August 14, 2008

The Amazon team have added a new button below any book which is currently not available on the Kindle. The new “Please tell the publisher” button aims to alert publisher of a demand for a particular book by Kindle owners and hopefully prompting them to publish a Kindle version of that book.

This is what Amazon said on its blog;

Our goal is to make every title available for Kindle, and to that end some eagle-eyed Kindle owners and enthusiasts have already noticed and been using a new tool to help us do just that. If you’re frustrated that a physical edition of a book is not (yet) available in Kindle version, just look below the book’s image on its product detail page and you’ll find a box that reads, “Please tell the publisher.” Click on the “I’d like to read this book on Kindle” link and we’ll forward your request. Make your voice heard.

It is a nice feature which will hopefully be used by Kindle owners to highlight old and new books which publishers haven’t bothered to Kindle-ize, yet. It would be also nice if once you have submitted you request to be notified by Amazon if the book does become available on the Kindle,

Next step is magazines and newspapers which should also have this button.

Source: Official Amazon Kindle Blog

These days if company’s want a device to be a success it has to support as many different standards as possible, be as useful to the user as possible, be as cheap as possible and be as open as possible. There are always exception to the rule, take iPhone for example, but on the whole its an accurate statement.

One way of opening a device up is by offering a software development kit (SDK), I was reading k.indled today and the question came, If Kindle had an SDK, What would you do with it?

One thing I would do is add support for the .epub format, I’m not sure if it would be possible because I am no programmer, but I feel that Kindle must support .epub one day, its the industry standard and I think this will get a lot more publishers on board, especially the ones who have a lot of technical content which isn’t easy to render on the Kindle.

I think Amazon will have to eventually open up the Kindle and they should do it sooner rather than later, having an ‘app store’ similar to the iPhone app store I think would go a long way in helping the Kindle attain mainstream acceptance, and it could open up a while host of other uses for the Kindle.

What would you create with a Kindle SDK?

Source: k.indled