Managing with Aloha now on Kindle!

I’d promised to keep it quiet here this week as we all worked on this: Job Creation Employs Strengths, Then People however I cannot contain my excitement about the day’s product release, and must share the news: Will you help me share it too?

Managing with Aloha is FINALLY on Kindle

Amazon.com Kindle Page

Yes, this took me way longer than it should have. Part of the delay was simply not prioritizing the project (I admit it, all on me), and then once I jumped into it I found that I had to rewrite the manuscript from scratch for the digital formatting required, with the Hawaiian diacritical marks lending some extra challenges.

All those challenges have now been successfully met, AND I made some other small updates while I was at it… amazing the grammar glitches that leapt off the page as I reread it for myself cover-to-cover, seeing it through fresh eyes.

No Kindle required!

If you don’t have a Kindle, but HAVE joined the ranks of devoted ebook readers who prefer digital formats, please take a moment to click into the Amazon.com page and check out your options: Having MWA Kindle published means you can also get the book for the $9.99 ebook price for reading on your computer, iPhone, and blackberry.

You can also start with a free sample: It includes a newly expanded Table of Contents, the Foreword written by master navigator Nainoa Thompson, my Prologue, and most of my Introduction, including these sections:

What should managers be?
Process versus people
The role of the manager
Why focus on management?
Why incorporate values into business?
The case for managing the Hawaiian way, with Aloha

Click here to check it out

Have you become an ebook fan?

I purchased a Kindle this past December, and have surprised myself: I use it much more than I thought I would, and there is absolutely no doubt I am reading more books because I have it. I believe that more reading is invaluable — whatever format it might be in, and ebooks (both on my Kindle, and reading them on my computer screen) have added to my learning awareness significantly.

I will always encourage you to invest the $25 (or less) for a hardcover copy of Managing with Aloha rather than deal with your own printing, and I will continue to offer it that way: The book was designed with extra-wide margins, blank spaces and notes pages to become the Alaka‘i Manager’s workbook, ongoing resource and journaling companion. I’ve been a longstanding member of that hardcover club of zealous book annotators and story collectors because I find that marking up books adds so much to the learning process.

That’s been the biggest difference for me personally: I will preview non-fiction books on the Kindle, and then order hardcovers for those I choose to study via annotation. Everything else I now read digitally: Fiction and my lighter reading is ebook-purchased or web-read for ease, mobility, to lighten the load (especially when traveling!) and to cut down on the dusting and clutter of my home office bookshelves. Magazines and newspapers in print have all become relics of the past.

So getting MWA on Kindle has not been a case of finally giving in for me, but of prioritizing the project once and for all: I truly have been able to empathize with changing habits though I once thought I would be a “real book” junkie exclusively and forever. People learn in different ways and with a variety of media, and more reading is always a winning proposition.

I’d read in a blog comment somewhere that books are not about softcover, hardcover, digital or any other format, they’re about the stories they tell and information they share, and the way they make a reader feel; I think that’s so true.

I found this interesting, reported by Mark Coker of Smashwords on new data on ebook adoption trends presented by The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) at the Tools of Change Conference:

Most popular devices for reading ebooks:
This is interesting. You might guess, as I did, the Amazon Kindle. Wrong. The most popular device for 47% of customers is their computer screen. Kindle comes in at a close and impressive second place at 32%, followed by 11% for the iPhone, 10% for iPod Touch (note this adds up to 22%, pre-iPad), 9% each for the Blackberry and netbooks, and 8% each for the Barnes & Noble nook and the Sony Reader.

So I hope you greet this bit of news on my newest product release as good news for you too! Thank you so much for all you do in continuing to learn Managing with Aloha here, and within all the writing I publish about it.

Tell you what: Here is a special offer exclusively for you who are Talking Story readers.

I would love to populate that new Kindle page for MWA with your Ho‘ohana Community book reviews! Post a review there on Amazon.com and then send me your mailing address once it appears: I will send you a hardcover copy of Managing with Aloha absolutely free! If you already have it, you can give it to another manager as a gift.

Meanwhile, I have another ebook coming soon now that I have done the heavy-lifting of formatting design with Managing with Aloha… stay tuned!