I’m pleased to announce that London Theatre Blog is available on Amazon Kindle. Amazon’s flagship e-book reader, the Amazon Kindle is a wireless, ergonomic device with electronic-ink display technology that emulates the visual aesthetic of a printed book. It is by no means a substitute for the printed novel, but its support of online content, including blogs and online newspapers, makes it an exciting reading medium for an increasingly tech-savvy world.
All Kindle content is accessed either on a one-off or continual subscription basis. Subscription costs for blogs and online papers are very low and part of the charge goes towards wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet, part goes to Amazon LTD as an admin charge and the final part goes to the content publisher. In LTB’s case any short term revenue derived from Kindle subscriptions will contribute to the maintenance costs and development of the site. The most important factor in LTB’s support of Kindle is the distrubtion of its content to a wider audience.
Kindle is still only available in the US, but an increase in user popularity and strong interest from newspapers worldwide, means that it’s simple a matter of time before a unit appears in the UK. So LTB is keen to get a head start by supporting its content on the device ahead of European distribution.
e-Readers were the topic du jour at this year’s London Book Fair. Sony execs assure us that the advantage of having a US-only market (for the moment) is that we can learn from their mistakes; the US ebook market looks poised to repeat the music industry’s disastrous DRM policy (mostly because the DRM naysayers, despite being in the right, have yet to suggest a workably commercial alternative).
So it’ll take a long while before I’m persuaded to buy one to read books on (I like lending books, and I want the option of selling them to second-hand shops, and of passing them on to my descendants), but as a portable online content grabber-and-reader, they have some real potential.
All of which is a more roundabout way of saying, “It is by no means a substitute for the printed novel, but its support of online content, including blogs and online newspapers, makes it an exciting reading medium for an increasingly tech-savvy world.”