Amazon Kindle Reader Opens Up New Publishing Routes For Authors
Online retail giant, Amazon, was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and the original Amazon website launched in 1995. Today Amazon is an extremely successful business and one of the best recognised and most trusted brands on the planet. It’s easy to forget what an unusual concept ordering books online and having them shipped by mail was at the time. There were plenty investors and business analysts who predicted that Amazon would have a difficult time of it – and indeed it took until the end of 2001 before Amazon were able to report their first profit.
After modifying the way that many people bought books, Amazon quickly diversified into other areas. Video, music CDs, toys, consumer electronics and computer software are just some examples of the types of items which Amazon added to their list of product offerings. At the moment you can find virtually any consumer product that you can imagine on Amazon’s website – even your groceries if you like.
In addition to growing their product range, Amazon set up further websites in the UK, France, Germany, China and Canada. Nevertheless, they maintained their original passion for books and they still had, in the eyes of the public, a very strong link with book sales.
This was something that would stand them in good stead in November of 2007 when the Amazon Kindle e-book reader launched. Having previously changed the way that books were purchased, Amazon was now modifying the way that books were actually read. The Kindle reader got a lot of publicity and it’s fair to say that e-book readers really took off with the launch of Amazon’s upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009.
In June of the same year, Amazon followed up with the large format Kindle DX. This sported a larger e-ink display screen and was aimed at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks. Much of the buzz surrounding the DX was generated by the normally conservative world of academic publishing.
So, the manner in which books are bought, delivered and read have all been radically modified in a relatively short time frame. The last piece of the reading jigsaw – publishing – is also likely to change in the near future. Any major publisher will almost certainly require to publish an e-book version of any new editions in future. The well established process of hardback publication, followed a few months later by the paperback version will be altered by the insertion of an e-book version at the front end of the cycle.
Given that publishing e-books is considerably less expensive than a traditional print run, it’s possible that publishing houses may be encouraged to take a chance on less well established authors in future. It may be that more authors will decide to cut out publishers altogether and go down the self publishing route. In fact, publishing books for the Amazon Kindle is very simple and can be done for free by anyone who has an Amazon account and is able to use Microsoft Word.
Learn more about the Amazon Kindle and see the full range of Kindle accessories available to help you customise and protect your reader.
