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Amazon Tweaks Kindle Store Royalty Program Ahead of Apple Tablet Launch

The future of publishing is to publish your own book yourself. As of now, there are already plenty of online contents floating around. Just don't have a central device/platform that would make these writings to be easily accessible by everyday readers. Maybe APPLE can do it...

YEAH! publish your own writing without anybody standing between you and the readers... :D
 
The biggest thing that the tablet has over e-ink is including enhanced interactivity for the books. Imagine using google maps for showing off location described in the ebook as well as ipod for audio playback, and so on. This can actually increase readership among the youth.

Amazon instead of limiting their Kindle Store to the Kindle, should be able to expand to the tablet via the App Store like they did with iPhone, so this tablet isn't going to kill Amazon as much as people think it will. However it'll likely reduce the sales to Amazon as people will likely be using iTunes instead, especially if Apple is smart enough to get the publishers to include enhanced interactive features along with the ebook like the iTunes LP for music. That's going to be the killer app for ebooks. As for the charge for data size, Amazon doesn't want to pay a lot of money for the whispernet and unfortunately that's their fault. The best way to fix this is to include Wifi into the Kindle, most people with iPhone use wifi as well and usually don't use more than 500mb per month. That's why the tablet will have WiFi (hopefully N)

As for LCD/e-ink, people never realized that they already read all day long on LCD. It's not the screen that hurts the eyes, it's the lighting environment. Increase the light around you, and LCD can be used for hours of reading. E-ink requires lighting around you as well. While the e-ink does provide a better reading experience, it may not be enough for some people to justify the high cost of a single function device. I see more people reading ebooks on their iPhones than I see people reading on kindles.

Piracy is not going to be a big issue if the ability to buy ebooks become cheap and easy just like the iTunes did for music. Remember, we're talking about the global audience here that's usually not tech friendly and that's the money maker here. Also libraries can do far more damage than piracy (especially since you won't be able to lend ebooks to your friends), so I think the publishers are going to be more happy with iTunes solution than just not doing anything and keep acting like a bunch of wuss.
 
wally626 said:
Kindle documents can be read on things other than the Kindle, the Kindle does support gray-scale images and if they do not want to fail completely they will have to eventually start support color, if not on the Kindle then at least for Kindle documents on other devices, if they stay with e-ink video is going to be tough, but for viewing on Macs, Windows PC's, Phones, tablets etc. they will need to update the format.
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The Kindle and other eReaders are pretty widely expected to start supporting color in volume in around the next 1-2 years. This deal seems to have to do mostly with the fiction / non-fiction book market. There, honestly, the per-megabyte charges are not a huge deal, and most publishers who take advantage of this alternate option appear to have the opportunity to make a lot more money out of it.

I'm glad to hear that they're stipulating things like support for speech-to-text. Not that I use it, but it does irritate me that the feature is on the Kindle and is blocked by some publishers.
 
MikhailT said:
As for LCD/e-ink, people never realized that they already read all day long on LCD. It's not the screen that hurts the eyes, it's the lighting environment. Increase the light around you, and LCD can be used for hours of reading. E-ink requires lighting around you as well. While the e-ink does provide a better reading experience, it may not be enough for some people to justify the high cost of a single function device. I see more people reading ebooks on their iPhones than I see people reading on kindles.
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I showed my wife a nook, which as I understand it has the same screen as the kindle. She is by no means a geek, and she was unimpressed. I think the masses don't care about the fact that e-ink is easier on the eyes - for the same reason consumers buy TV's that have their brightness and red guns turned up too high in the showroom, they'll prefer LCD in their buying habits. She also was extremely turned off by the slow page turns. I know kindle is somewhat faster than nook, but still...
 
pmz said:
This really isn't an opinion. If you're not interested in ebooks then you're not interested in reading, period.

I mean you're reading an article and responding to it on a computer, while complaining about digital instead of physical. What a joke.
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I'm a casual reader. I don't read much, I read maybe 3 or 4 books last year. But I'm not interested in an ebook reader. And yes, reading for hours from paper is not the same as reading from an LCD screen.
 
vista.john said:
The future of publishing is to publish your own book yourself. As of now, there are already plenty of online contents floating around. Just don't have a central device/platform that would make these writings to be easily accessible by everyday readers. Maybe APPLE can do it...

YEAH! publish your own writing without anybody standing between you and the readers... :D
Click to expand...

It'll probably have to sit somewhere between the AppStore model and the iTunes model. Any idiot can buy a developers licence, make a fart App and get it on the AppStore. With iTunes though, you still need to be affiliated with a label (please correct me if I'm wrong), you can't just record yourself singing in the shower and get it on iTunes. Also, while the AppStore ranking model works well for an App whose quality you can gauge in 10 seconds, that won't really work with books. Labels/publishers will still need to be involved as some form of quality control. It will however allow independent "publishers" to spring up and publish/manage/edit upcoming writers.
 
John.B said:
Amazon is in communication with the same publishers that are in communication with Apple over content for the new Tablet. Simple as that.
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Do you really think Apple trusts publishers at all? They didn't even trust Cingular (to be AT&T) with a prototype of the iPhone. The publishers know nothing. Amazon knows Apple is releasing something soon (because Apple just announced they were releasing something the other day) so they're just picking an arbitrary date around the same time that this tablet is going to come out. Reading anything more than Amazon reworking it's pricing structure to remain competitive is silly.
 
cmaier said:
I showed my wife a nook, which as I understand it has the same screen as the kindle. She is by no means a geek, and she was unimpressed. I think the masses don't care about the fact that e-ink is easier on the eyes - for the same reason consumers buy TV's that have their brightness and red guns turned up too high in the showroom, they'll prefer LCD in their buying habits. She also was extremely turned off by the slow page turns. I know kindle is somewhat faster than nook, but still...
Click to expand...


That's why there's a slow market for it, a lot of people are not that impressed with it to justify the cost of it. The e-ink technology overall is still in early adaptor stage of development, it'll take several more years for it to mature to get to the point of mass market adoption. The problem is that AMOLED/PixelQi technologies are speeding up to the point that they can be perfectly fine for ebook reader or more specifically netbooks/tablets. The only advantage that e-ink still have over those are the battery life but that's slowly being eroaded away since PixelQi saves battery life by turning off backlighting and give it time, it may exceed a week worth of life on a single charge. Majority of people probably don't need a month worth of battery life, just something that can last several books worth of reading.

There are reports of an ASUS AMOLED reader/tablet in development that is stated to have 120 hours of battery life, if it is true and it comes out with PixelQi type of technology, that's enough to get people to push off e-ink readers.
 
Nope.

Amazon's announcement has zero to do with an impending Apple product. If you have to make a comparison to Apple, Amazon is in the same position with book publishers that Apple found itself in with music publishers.
 
pmz said:
This really isn't an opinion. If you're not interested in ebooks then you're not interested in reading, period.

I mean you're reading an article and responding to it on a computer, while complaining about digital instead of physical. What a joke.
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I enjoy reading when I get to do it. And I prefer to do so with a physical book. I prefer holding it and flipping through the pages. If the book is available for free in PDF or for $20 or $30 in print, I'll take print. If it's just an eBook, I'll print it.

Articles I'll read online. They're short and I'm not generally flipping back and forth through pages.

PsyD4Me said:
your opinion is in the minority if you look at the sale of the Kindle and the Nook.

One reason why people will prefer the Kindle to the tablet is the size of the tablet
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Not really. 90% of the people I know are exactly like me. If I forward a document to my friends/coworkers, most will print it rather than read it in DOC / PDF. If they get an eBook or documentation they'll print it.

At work, I've got 2000 pages in a binder at my desk that my colleges come and reference regularly, even though the PDF version is readily available to them.

I don't know anyone who owns a Kindle or uses / buys eBooks on their handheld devices (such as iPhone). There are exceptions, such as having to review document when you're on the road (blackberry / iPhone review).

Cheers,
 
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