After optimizing the Kindle bookstore for the iPhone and acquiring the popular iPhone e-book reader Stanza, Amazon is now turning the page on its next Kindle innovation: Blog subscriptions.
Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a beta program to pay bloggers for Kindle subscriptions to their posts. Although Kindle comes equipped with a simple browser that allows consumers to pull up their blogs of choice, Amazon has decided to remove a step from the process and push blog content to the device's home screen. Subscriptions run 99 cents to $2 a month.
Amazon pays registered bloggers 30 percent of the subscription fee and keeps 70 percent for internal costs. Bloggers don't have to pay any fees to join the program, but Amazon sets the price of the content based on what it deems a fair value for customers. The new program opens the door for bloggers to gain new readers and cash.
Amazon's Digital Strategy
"This blogging program shows the diversity of content available for Kindle. For some blogs it could very well become their vehicle and their way of breaking away from the pack," said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret.
"More importantly, it shows Amazon continues to evolve Kindle as a device and as a platform. Amazon is establishing the Kindle not as an e-book reader, but rather a content reader. I can get my blogs, my newspapers, my magazines, and, of course, my books."
With multiple Kindle devices and multiple platforms to read Kindle content, Amazon appears prepared to continue its rush toward digital content and digital distribution where others have tried and failed.
Microsoft, for example, once had a vision for electronic books that showcased the digital content on a PC. Adobe has made moves to push e-book publishing through its PDF format. Sony has its e-book reader, but it hasn't gained traction. In all, about a dozen companies have turned their attention to e-books, but none has seen the success of the Amazon Kindle.
The Kindle blog-subscription program may not drive purchases, but it's driving awareness of the possibilities of e-book readers as more than just readers.
Amazon's Kindle Optimization
"Kindle is not a mass-market device yet. It's still priced too high. Consumers still have a lot of perceived value in books, but Amazon is doing the right things to drive awareness and usage of the product," Gartenberg said. "Getting the platform onto other devices consumers already have means I can become part of the ecosystem and check out what an electronic publication is without committing $300 or $400 to a device early on."
Analysts said Amazon has an uphill climb, but in many ways the company has made more progress on electronic books in the past year than others have in the last decade. Amazon is already starting to see traction and continues to push ahead with innovations.
"People have said in order for e-books to be successful, you have to go after the textbook market -- and Amazon is starting to do just that. Amazon understands that reading textbooks is not the same as reading books, so they came out with a device optimized for that purpose," Gartenberg said. "We are seeing Amazon do a lot of the right things to drive the proposition of electronic reading forward, but we are still so very much in the early stages and we'll have to see where it goes."
Via Yahoo
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