Counting down to Amazon’s Kindle press conference

By Stephen Windwalker

Editor’s Note: We are happy to welcome Stephen Windwalker as a regular contributor to TeleRead. Stephen has been writing about Amazon’s strategic innovations since his niche bestseller on online bookselling in 2002, and his Complete Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle was the top-selling title in the Kindle store for 17 weeks in 2008, but on advice from Amazon’s attorneys Windwalker refuses to divulge how many books have been sold. Stephen is also publisher of the Kindle Home Page blog and the weekly Kindle Nation email newsletter. Paul Biba

Far be it from me, just hours before the heralded launch of the Kindle 2.0 (or whatever Amazon plans to call it), to pull back the curtain with wild claims about any of the device’s new features. Tomorrow I’ll do my best to base all of that on the actual news, rather than the rumors, and pack it into tomorrow afternoon’s felicitously timed weekly issue of my Kindle Nation email newsletter.

Tonight seems like a better time to look back at the prospective Kindle 2.0 features that I suggested last summer in The Complete Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle. We could all agree on the obvious fixes demanded by thousands of Kindle owners including, most notably, those pesky next- and previous-page bars and a user-friendly system of content management folders or labels. Other hardware enhancements such as quicker refresh, a touch screen, and a color display will happen when the technologies are ready.

But the more significant questions to be answered at Monday’s press conference may tell us how aggressively Amazon is prepared to pursue the still unrealized revolutionary potential of the Kindle. Without making too much of the fact that these suggestions are discussed in much greater detail in my book, let me here provide the briefest of discussions of a few of the high notes Jeff Bezos could hit in between those signature fits of forced laughter.

A big tent approach to content availability

As I wrote in my book, Jeff Bezos volunteered, during a presentation at the Spring 2008 BEA trade show, that Amazon might make Kindle edition books available for download to other devices. But Amazon cracked the door open further on this intriguing possibility last week when it allowed a spokesman to let slip that it was working on making Kindle store titles available on a variety of mobile phones. While it is true that Amazon wants to sell Kindles, the real function of this Trojan horse device is to prepare Amazon to maintain and strengthen Amazon’s position as the leading online bookseller even as the modalities through which content is published, purchased, and read continue to change. Many hurdles lie ahead, and Amazon will have to play nice with Apple, Google, and a wide range of content publishers and authors – to act more as partners than as competitors – to deliver on the Kindle’s potential.

Ultimately, a wide range of issues must be sorted out involving publishing standards, royalties, corporate publishing roles, commons licenses and the public domain. The continuing need of publishers and authors to protect their ability to monetize their publications will remain a paramount consideration, and Mike Elgan’s excellent recent discussion of these and other issues may be a seminal text as we move forward. But I expect that by the end of 2009 some of us may be as surprised by the evolution of Amazon’s approach, say, to publishing standards, as many observers were a decade ago when the company invited competing booksellers to compete for sales inside what came to be known as the big Amazon Marketplace tent.

For my part, my ears will perk up at even the briefest discussion by Bezos of how Amazon will navigate these minefields.

Kindle Groups, Kindle Tribes, and Kindle Networking

In my chapter entitled “The Golden Age of Kindle 2.0 and Beyond,” I suggested that the Kindle could provide a powerful way for Amazon to support social networking and viral behavior among Kindle owners. Whether such initiatives stand free or are, more likely, layered upon an existing network such as Shelfari or Facebook, Amazon is in the enviable position of being able to make more money and sell more content by supporting the natural efforts of people to connect with people with whom they have much in common around the interests which they share.

Kindle Buffet and Kindle Reading Subscriptions

Once a customer buys a Kindle (or an iPhone or iPod Touch?) to connect with the Kindle Store, why not give her the option of “subscribing” to a certain access level of content each month? I am very happy to have my credit card charged each month for O’Reilly’s Safari bookshelf service. Some months I use it more than others. The concept would work wonderfully for the Kindle Store.

e-Commerce empowerment of Kindle owners as Kindle sellers

Kindle owners are the best salespeople for the Kindle. Amazon Associates currently pays website owners 10% of its revenues for the Kindle and its content whenever their links lead to completed Kindle transactions. It would be stunningly simple for Amazon to equip every shipped Kindle with an Amazon Associates tag so that its new owner could get paid anytime her suggestion or Kindle demonstration led to the sales of a Kindle or Kindle content. Nothing would take the bite out of the device’s daunting sales price like the prospect of actually being able to make one’s new Kindle into an income-producing device.