Amazon Wants To Make Kindle Money Off Your Blog
According to Amazon, Kindle Blogs are delivered automatically through the Kindle's wireless connection. With the fee structure currently in place, Amazon claims 70 percent of the blog's monthly subscription fee and 30 percent goes to the blogger.
Amazon also states in Kindle Publishing for Blogs that it determines the sale price of the blog "based on what we deem is a fair value for customers." Amazon doesn't clarify what it sees as "fair value," but at first glance on the Kindle Publishing beta, most available blogs—well-known names like The Huffington Post and blogs from The New York Times—go for 99 cents to $1.99 a month. Interestingly, Amazon won't let bloggers offer their blogs through Kindle for free.
Amazon's new service comes a week after it debuted the Kindle DX, a large-screen Kindle suited to periodicals and textbooks that sells for $489.
Amazon Wednesday also debuted AmazonEncore, a referral service that Amazon will use to identify "exceptional, overlooked books and authors that show potential for greater sales." The company plans to use customer reviews to track down books that might otherwise slip through the cracks and redistribute them through multiple channels, such as the Amazon Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, and national bookstores through third-party wholesalers.
In a statement, Amazon said "Legacy," a self-published novel by a 16-year-old author Cayla Kluver, was earning rave reviews from customers but saw only modest sales. Through Encore, Amazon will partner with Kluver—the first author to benefit from the new service— and revise and reissue "Legacy" as a digital download from the Kindle store and in a spoken-word audio edition through Audible.com.
"Sometimes exceptional books and new authors don't get the attention they deserve. We're fortunate at Amazon to have customers who know great books and aren't shy about telling us when they find one. We developed AmazonEncore to connect readers with great books that were overlooked the first time they were released," said Jeff Belle, vice president of books for Amazon, in a statement.
