Apple forces Amazon to remove their in-app purchase button from the Kindle app and Amazon complies. Meanwhile, Amazon was obviously developing their HTML5-based Kindle Cloud Reader for all platforms. Advantage, Amazon! If Apple ever had any hope of grabbing 30% of all Kindle content sales taking place on iPads/iPhones that dream just crumbled.If you're a Kindle device user this development doesn't mean a whole lot to you...yet. You'll continue using your Kindle hardware like you always did. But if you own a tablet like the iPad you'll find Kindle Cloud Reader is a terrific alternative to Amazon's native app for those...

Why are e-reader apps so dumb? They pretty much let you read the content, make a few highlights/notes and that's about it. Btw, by "e-reader apps" I'm talking about dedicated devices (e.g., Kindles, Nooks, iPads) as well as apps on other platforms (e.g., Kindle apps on Windows, Mac, iPad, etc.). I feel like these apps and devices are at the same stage the mobile phone was prior to the iPhone's release. They're not as smart and powerful as they could be. Let me give you a few examples: Automatically gathering collections. Let's start simple here. The original Kindle just placed all...

Amazon is introducing an advertising component to the Kindle platform.  I love it.  Kudos to Jeff Bezos & Co. for their forward thinking on this initiative.  I'm talking about the less expensive ($114) device currently known as "Kindle with Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers."  (It's not the sexiest name but it certainly describes the product!  Still, I wonder what Apple would have named this...) I've blogged before about how advertising and its close cousin, sponsorship, will take on a larger role in the ebook world and most people have criticized that logic.  They say "books aren't magazines", "the book reading experience...

I'm back.  It's been one year to the day since my last Kindleville post and I've decided to resurrect this blog.  After using my iPad exclusively for ebook reading for a year I went out last week and bought a new, $139, wifi-only Kindle.  I'm not abandoning my iPad.  Far from it.  But after playing around a bit with a friend's graphite Kindle I decided I needed one too.  I'm glad I bought it as we just wrapped up a family vacation and I was able to give my wife my first-gen Kindle while...

While flying home from Bologna for our TOC event I couldn't help but think about some of the similarities between digital rights management (DRM) and airport security.  Here are a few common points that come to mind: False sense of security -- Seriously, does anyone today still believe any DRM system is hackerproof?  Heck, even books that have never been legally distributed in any e-format are out there as illegal downloads.  Just Bing the phrase "harry potter ebook downloads" and you'll see what I mean.  Scanners are everywhere, so if physical books can...

I can't tell you the last print book I bought.  Ever since I got a Kindle more than 3 years ago I've gone almost exclusively with ebooks.  Despite that fact, I visit any one of several local bookstores at least once a week.  I go there because I'm able to browse and discover products in a way that I simply can't do online. My iPhone is always with me when I'm in the bookstore.  Many times I've found a book that interests me, I pick it up and browse through it, then pull out my...

Amazon is apparently preparing to launch an Android App Store as early as this month.  Meanwhile, GigaOm's Kevin C. Tofel talks about how the real iPad challenge might come from Amazon in the form of an Android tablet.  I love it! Why?  I could easily jump from iPhone/iPad to the Android platform this summer because my AT&T contract expires in June.  If the Samsung Galaxy Tablet I tried at the AT&T store recently is any indication, nobody is offering a compelling iPad alternative on the Android platform...yet.  Amazon could be uniquely positioned to do just that. It's...

I was disappointed to read the conclusion drawn by this recent New York Times article.  The writer, Dirk Johnson, makes it sound like margin notes have no future in the ebook world.  I couldn't disagree more. In a blog post I wrote late last year I talked about how content mark-up and sharing are features that need to be improved upon in today's ereader apps.  You can take notes with most apps but note sharing is only now starting to become a reality.  That concept led me to something more interesting though. If you click on...

I've been banging the drum a lot lately for short-form content.  We've all got way too much to read and I believe concise content will become even more important in the mobile/tablet world of tomorrow.  That's one of the reasons Kindle Singles caught my eye a few weeks ago.  The Business of Media is the only Single I've bought and read so far and it was a non-fiction work of art.  Amazon is heading in the right direction with Singles but, as I mentioned in that earlier post, they need to reconsider their ...

I'm a longtime subscriber to both Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines, so I was happy to see both recently released as free iPad apps (iTunes links here and here).  Like most magazine apps to date, they're simply digital reproductions of the print edition. One of the nicer options is that anytime you see an url on the page you can touch it and quickly jump to that website.  Unlike most ereader apps available today, you go directly to the site without leaving the app; a built-in browser appears on the bottom half of the screen, resulting in a user experience that's far better than...

Amazon launched their new Kindle Singles line with the usual series of email blasts and banners on amazon.com recently.  There appear to be 20 or so Singles products so far but I'm sure many more are in the works.  Amazon says Singles are "compelling ideas expressed at their natural length."  My interpretation of that is, "most traditional books are bloated works, puffed up to either achieve a specific spine width or price point a publisher has in mind." A Singles product isn't tied to spine width because Singles only exist in the e-world, a place where spines have no meaning. I love...

Today there are typically two ways of publishing and reading ebooks on mobile devices. You either use a reader app, often from a device maker (e.g., Kindle, iBooks) or you use a dedicated app written on that platform for that particular work (e.g., The Elements or Solar System for iPad). Some of those dedicated book apps are terrific but I think they're a symptom of one of the more significant problems in the world of ebook evolution. I love it that there's so much experimentation going on now with apps, but oftentimes they're one-off's that require a reinvention of...