There are two features that haven’t gotten much attention as the new Kindle DX 2 has stolen the spotlight – Kindle Web Widgets and Kindle Previewer for HTML 5.
Well, let’s take a look at each and see if they point at Kindle Online – A ‘Read any Kindle Book in any Browser’ option that Amazon thinks will supplement Kindles and Kindle Apps and help them cover everyone who’d like to read Kindle books.
Kindle Previewer for HTML 5 – Samples built from HTML 5 and CSS 3
What is this feature?
In plain English – Online Kindle Book Samples.
This is how Amazon describe it -
… you’ll be able to sample Kindle books from anywhere.
Kindle book previews will be available through your web browser – simply click a Preview button on an Amazon book detail page and a new browser window will open containing the preview.
They talk about how the previewer is designed for HTML 5 and CSS 3 – thus enabling complex layouts, graphic design, embedded audio and video, and enhanced user interactivity.
In other words it’s a way to sample Kindle books in your browser and with lots of pretty gift wrapping. To be fair the complex layouts, graphic design, and better user experience are pretty useful - the enhanced user interactivity and embedded audio and video sound excessive.
From the Kindle Forum we figure out some real advantages – people who live outside WhisperNet areas can access samples (instead of having to download them to their computer), ability to sample a book before buying it when shopping from a computer, the use of HTML5 and CSS3 which are becoming the next big web standard, and reaching more people.
Kindle Web Widgets – Samples all over the Web
Hand in hand with the Kindle Previewer are the Kindle Web Widgets. While the Kindle Previewer lets anyone read samples online the Web Widgets let any site or blog owner add the Kindle Previewer to their own site.
So when a site owner writes about a great book they read they can embed a sample of that book on their site and you can read the sample and, if you so choose, buy the book right from that site itself.
In some ways it’s not that big of a deal – It in essence removes that one additional step of clicking on a link and going to Amazon’s site. In other ways it’s a big deal – users stay on the site, users can read the sample right there, site owners don’t feel like they’re losing the customer and in fact are able to provide additional value to readers on the site itself.
It’s basically two pieces of value – The value of being able to read a sample online (and making a decision online); The convenience of doing it on the site you’re on (and via any HTML5 compliant browser).
Update: An additional huge value is that users will be on the site when they finish the sample and not on their Kindle. If they then decide to buy the ebook the site gets credit – as opposed to getting zero credit if users buy from their Kindles.
Does this signal a ‘Read in Any Browser’ option? Are we going to see Kindle Online?
It certainly seems like Amazon are planning to offer the ‘Read Kindle Books in your Browser’ feature down the line.
There are a few reasons to do this – It continues the ‘Kindle platform reaches everywhere’ philosophy, it helps compete with Google Editions when Google launches their ‘online ebooks’, it reaches a lot more people.
The last point is really important – Amazon can’t build an App for every single platform. If, however, every single platform is going to end up with an HTML5 compliant browser then, by having an HTML 5 compliant online eReader, Amazon can reach each and every platform.
It’d be typical Amazon style to introduce this as a minor ‘online samples’ feature and gradually expand it into a full-featured Kindle Online that lets anyone with access to a HTML5 compliant browser access every Kindle Store eBook.
Quick Thoughts on Kindle Online
Kindle Online would enable Amazon to match any special killer features planned for Google Editions. It would give Amazon a big advantage over other eBook and eReader platforms. If Apple decides to kick out eBook Apps down the line Amazon would still have a way into the Apple Xanadu.
Amazon can reach Nokia owners and Samsung owners and Windows 7 Phone owners. They can reach Nook owners even if B&N don’t open up an Android App Store (or if they keep Kindle for Android out). They can eliminate the need for users to download a Kindle for PC app or a Kindle for iPhone App – It’s much, much easier to go to www.amazon.com than to download an app.
A nice bonus would be that on platforms like the iPhone the reading and buying processes would no longer be separated. That’s an iBooks advantage and by creating a HTML5 powered Kindle Online Amazon would combine reading and purchasing into the browser.
These two innocuous features, Kindle Previewer and Kindle Web Widgets, are the start of Kindle Online and Kindle Online might become a top 2 channel for selling and reading Kindle Books.
Filed under: kindle Tagged: | kindle online, kindle web
