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Andy Ihnatko: EPUB to come to Kindle in apps?
September 7, 2010 | 8:15 am
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By Chris Meadows
“switch11” on iReader Review quotes tech pundit Andy Ihnatko in an appearance on a podcast saying that there are EPUB reader apps in development for the Kindle:
I believe now that there’s an actual app development kit for Kindle .. I have talked to a couple of people who have said that they want to build an ePub reader that would run on the Kindle. And Amazon says they don’t care – go ahead.
switch11 notes that Ihnatko may have been confused, but even if he wasn’t it is unclear whether Amazon would approve such an app as it seems to go counter to their “no generic readers” development rule. I would be inclined to agree—it doesn’t seem likely that Amazon would allow EPUBs in the back door after refusing to let them in the front. Even if it did, it’s doubtful any EPUB DRM format would be supported. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
The entry also mentions a couple of audiobooks apparently free to Kindle users outside the US (or who reset their country to “Canada”), as well as eight free classic Doctor Who novels (including Human Nature, turned into a 2-part 10th Doctor episode, and Lungbarrow, considered one of the 7th Doctor’s finest adventures) available for download in PDF and PRC (MobiPocket) format.
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Comments:
Those Doctor Who novels aren’t all in the same formats.
(I’m assuming they were created over a number of years.)
A couple are html only. Several have pdf versions. And most have .pdb, .lit, and .prc on a per-chapter basis.
And it would be so easy to turn them into basic epub editions… though the BBC probably wouldn’t appreciate it if it wasn’t their idea…
As far as ePub on Kindle. I thought the stuff with the SDK said no reading apps, can’t remember where I read that though.
No “generic” reading apps. Considering that the Kindle doesn’t read ePub format, an ePub reader wouldn’t have to fall under the “no generic reader” restriction…
This was discussed on the Amazon forums too (the podcast quotes) and Andy I’s sources said they “want to” build one and did not get a red light from Amazon.
I’m assuming this is to read non-DRM’d ePub files.
Whether they can build one to the approval of Amazon’s app development decision makers will be the key, I imagine.
I send a lot of doc files to me@free.kindle.com for conversion (though this can be done easily enough on the free MobiPocket Creator too, but I’m usually lazy and am too behind to spend time that way). It’d be great to have an app that reads doc files on the Kindle. The only reason I don’t love the idea is that doc files can be too fat (and it’s best to turn off file Saves that add new text over and over again on a much edited Word doc)/