Every so often there comes along an innovative and potentially society-changing idea. I will address one in this post, and another in the next....the interesting part about both these ideas is that I had them years ago, but, like most people, didn't have the capital to patent them or fund the development.
The first, is the Kindle e-book reader, and the Digital Text Platform offered by Amazon. I knew that the big reason e-books would not succeed was that people needed to feel that could be almost anywhere and read a book, and reading books on a computer monitor was just too cumbersome and limiting. I knew we needed something the size of a hardcover or paperback book, which we could see a page at a time, as if we were reading it in a physical, paper book. Enter the Kindle device. It aspires to provide this solution, but I fear its rise to universal usage is limited by its most prohibitive obstacle. Namely, the DTP format is not capable of handling the task.
On the Kindle Blog, this post espoused the glory of Kindle:
Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) allows you, yes YOU!, to publish anything you want and put it up for sale in the Kindle Store. How cool is that?
Do you have an old novel that you wrote in college? or are you trying to find a publisher for your next best seller? Then Amazon’s Digital Text Platform is for you. So what is Digital Text Platform I hear you ask;
Digital Text Platform is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets you upload and format your books for sale in the Kindle Store.
You can read the FAQ which will guide you through setting up an account, formatting your document and how to uploading your content to the Kindle store. There is also a very active user forum for Kindle publishers to discuss the platform.
Now I think this is a very smart move by Amazon to offer this service even though we know there are a limited number of Kindles out there. Amazon is keeping tight lipped about the number of devices it has sold.
As more people get the Kindle in 2008, I think we are going to see an increase in the number of people, and companies, who decide to publish content through DTP. I don’t think its going to be just authors who use this service, its only a matter of time before blogs and print media truly jump onto the Kindle bandwagon and offer Kindle exclusive content, which I think is what Amazon wants them to do instead of just re-publishing their content in Kindle format. Think about it, soon we will be begin to see Kindle exclusive newsletters , novels, blogs entries and newspaper articles. DTP for me is what Kindle is all about, its going to give the power back to the writers. No longer is the publishing house going to decide whether you’re good enough to get published.
What do you think?
I posted the comment below:
This is all very well and good, but there is little information for the authors themselves, aside from a forum on the DTP site wherein authors like me post about all the issues, but don't seem to get a solution...oddly, there is no customer service to speak of--no one who seems knowledgeable about solutions to the many issues DTP presents to the AUTHOR. CreateSpace, (Amazon's POD publishing arm) on the contrary, has outstanding customer service, efficient and competent reps and their finished product is professional and high-quality. Why can't the Kindle/DTP folks follow their example? There are inherent and prohibitive problems with the DTP format. I am the author of 13 books with more on the way--I still have my Kindle/DTP account on a holding pattern, because I am not satisfied with the way the conversion MASTICATES the manuscript. Novels and books aren't just text files. They have a format, typographical elements, and often, images as well. These DO NOT translate well to DTP. In the case of one of my non-fiction books, if the images don't land where they are supposed to, or if they are not included, the text then makes no sense. I'm simply not okay with the fact that an image lands in the middle of a sentence and looks like it was taken with a toy pinhole camera made from a shoebox. The standard for publishing is the .pdf file. It keeps the layout, formatting and typography as-is, and prevents alteration of the text when used in e-book form. This is the obvious format for DTP/Kindle/e-books of all kinds. Perhaps the Kindle was premature. Ever heard of getting the cart before the horse? To the Kindle-Developers, et al: First, make sure the horse can maneuver the cart properly, before hooking them up together.
Until then, I suppose we authors will have to offer .pdf versions of our books on our websites, but without the benefit of the traffic Amazon has.
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