Publish on Amazon with the Kindle

The last two days have seen extraordinary opportunities opening up for publishers (authors) on the Amazon Kindle platform.

Yesterday, Amazon announced it would increase payment to publishers (via an option) a 70% royalty fee on titles that met the following criteria:

The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

Delivery costs will be based on the size of the Kindle file. As an example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option.

In my mind, this is a no-brainer. But bad news for all those smarty pants who are madly converting out-of-copyright books to Kindle format – those don’t quality for the new option.

I love selling my stuff on Kindle, so this is manna from heaven for me. And you, too, I hope.

(Two little suggestions: Amazon, PLEASE get better at answering questions in your Kindle forums. And PLEASE refine your conversion process.)

Now today, Amazon delivered the second of its one-two punches and announced it’s opening up its platform for application developers (think iPhone apps!). Now, software developers can add interactive content to the Kindle. Read the press release. “Travel books that suggest activities based on real-time weather and current events, cookbooks that recommend menus based on size of party and allergies, and word games and puzzles–just some of the possibilities with the new Kindle Development Kit.”

What next, King of the Jungle? ?