Archive for the ‘Kindle Global’ Category
Amazon 6-inch Kindle Global now $189 no comments
Barnes & Noble announced Monday morning the introduction of a Wi-Fi only version of the nook ereader priced at $149 and lowered the price of the Wi-Fi + 3G nook to $199. Amazon apparently took this as a shot over its bow and responded promptly and forcefully by lowering the price of the 6 – inch Kindle
In a Kindle vs nook price war I have to think that Amazon has the advantage. If necessary Amazon could sell the Kindle as a loss leader and make up the loss on the ebooks sold through the Kindle Store. B & N would have a much harder time doing this.
Amazon’s aggressive response indicates that it is not going to sit by and let its ereader business get disrupted. Remember around the first of the year that wave of new ereaders that we were expecting? There were already abundant signs that the wave was faltering, and with these new lower prices on the market leaders the bar has been raised and it will be much harder for companies to introduce new ereaders and be competitive.
I’m wondering where this leaves Sony. I was expecting an announcement of new ereader models to replace the PRS300 and PRS600, but now I wonder if Sony might not decide to concentrate their ereader efforts in other markets outside the US. Recent announcements from Sony that they were expanding the global distribution of their ereaders as well as building an ebook distribution company in Japan could be indications of this.
As much as I didn’t like the way B & N rushed the nook to market before it was fully functional, in retrospect if they hadn’t done so they would probably be on the outside looking in right now.
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Amazon Gets Exclusive eBooks from Author F. Paul Wilson; New Christopher Moore no comments
Amazon announced this morning that they have added another author to the list of those who have made their ebooks available exclusively in the Kindle Store for reading on the Kindle ereader and the various Kindle for (insert your device here) apps.
This time it is sci-fi and horror writer F. Paul Wilson, who will be adding the five books in his LaNague Federation series. The five books are:
- An Enemy of the State
- Wheels Within Wheels
- The Tery
- Dydeetown World
- Healer
Wilson has won the Stoker, Inkpot, Porgie and Prometheus awards and has written over 40 books.
Bite Me: A Love Story – New Christopher Moore Today
If you are a fan of Christopher Moore and his sick sense of humor then you probably are already aware that his newest book Bite Me goes on sale today. This is the third book of his campy vampire series. Bite Me is available for $9.99 in Kindle edition, 
or from the Sony Reader Store.
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Kindle for Mac Released no comments
Amazon has just announced the release of the promised Kindle for Mac
From Amazon’s press release:
With Kindle for Mac, readers can take advantage of the following features:
- Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
- Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
- Choose from 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
- Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
- View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle for iPhone
- Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks
Several features will be added to the Kindle for Mac app in the near future, including full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights. Kindle for Mac is available to customers around the world as a free download.
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New York Times to Offer Stand-Alone Book Review Section for eReaders no comments
The New York Times currently will cost you $13.99 per month to subscribe on your Kindle, Sony or Barnes & Noble compatible ereader. The NYT apparently plans to break out its Book Review section and make it available as a separate product at an undisclosed price.
PoynterOnline reports that Times director of marketing James Dunn referred to the plan during an interview at the Digital Publishing Alliance. The Sony Reader Store will get the Book Section first in a few weeks, followed by the Kindle store and Barnes & Noble.
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Kindle eReaders get Free Two-Day Shipping Upgrade for Valentine’s Day no comments
Amazon is offering free two-day shipping for the 6-inch Kindle
To take advantage of this offer you will need to add your Kindle order to your shopping cart and select the two-day shipping option.
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Amazon Buys Touchscreen Start-up no comments
The New York Times is reporting that Amazon has purchased Touchco which is a start-up specializing in touchscreen technology. The acquisition will be merged into Lab126, which is Amazon’s hardware development division.
This is exiting news for the Kindle family of ereaders. While Kindle DX2 will definitely need a touchscreen, it is a feature that is perhaps less vital for the 6-inch Kindle, at least for some users. It is however, a feature that Amazon will need to add to maintain parity with competing hardware. It could also perhaps enable Amazon to ditch the chiclet keyboard and have a larger screen on a new ereader with the same overall size as the current Kindles.
The touchscreens commonly used in current ereaders are either of the capacitive type, which Sony uses in the Sony Touch Edition and which has glare issues which detract from the reading experience, or Wacom technology which adds considerable expense and must be used with a special stylus. Endless Ideas (of BeBook fame) will be releasing their new Neo ereader on February 25. The Neo will use a touchscreen based on Wacom technology and is priced at $299. I believe that this is the lowest priced ereader using this type of touchscreen that has been announced so far.
The technology (interpolating force-sensitive resistance) developed by Touchco is said to be completely transparent and flexible, and could cost as little as $10 per square foot. It is also capable of multitouch and can accept input from either finger or stylus, or just about anything else you should choose to touch the screen with.
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Amazon Announces 70 Percent DTP Royalty no comments
In a press release this morning, Amazon announced that publishers and authors who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) will be able to earn royalties of 70 percent of list price less delivery costs.
"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books."
While publishers and authors will be able to earn a bigger percentage from ebook sales if they use DTP, there are some requirements:
DTP authors and publishers will be able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. Books from authors and publishers who choose the 70 percent royalty option will have access to all the same features and be subject to all the same requirements as books receiving the standard royalty rate. In addition, to qualify for the 70 percent royalty option, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:
- The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
- This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
- The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
- The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
- Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.
The 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books). At launch, the 70 percent royalty option will only be available for books sold in the United States.
The $2.99 to $9.99 price range requirement could mean that we will see fewer Kindle books priced less than $2.99. This may be offset to some extent by the additional requirement that “This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book.”
More publishers might be enticed by the new terms to allow text-to-speech, and the part about Amazon continuing to add more functionality to the Kindle ereader and Kindle store sounds promising.
There have been persistent reports that Apple has been negotiating better revenue splits with publishers for content for its upcoming tablet (iSlate or iPad or whatever it will be called), which probably had a lot to do with this move by Amazon.
With the formidable competition facing the Kindle ereaders from all of the recently announced new ereading devices coming to market soon, Amazon will obviously not try to maintain the Kindle’s dominance by just engaging in an endless hardware arms race. The Kindle store is definitely one of, if not the biggest feature of the Kindles that sets them apart from the competition.
Last week Amazon announced that the Kindle Digital Text Platform was being expanded to enable authors and publishers worldwide to publish books in the Kindle store in English, German and French. This is great for international indie authors and the Kindle store needs more non-English language titles as the Kindle goes global. Hopefully we will see more languages added soon.
Amazon has also been striking deals with authors to provide their books exclusively in the Kindle store. For example, earlier this month Paulo Coelho signed on to make 17 of his books available in Portuguese for the Kindle. Coelho is the author of “The Alchemist”, and is the best selling Portuguese language author ever.
Several of the highest profile new ereaders and multi-function devices with ereading capabilities will probably appeal mostly to gadget boys and girls, but hardcore readers are the customers who buy the most ebooks, and this is the audience that the Kindle is aimed at. To maintain its position as the number one ereader for readers, the Kindle needs to have the best content store behind it, and Amazon is obviously not standing still.
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Amazon Announces Kindle Development Kit 1 comment
Amazon just released a press release announcing the release of a limited beta Kindle development kit next month.
AMAZON ANNOUNCES KINDLE DEVELOPMENT KIT–SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS CAN NOW BUILD ACTIVE CONTENT FOR KINDLE
Travel books that suggest activities based on real-time weather and current events, cookbooks that recommend menus based on size of party and allergies, and word games and puzzles–just some of the possibilities with the new Kindle Development Kit
SEATTLE, Jan 21, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — (NASDAQ: AMZN)–For the past two years, Amazon has welcomed authors and publishers to directly upload and sell content in the Kindle Store through the self-service Kindle publishing platform. Today, Amazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year. The new Kindle Development Kit gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build active content for Kindle–the #1 bestselling, most wished for, and most gifted product across all categories on Amazon. Developers can learn more about the Kindle Development Kit today at http://www.amazon.com/kdk/ and sign up to be notified when the limited beta starts next month.
"We’ve heard from lots of developers over the past two years who are excited to build on top of Kindle," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "The Kindle Development Kit opens many possibilities–we look forward to being surprised by what developers invent."
The Kindle Development Kit enables developers to build active content that leverages Kindle’s unique combination of seamless and invisible 3G wireless delivery over Amazon Whispernet, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, and long battery life of seven days with wireless activated. For example, Handmark is building an active Zagat guide featuring their trusted ratings, reviews and more for restaurants in cities around the world, and Sonic Boom is building word games and puzzles.
"As the leading worldwide publisher of mobile games, EA Mobile has had the privilege of collaborating with many dynamic and innovative companies in bringing exciting gaming experiences to new platforms," says Adam Sussman, Vice President of Worldwide Publishing, EA Mobile. "Working with Amazon, we look forward to bringing some of the world’s most popular and fun games to Kindle and their users."
Starting next month, participants in the limited beta will be able to download the Kindle Development Kit, access developer support, test content on Kindle, and submit finished content. Those wait-listed will be invited to participate as space becomes available. The Kindle Development Kit includes sample code, documentation, and the Kindle Simulator, which helps developers build and test their content by simulating the 6-inch Kindle and 9.7-inch Kindle DX on Mac, PC, and Linux desktops.
Could this be the start of a Kindle app store? If so this could be a big deal when it comes to helping the Kindle to stay ahead of the pack of new ereaders coming to market.
Amazon says that 70 percent of revenue from apps will go to the developer and 30 percent to Amazon, net delivery fees of $0.15 per MB. Amazon lists the following pricing options for developers:
Pricing Options
Active content will be available to customers in the Kindle Store later this year. Your active content can be priced three ways:
- Free – Active content applications that are smaller than 1MB and use less than 100KB/user/month of wireless data may be offered at no charge to customers. Amazon will pay the wireless costs associated with delivery and maintenance.
- One-time Purchase – Customers will be charged once when purchasing active content. Content must have nominal (less than 100KB/user/month) ongoing wireless usage.
- Monthly Subscription – Customers will be charged once per month for active content.
Active content applications have an upper size limit of 100MB. Applications larger than 10MB will not be delivered wirelessly but can be downloaded from the Kindle Store to a computer and transferred to the user’s Kindle via USB.
Will we be able to play games on a color Kindle by the end of the year? What about reference and textbooks, newspapers, etc. that are updated wirelessly? This could be huge.
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Kindle DX Global to Start Shipping Tomorrow no comments
Amazon is due to start shipping the Kindle DX with global Wireless
Since Amazon first announced the global wireless connection for the 6-inch Kindle ereader a little over three months ago Kindles are now available in several countries that were not included in the original Kindle Global release. These countries, which now do get Kindles, include Argentina, Canada, Chile and Thailand.
Refurbished Kindle DX ereaders with US wireless don’t seem to be available at the moment, but there are a few sellers of used Kindle DX’s with US wireless
This also seems to be true of the Kindle 2; there are no more refurbished Kindle 2 ereaders at the moment, so I am presuming that Amazon has sold out of their stock. You can buy used Kindle 2′s
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NewspaperDirect Comes to Kindle no comments
Just one day after NewspaperDirect announced availability for Sony ereaders the company is announcing the same for Kindlers.
The Kindle ereaders until now have had access to 80 newspapers in 6 languages. NewspaperDirect brings 1,400 full-content newspapers and magazines from 93 countries in 44 languages to Amazon’s ereader.
To access the new content, you will need to subscribe to PressDisplay.com and install their PressReader application on your computer. Your selected newspapers will then need to be sideloaded onto your ereader. Not as convenient as Whispernet, but this does make a lot more content available. Newspapers from NewspaperDirect should also have most of (if not all) of the graphics of the original, which in many cases are MIA in the current Kindle editions.
PressDisplay subscriptions for personal use are $9.95 per month for 31 credits (1 credit = 1 newspaper issue), and $29.95 per month for unlimited use. This is definitely a welcome addition to the Kindle; it would be nice if access to OverDrive were to come next!
