The Music Maker's Wife

Or - How to Remove the Cover from a Kindle Touch

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx

My dreams of making millions of dollars with my invention "Book" are dashed.

I had a number of people offer to hollow out a hardcover in order to be able to insert and thus hide my Kindle Touch from the prying eyes of New York bus riders, and was about to employ the most promising.

All I needed was a suitable dead-tree hardcover book for my prototype. I even had a working title - "Book" as suggested by one of my regular readers, Vanessa.

I needed a hardcover large enough to hide my Kindle Touch yet small enough to not be too bulky. I chose "Slammerkin" by Emma Donoghue. AS I wanted to check it would be sure to fit my Kindle I decided to remove its Amazon Lighted Kindle cover first.

Therein lay the problem. No way would the cover budge. I checked out the Amazon Kindle help pages. "Push the lower right hand corner of the cover to separate it from your Kindle Touch. Grasp the separated lower corners of your Kindle Touch and the cover and pull to remove your device from the cover."

Well, the lower right corner of the cover measures about 16th of an inch (0.0625 mm). I've marked it with a red blob in the photo on the left (insert). I couldn't get a grip on it. As to pressing down, don't even go there.

I called Amazon Help Desk and after a reasonable wait time, a woman answered.
I explained the problem and she answered with a question. How do you take the cover off a Kindle Touch?"

"That's what I am asking you." I explained.

To answer she put me on hold and after several minutes a "Kindle export" came on the line and asked my what sort of day I was having. How I love American help desks. Or do they do that everywhere? "Comment s'est passée votre journée ?" Whatever.

As I predicted, the help desk man, who identified himself as David, paused while he looked up Amazon's help pages and repeated verbatim, "Push the lower right hand corner of the cover to separate it from your Kindle Touch. Grasp the separated lower corners of your Kindle Touch and the cover and pull to remove your device from the cover."

"I looked that up too," I explained, knowing that any further conversation would be useless. But my inner annoying masochistic self just had to persist. During our conversation David came up with the following helpful comments:

"Push harder" "
Why do you want to take the cover off?"
"I don't actually know what the Amazon Kindle cover looks like."
"I don't have a Kindle Touch."

To be fair, he did say he'd recommend Amazon make a video to help people but it would take several weeks .... So much for that idea. Goodbye Book.

Perhaps it is better I actually write one.

Twenty minutes of market research, lead me to an interesting avenue of opportunity. Yes, I know I've been in America too long. Imagine a writer market researching for a title before putting finger to keyboard. Talking about fingers, when talking to Amazon-Help-Desk-Man David, I suggested that one would need to be a hobbit in order to "press down" on  11/16th inch width piece of leather. I was answered with silence. David is obviously too young to have heard of Tolkein.

My market research American style resulted in my finding a title that will sell. All you need to do is put "Daughter" or "Wife" in the title.

Without even trying I found the following Amazon.
"The Baker's Daughter"
"The Shoemaker's Wife"
"The Hangman's Daughter"
"The Tiger's Wife"
"The Time Traveler's Wife"
"The Apothecary's Wife"
"The Memory Keeper's Daughter"
"The Shoemaker's Wife"
"The Rock Star's Daughter"
"The Paris Wife" "The Reverend's Wife"

All published by Amazon within the last year or so.

Obviously it is better to have a profession in front of the "wife" or "daughter", although an animal or a place name will do. I'm on to something here. I might even do a series.

And in dedication to my faithful reader Van, I will name my first novel,  "The Music Maker's Wife".

Stay tuned.