While Amazon is doing nicely with its Kindle e-book service, one flaw at present is that potential customers can’t see what the Kindle version of a book looks like before splashing out. Today Amazon is changing that with the launch of Kindle for the Web.
This new feature, currently in beta, is similar to Amazon’s existing preview option for physical books but displaying the electronic version instead. There are a few new features too.
It’s possible to embed Kindle previews into web pages with a simple chunk of HTML and to share a link to them via Facebook or Twitter. A button is available in the preview to quickly buy the book in Kindle form. Members of Amazon’s affiliate network can even get a cut of books sold via the feature.
As with the Kindle hardware and mobile apps, the text can be customised to the reader’s taste. Text size; line spacing; words per line and background colour can all be changed within the embedded preview.
Kindle for the Web is a simple but useful addition to Amazon’s e-book platform. We imagine authors will find it especially useful for promoting the Kindle version of their masterpiece. Indeed Robin Wauters at TechCrunch, who reported on the new feature, points out this example of an author who has done just that
We’d love to see entire Kindle books readable within a browser-based app. While Amazon hasn’t indicated that this is on the way, it seems the next natural step following this latest development.
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