Kindle First October 2017 options are up!

Prime members, your hard dollars at work! Good until October 31st in 2017, you can pick up one FREE pre-release e-book from a choice of six options as part of the Kindle First program. If you are not a Prime member, you can purchase one of the six for $2 and read it right away. If you need more than one, Prime or not, you have to wait until November 1st 2017 when all six of them will be released.

The October 2017 choices are:

  • “A Tangled Mercy: A Novel” by Joy Jordan-Lake in the … “Book Club” genre
  • “The House by the River” by Lena Manta, Gail Holst-Warhaft in Family Dramas
  • “Mark of Fire (The Endarian Prophecy Book 1)” by Richard Phillips in Fantasy
  • “The Unremembered Girl: A Novel” by Eliza Maxwell in Suspense
  • “The Extraditionist (A Benn Bluestone Thriller Book 1)” by Todd Merer in Legal Thrillers

As usual, there is no rush to pick up one right away. Since they are pre-release books, they don’t have reviews out of the gate. So you can wait for a couple of weeks until they get useful review profile. You have until 10/31/17 at 11:59pm to pick from these!

October 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

Buy Prime Surprise Sweets Dash Button for $2.50, Get $4.99 Store Credit towards Sweets Box

One of the Amazon “Dash Buttons” is a little special. It’s the Prime Sweets button. Every time you press it, it sends you a random selection of a box of sweets for a flat price of $18. Since this is restricted to Prime members, everyone who is able to order it gets free shipping.

You cannot select what kind of a sweets box you receive (thus the SURPRISE part), but you can look at some of the options. SPOILERS if you want to be totally surprised when your box arrives 🙂

Just like the other Dash Buttons [unboxing of a different model], you pay $4.99 for it, and to counter the price of the Dash button, Amazon puts a $4.99 credit in your Amazon account after your first order placed with this button ships [not after the button ships].

However, occasionally Amazon has promotions that get you the Dash Buttons for less than $4.99, but you still receive the $4.99. So, assuming you use this to buy things you want/need, it’s a money-maker. If you end up buying it, and doing nothing or buy things you don’t want/need, then you lose money.

To cut a looong story short, good until September 30 (2017), coupon code 50OFFSWEETS cuts the price in half of the Prime Sweets button in half, making it $2.50.

Once you receive the Prime Sweets Button and you configure it [depending on your setup, they are not as easy to configure as Amazon makes them out to be], and you press it for the first time, you will receive the $4.99 credit in your account. The Prime Sweets box has a flat price of $18.

You will pay that $18 price. The 50% off is only on the purchase of the Dash button. Not the Box of Sweets. However, this being your first order, other things equal, the $4.99 credit may be posted towards this purchase.

September 27, 2017 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: , ,

Buy $35+ in select Supplies, Get $10 Amazon Gift Card

Amazon continues to roll out more and more Prime benefits. Including exclusive promotions. If you purchase $35+ in select supplies, you can get a $10 Amazon plastic gift card for FREE.

You must add both the supplies and the $10 gift card to your shopping cart, and the price of the gift card will be discounted to $0 in the shopping cart via a -$10 off deduction.

The promotion runs until 9/12/17 at 11:59pm pacific. This is only available to Prime members!

Just like the Prime Pantry free shipping options, you have to reach the $35 minimum with any combination. Multiple different items, or multiple units of the same item. The shopping cart below is with two units of a $20 item:

September 4, 2017 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

The September 2017 Kindle First e-book choices are UP

It’s that time of the month again! If you are a Prime member, a new selection of six pre-release e-books has been loaded to the Kindle First page. As before, during September 2017, you can select one of the six ebooks and read it right away for FREE!

You can do this at any point until September 30 (2017). Non-Prime members can buy one for $2. If you want more than one, you have to wait until October 1st (2017), when they will be released to the general population. Most of them end up in Kindle Unlimited, so that’s another way to read them.

[Read more…]

September 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

Whole Foods discounts coming along with other benefits

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods will usher the first wave of big changes starting on Monday 8/28/17! And it will be very practical changes: in-store discounts! a number of popular food items will be discounted. The amount of the discounts is not mentioned in the press release so we’ll have to wait until Monday to see which products and by how much.

Whether there is more flexibility for bigger discounts are obviously the 365 house brand and other products that Whole Foods have more control over the price. Amazon could decide to give them away for free if they wanted to 🙂

[Read more…]

August 24, 2017 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

Hot New Deal: Snacks Amazon Sample box for $10 [Prime members only!]

A Prime membership is getting more and more valuable. Among the many Prime Benefits are the Amazon Sample Boxes. They work like this:

  1. You purchase a sample box at its listed price
  2. one week after the sample box ships, the purchase price of the sample box is added to your Amazon account as a store credit; you can use that store credit to purchase products from a list of items that includes the sampled products

[Read more…]

August 10, 2017 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

Kindle First choices for August 2017 are here

It’s that time again, a new month is born (August 2017), and that means, among many other things, that a new selection of ebooks are available as part of Amazon’s Kindle First program, another one of the many Prime Benefits.

[Read more…]

August 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

Prime Surprise Sweets Dash Button for 99c after coupon

For a limited time only, coupon code SWEET99 gets you the Prime Surprise Sweets Dash Button for $0.99 instead of its usual price of $4.99. You will still earn a $4.99 Amazon store credit after the first time you place an order using this button. The offer expires by 7/26/17 at 11:59pm pacific (or earlier if sold out).

The Surprise Dash button is different from all the other buttons because you don’t know exactly what you are going to receive. It will be something, a box of sweets, but you don’t know which one. There are many varieties available, but you don’t decide which one you get. Amazon’s computers or randomness decides. It’s a bit like a Sample Box in that regard.

The Sweets Surprise Box has a flat price of $18 with free shipping. So this promotion only makes sense if you are (or were) planning to order this box. Otherwise you’ll end up having the Dash button and being 99c short 🙂

PS: if you’ve never used a Dash button before, fear not! I just received my first Dash button and I will post a simple explainer post on how to use it! Stay tuned for that.

PS2: I am tempted by this but I am (as of the time of writing) resisting the temptation 🙂

PS3: the Dash buttons (including this one) are all exclusive to Prime members.

July 25, 2017 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Amazon launched $12 Sample Box for Dogs (food and treats)

Amazon appears to be loving the Sample Boxes idea, because they have launched a brand new one, these one offering treats and food for dogs. Now the puppies can really wait by the door for their very own Amazon package 🙂

As before, these offers are restricted to Prime members only. The promotion works just like the other sample boxes.

  1. Buy the $12 Sample Box – you pay full price
  2. you receive the sample box – I believe it has only one shipping delivery speed, you can’t change it
  3. one week after your $12 box ships, Amazon will post a $12 promotional credit to your Amazon account. They will send you an email informing you so
  4. once the credit is in your account, you can use it towards the purchase of eligible dog food products. Over 110 items are eligible as of the time of writing. You cannot use the credit on any Amazon purchase. Only these participating products which are often the brands you get in the Sample box
  5. the promotional credit has an expiration credit, so pay attention to that. You can use it in multiple transactions, you don’t have to use it all at once
July 17, 2017 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: ,

New Slow-Shipping Option for Prime members: $10 off Mattress or Furniture or Area Rugs

If you are a Prime member, and you like to get little bonuses by selecting slow shipping for your Prime membership, pay attention in the shopping cart, because, depending on your purchase and the Amazon shopping cart algorithms, you may offered a $10 off discount towards the purchase of a Mattress or Furniture or Area Rugs, if you select slow shipping (“no rush shipping”) instead of the 2-day Prime shipping.

This credit must be spend by 9/30/17. If not, it will expire aka evaporate 🙂 It will be applied automatically by the Amazon shopping cart when you have eligible products in your shopping cart. There’s no coupon code to enter.

If their computer deems you are eligible for this offer, it will appear like this in your shopping cart (screenshot below):

July 8, 2017 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With:

First time Prime Pantry shoppers: 10% off First Order of 10+ items

If you are Prime Pantry curious (you haven’t placed an order with them before) AND you are a Prime member, Amazon is trying to tempt you some more to place your first “Prime Pantry Box” order with a coupon! Coupon code PANTRY10 gets you 10% off if your first order has 10 or more items in it. This is a good opportunity to stock up on consumables, be it food or kitchen or bathroom. You can find the promotion details at the coupon’s page.

You have to pay a $6 flat shipping fee for every Prime Pantry box you order, but there are two ways to make up for that:

  1. if you select slow-shipping on some regular Prime orders, Amazon may give you a $5 Prime Pantry credit. You can easily check if you have one in your account by visiting amazon.com/norushcredits. That page also shows the expiration date of each credit, so plan ahead!
  2. you can get free shipping outright if you buy five or more items from the list of qualifying products. Any combination works, five of the same item, or five individual items, or any other combination as long as the total eligible units in your shopping cart are five or more
May 1, 2017 Filed Under: shopping Tagged With: , ,

Choices for May 2017 Kindle First are up (pick one of six for FREE as Prime member)

May 2017 is here, and if you are a Prime member, this means you can get another brand new pre-release e-book for FREE! If you are not a Prime member, you buy one of the choices below for $2. The rest will become available June 1st and most likely will all be in Kindle Unlimited, so if you are a member of that program, you can just wait until June 🙂

So without further delay, here are the Kindle First choices for May 1st until the end of day on the 31st:

  • “North Haven” by Sarah Moriarty in Contemporary Fiction
  • “The Lioness of Morocco” by Julia Drosten, Christiane Galvani in Historical Fiction
  • “The Great Passage” by Shion Miura, Juliet Winters Carpenter in Lit Fiction
  • “The Hundredth Queen (The Hundredth Queen Series Book 1)” by Emily R. King in Fantasy
  • “The First Word” by Isley Robson in Romance
  • “Dead Certain: A Novel” by Adam Mitzner in Psychological Thrillers (already hammered in the early reviews)

My pick for this month is…

Book #2 is already scheduled to come out in September 2017, so you don’t have to wait for it like “The Winds of Winter” 🙂

May 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

Prime members: you may get a $3 Happy Belly Reward if you select Slow Shipping

If you are a Prime member, and you make a qualifying purchase at Amazon (it has to be shipped from Amazon’s facilities as a minimum), you may be offered a $3 Happy Belly store credit if you select Slow Shipping instead of the Prime 2-day shipping. The official term for this is “No Rush Shipping” which is more accurate since sometimes things arrive fast anyway (it depends on many factors including availability of product nearby and other orders you may have coming).

You are presented with this offer in the shopping cart, so if you have 1-Click shipping, you may not notice it. It looks like this (screenshot below):

What is Happy Belly you ask? It is a relatively new line of Amazon house-brand products that, as the goofy name suggests, are food items. These include various nuts, coffee, spices, trail mixes, and …eggs (I’m sure Amazon does not have live chickens in its warehouses). The prices are typically competitive for no-nonsense basic quality products.

In typical (frustrating) Amazon fashion, different flavors/options are available in a combination of regular Amazon.com, and/or Prime Pantry and/or Amazon FRESH. YMMV on each item depending on when you check and where you live.

April 18, 2017 Filed Under: foods Tagged With: , ,

April 2017 Kindle First Choices are out, pick one out of six

It’s a new month, and April Fools Day to boot, but this post is no Fools joke! It is a new selection of Kindle First e-books, where Prime members can select one of the six choices for FREE and also start reading them immediately. These are pre-release ebooks that will get released May 1st for most people. Non-Prime members can buy one of the six for $2 and read them right away as well.

[Read more…]

April 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

Kindle First Choices for March 2017 are up

And just like that, March 2017 is here, which means, for Prime members, a new e-book pre-release freebie is available to get right now and read right now before its official April 2017 release through the Kindle First program. If you are not a Prime member, you can purchase one of the six for $2.

Without further ado, here are the six choices for March 2017:

  • “Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations” by Garson O’Toole in Nonfiction (398 pages) – this looks to be the most promising of this lot (I got this one)
  • “The Practice House” by Laura McNeal in Literary Fiction
  • “The Last Paradise” by Antonio Garrido, Simon Bruni in Historical Fiction
  • “A Criminal Defense” by William L. Myers Jr. in Legal Thrillers
  • “The Halo Effect: A Novel” by Anne D. LeClaire in Suspense
  • “The Breaking Light (Split City Book 1)” by Heather Hansen in Scifi

As usual, if none of these “speaks to you” (so to speak), you don’t have to get one immediately. You have until March 31st (2017) to make a choice. In a few more days, each book will have a lot more reviews as the “early adopters” and voracious readers go through them. Then you can use the customer reviews to figure out what to get, or what to avoid (reviews seem to be better at this than the former).

March 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,