Comments on: Needed: More magazines on the Kindle

By: Joe Wikert

Joe Wikert — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:19:45 +0000

Don’t forget: You start with a PDF, but when you let Amazon convert it for free, you don’t wind up with a PDF on your Kindle. Also, as I mentioned in the original post, all the magazines and newspapers currently on my Kindle are smaller than 1 Meg each.

By: Alan Wallcraft

Alan Wallcraft — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:25:06 +0000

There are already sites, FictionWise and FeedBooks for example, that allow user-initiated e-mailing of ebooks to the Kindle. This seems to be within Amazon’s terms of service, but I’m not sure if an automated service (e.g. once a week) without additional user input would be.

A PDF might be best for the Kindle DX, athough some PDFs can be large ($0.15 per MB for e-mail delivery). For the Kindle 1 or 2 probably pre-conversion to MOBI would be better, perhaps using Calibre. That way the magazine has control over how the MOBI looks on the Kindle and can fix poor formatting.

The Kindle DX does not currently allow downloading of PDFs via its web browser. You can download MOBI files that way, or you can add a link inside a MOBI ebook to download another MOBI ebook. Feedbooks and MobileRead use this feature in their MOBI catalogues for the Kindle.

By: Joe Wikert

Joe Wikert — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:01:08 +0000

John, PDF is just one option. As you mention, there are other ways to approach this. It’s the thought of going direct from publisher to customer that I’m trying to highlight as an opportunity.

Richard, you make a good point about Amazon blocking the email delivery. OK, let’s say that goes away. What about just delivering the content as a file thru the browser, just like KindleFeeder does? And btw, I like this approach better than the email one KindleFeeder used to offer. I guess Amazon could also block all of us from using the browser in the Kindle, but that seems pretty dramatic too. If anything, they’d be painting themselves into more of a corner than they’re already in.

By: Richard Askenase

Richard Askenase — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:54:26 +0000

I think if you try to avoid Amazon subscription fees (and charges) by having all subscribers go through the magazine’s website, which will then e-mail it to the Kindle through Amazon’s conversion process, that Amazon will BLOCK the tansmissions/e-mails. They are not stupid and will not allow this, especially as you would be abusing their e-mail serbice to avoid their subscription, at your company’s profit.

Won’t happen. Go through the Amazon subscription, and try to make your best deal. Or, Amazon could cancel its e-mail service overall for abuse!!

By: John Ruschmeyer

John Ruschmeyer — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:34:06 +0000

Personally, I agree with the basic premise, but not in PDF. Unless you have a Kindle DX, PDF conversion is, at best, problematic for the Kindle 1 and 2.

To make this work, the publisher would really need a backend change that would provide the magazine in a more e-book reader native format such as Mobi or ePub. I might still have to convert it myself for the Kindle, but I’d have a better chance of a readable book.

How about an option of sending an ePub of “Make” directly to my Bookworm account?