Find eBook Readers Blog » Kindle store

Audible’s new Series View feature

Richard — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:12:28 +0000

Audible.com has improved the way in which audiobooks are displayed on its site to make following a series of books much easier. With the new Series View feature, information like the order of the books in the series, which ones are available as audiobooks and which ones are not, how many titles are in the series and much more can be easily seen at a glance.

Okay, so why am I writing about this? Because Audible is owned by Amazon and I’m hoping that this is a portent of things soon to come to the Kindle Store. Discovering which book comes next in a series is often so difficult at the Kindle Store that it is usually better to to do the research elsewhere (like at Barnes & Noble) first so you can forearm yourself with intel on the book sequence before shopping there.

This has always been perplexing to me, as Amazon is normally so very good at creating a user friendly shopping experience.

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Amazon launches Kindle Stores for Spain & Italy

Richard — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:01:45 +0000

Amazon announced today that Kindle Stores have been added to both Amazon.es and Amazon.it. Both of the new Kindle Stores launch with something over 900,000 titles. The Spanish store includes over 22,000 Kindle books in Spanish and the Italian store opens with over 16,000 Italian-language titles. The bulk of the ebooks on offer are in English or other languages. Both stores only sell the basic Kindle ereader for 99EUR at the moment.

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is now available for both stores, which will enable authors and publishers worldwide to self-publish to readers in Spain and Italy. There are new Italian-language and Spanish-language KDP websites that authors and publishers working in these languages can use to make their work available to Kindle Stores worldwide. Amazon’s 70% royalty option is available for Kindle books published via KDP and sold in both Spain and Italy.

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Amazon launches French Kindle Store

Richard — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:47:58 +0000

Amazon today announced the launch of a French Kindle Store. The Kindle 4 supports the French language and can now be pre-ordered there for 99EUR. It is expected to ship on Oct 14.

The French Kindle Store will launch with over 35,000 French-language ebooks out of a total of over 825,000 titles in various languages. All 28 of the L’Express best sellers are available as are a number of free classics. Authors and publishers can now use Kindle Direct Publishing to publish their work at the French Kindle Store, so there will probably be an influx of titles from indie authors as well.

Amazon also updated its Kindle for Android app today to include localized support for French, Italian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Maybe a Brazilian Kindle Store is on the way?

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Amazon.de launches German Kindle Store

Richard — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:38:24 +0000

Amazon.de today today announced the launch of a German Kindle Store that will serve customers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. The new store launches with over 650,000 titles, making it the largest ebookstore in Germany.

Most of the ebooks in the German Kindle Store are in English — at launch there are 25,000 plus German-language ebooks in addition to about 5,000 free public domain titles in German. The store also has a few German newspapers and magazines. Amazon today also announced a new German Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) website that authors and publishers from around the world can use to publish in any of the Kindle Stores. This should result in a wider selection of German-language titles over time.

The Kindle 3 ereader (with English interface) can now be purchased direct from Amazon.de. German-language versions of most of the various free Kindle apps with Whispersync are now available to enable customers of the German Kindle Store to “Buy Once, Read Everywhere.”

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Free eBooks – 7/25/2010

Richard — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:36:34 +0000

A few new ( and reappearances by a couple of former) freebies at the Kindle Store:

Autobiography of a Yogi (Reprint of Original 1946 Edition) By Paramhansa Yogananda (4 1/2 stars/81 reviews) Biography.

Seducing Jane Porterby Dominique Adair (4 stars/10 reviews) Romance.

Revenge of Innocentsby Nancy Taylor Rosenberg (2 stars/17 reviews) Romantic thriller.

Once Around The Trackby Sharyn Mccrumb (3 1/2 stars/8 reviews) Contemporary fiction, NASCAR.

Calling Homeby Janna McMahan (4 1/2 stars/ 10 reviews) Contemporary fiction.

eHarlequin is having a Then and Now Salewith 30 percent off on selected romance titles by some popular authors. These ebooks will require Adobe Digital Editions.

Many of these titles and others listed on my Free Kindle Books page are also free at Koboor Barnes & Noble if your favorite ereader is not a Kindle.

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Botvin LifeSkills Parenting Coming to Kindle

Richard — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:31:32 +0000

Princeton Health Press is making its award-winning Botvin LifeSkills Training Parent program available as an ebook through the Kindle Store.

From the press release:

The award-winning Botvin LifeSkills Training (LST) Parent Program is now available as an e-book: Princeton Health Press announced today its plan to make parent resources more accessible through the world’s most popular eReader, Amazon’s Kindle, as well as through the Kindle application for PCs, Mac, Blackberry and the Apple iPhone and iPad.

"The Kindle provides an exceptional reading experience and we’re pleased to offer our Parent Program through this platform," said Craig Zettle, Vice President of Princeton Health Press. "In less than 60 seconds, parents can download the book and start to learn valuable skills that will help their children stay healthy and lead drug-free lives."

The comprehensive LST Parent Program fosters family communication through skill-building activities that can help parents teach their children to avoid the perils of alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse. Parents using the eReader edition will have access to a complimentary Parent Resource website from where they can download worksheets for interactive activities.

"Parents can dramatically reduce the likelihood that their children will develop problems with cigarettes, alcohol, or illegal drugs," said author/program developer, Dr. Gilbert J. Botvin. "The LST Parent Program provides parents with the tools needed to help their children avoid drug abuse and cope with the many challenges of life."

The LifeSkills Training Parent Program is part of a comprehensive suite of new prevention materials based on the highly effective LifeSkills Training (LST) school-based alcohol, drug, and tobacco prevention program for adolescents. LST is included in the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP) and has been selected for excellence by the U.S. Department of Education, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy.

This one is available now at the Kindle Store.

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Amazon Scores Another Author Exclusive

Richard — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:59:25 +0000

Amazon announced today that author M.C. Beaton is the latest writer to make their books available in digital format exclusively at the Kindle Store. From the press release:

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that two historical romance series of six titles each from the bestselling author M.C. Beaton–also known by her real name Marion Chesney–are available exclusively in the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). These books are from the previously out-of-print series "Six Sisters" and "The Traveling Matchmaker." This is the first time any of the titles have been available electronically, and the 12 books will be exclusive to the Kindle Store for one year. Rosetta Books is the publisher of the electronic editions.

M.C. Beaton is the most well-known pseudonym for author Marion Chesney, who is best known for her two most recent bestselling mystery series "Agatha Raisin" and "Hamish Macbeth,"each of which have been published for several decades. While M.C. Beaton is the pseudonym she reserves for mystery novels, Marion Chesney has also written under the names Ann Fairfax, Jennie Tremaine, Helen Crampton, and Charlotte Ward. All names combined, the author has written over 100 books. These electronic books will be listed under the names M.C. Beaton and Marion Chesney in the Kindle Store.

Amazon also noted that the Kindle Store now has more than 480,000 titles.

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Indie Book Publisher Signs Deal With Amazon

Richard — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:11:41 +0000

Author Solutions today announced that it has entered an agreement with Amazon to publish all new black-and-white AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing and Xlibris titles for the Kindle ereader.

A default price of $9.99 will be set for every ASI title made available through the Kindle, but each author will have the opportunity to set his or her own price. E-book distribution through the Kindle will be included as a free service for all new black-and-white ASI titles.

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Amazon Announces 70 Percent DTP Royalty

Richard — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:33:00 +0000

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

Richard — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:31:02 +0000

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.