011, as it has been before, "Sex" was the most popular out-of-print book people searched for.

That's according to Bookfinder.com, which released its annual Top 100 Out-of-Print books list this week. Bookfinder searches 150 million books for sale from dozens of used booksellers, including EBay, Alibris and AbeBooks (which now owns Bookfinder).

Madonna's "Sex" perennially tops the list. Stephen King has two books in the top 10: "Rage" (as Richard Bachman) and 1989's "My Pretty Pony." If you're not a regular bestseller like King or Nora Roberts, whose "Promise Me Tomorrow" is at No. 2, being plain old famous helps. Johnny Cash's autobiography "Man in Black" is at No. 7, while Norman Mailer's "Marilyn: A Biography," is at No. 8.

Did I mention that sex sells? That's part of the appeal of "Codex Seraphinianus" by Italian artist Luigi Serafini. Clearly the strangest book high up on the list, one cover of "Codex Seraphinianus" featured an illustration of a couple coupling and becoming a crocodile. The illustrations are unique, surreal, and, according to some, beautiful -- and expensive. According to Bookfinder, copies of "Codex Seraphinianus" range from $135 to $2,700.

Though many of the books are collectible, not all popular out-of-print books are so far out of reach. Cash's memoir can be bought for less than $5, plus shipping. Carl Sagan's "Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record" (No. 15) is only a few dollars more. There are plenty of copies of Marie Simmons' cookbook "Pancakes A to Z" (No. 58) and "Fly Fishing: Memories of Angling Days" by J.R. Hartley (No. 17), both of which will run you about $10.

A fascinating debut on the list is the work of author Barbara Newhall Follett. Follett was just 13 when her first novel "The House without Windows" was published in 1927, when she'd already been writing for years. A story that aired in December 2010 on NPR -- here in longer form in Lapham's Quarterly -- showed that Follett was a gifted writer, even a prodigy. But after her father left her mother, the girl essentially gave up writing and went to work. She married before she turned 20, and at age 25 she disappeared, never to be heard from again. Interest in Follett has raised her literary stakes: Copies of "The House without Windows" now sell for $500 to $700.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Madonna "vogue"-ing in 1990. Credit: MTV

Toys R Us to carry Amazon's Kindle

From the department of hook 'em early: Amazon will sell its Kindle e-reader in Toys R Us stores nationwide. The toy store will give a free $10 Toys R Us gift card to shoppers who purchase the Kindle at a Toys R Us store between Sunday and Aug. 6 (while supplies last, of course).

Reuters reports Toys R Us will carry three Kindle models: Kindle WiFi, Kindle 3G and Kindle with Special Offers. The Kindle with Special Offers is the advertising-based Kindle. Do you think it'll include ads for Legos and juice boxes along with Visa?

Children's e-book apps have done well on tablets like the iPad, which are full-color and have interactive touch screens. But so far the Kindle has remained a mostly text-based black-on-gray e-reader. It may be hard for it to catch on with young people in the frenetic, hi-key Toys R Us environment -- or maybe it doesn't have to. Maybe the target market is their parents.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Toys R Us, Times Square, New York. Credit: jen_rab via Flickr

Jane Austen's $1.6-million manuscript

Jane Austen's unpublished manuscript of "The Watsons," a book she never completed, was sold for $1.6 million at auction Thursday. The phenomenal price surprised watchers, who had expected the manuscript pages to sell for $330,000 to $490,000.

Written and edited in Austen's own hand, the manuscript was the last to be held by a private party. Who has bought it is a mystery -- it was purchased by an unidentified phone bidder.

The buyer doesn't get the complete version of "The Watsons," the name given to the unfinished manuscript after the fact. The first 12 pages of the novel-in-progress are at New York's Morgan Library and Museum. And, of course, Austen never finished "The Watsons" -- the book is about one-quarter written.

Jane Austen published four novels during her lifetime: "Sense and Sensibility," Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park" and "Emma." "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion" were published after her death in 1817.

In the nearly 200 years since, her popularity has only grown; recent film and television adaptations keep her stories in the public eye. Not to mention the public heart -- there have been several swoon-worthy portrayals of "Pride and Prejudice's" Mr. Darcy on screen.

Come to think of it, a Hollywood star might be able to afford $1.6 million for a Jane Austen manuscript. Colin Firth, was that you?

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Pages from Jane Austen's manuscript of "The Watsons." Credit: Sotheby's