Tag Archives: Kindle

How To Get Your Blog into Amazon Kindle

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Posted by Crumbtopia on February 17, 2010 – 5:30 pm
Filed under Kindle, Kindle Development Kit
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How to get your blog on Amazon’s Kindle

kindle2 You can now publish your blog’s RSS feed for sale on the Amazon Kindle Store and Amazon will share revenue with you for every Kindle user who subscribes to your feed.

Getting started is easy

To start using Amazon Kindle Publishing for Blogs, first create a new account by following a quick three-step process to create your login information, set up your security questions and fill out the Vendor Set Up form.

In the Vendor Set Up form you will need to do the following:

  • Provide your contact information
  • Provide your payment information
  • Accept the terms and conditions

Once you are finished with the setup, you can upload your blog on the Add a Blog page.

Add a blog

To upload your blog for purchase in the Kindle Store you need to follow a short three step process:

  1. Fill out the simple one page form
  2. Preview your blog to be sure you are happy with how it will be displayed
  3. Publish your blog

Add your feed

First you need to validate your blog’s feed URL by using the URL of your blog or its RSS feed by adding it the appropriate field. If your feed is not validated, then please check the following requirements:

  • The blog feed should be a full text, well formed XML feed.
  • The feed should be a valid ATOM or RSS feed.

Note that if your feed has videos or user-generated links like Reddit, DIGG and Technorati, they will be removed for the Kindle version. Also, if your feed has advertisements and promotional links, they will be removed for the Kindle version. Use the preview functionality to make sure you are satisfied with how your feed looks.

How will your readers identify your blog?

This section allows you to add information that will be used to display your blog in the Kindle store, including your blog’s detail page. The one exception is the masthead image which is used in the actual rendering of your blog’s content on Kindle.

How will your blog be found?

This section is all about information that will be used by customers to search and browse for your blog. This includes your blog’s tagline and description and keywords. You’ll also need to provide a screen shot of your blog and a masthead. Finally, the blog post frequency field helps Amazon make sure customers are receiving updated posts from your blog

Preview your blog

It is very important to use the preview feature to make sure the content from your feed is being shown properly and that you are happy with how your blog will look on a Kindle. It’s not an exact representation of how it will look on Kindle, but it’s close. Note that previews may take up to two minutes to generate depending on the size of your blog.

Publish the blog to the Kindle Store

Once you are finished providing the necessary information for your blog, validating and previewing it, you can post a request to publish it on Kindle by clicking on the “Publish Blog to Kindle” button. It should 12 to 48 hours before your blog is available for purchase in the Kindle Store. Once a blog is successfully published, you can visit the Dashboard to go the blog’s product detail page in the Kindle Store.

Editing your blog

You can update your blog’s information at any time. On the “Your Blogs” page, click the blog title or the edit icon next to it. Once you have made changes, click on “Save” to save your changes. Then you MUST click on “Publish Blog to Kindle” for these changes to take effect.

Promote your blog’s availability at the Kindle Store

Place a Kindle Chicklet next to your other RSS chicklets or elsewhere on your site to let Kindle owners know that your blog is available on a Kindle. You can get a Kindle chicklet, badge or banner from Newstex. Or if you’re a member of the Amazon Associates program, use their chicklet since you’ll also receive referral fees for all qualifying purchases on Amazon.com, including 10% on the Kindle device. Go to the Kindle chicklet page, pick which chicklet you want to use, and type the name of your blog into the Search Kindle Store box. When your blog appears, click on the Get HTML button, then the code will pop up for you to add in the sidebar of your blog.

Earn money with your Kindle subscriptions

Amazon sets the price of your blog. Smaller blogs usually go for 99¢ while the more popular blogs cost $1.99 a month. Amazon will pay you 30% of the monthly blog subscription price for every Kindle subscriber to your blog. So for each subscriber, you’ll pocket around 30¢ a month. It took me six months to get over the payment threshold of $10. Granted that’s not much, but I wasn’t marketing my Kindle subscription at all at the time.

Payments are made via electronic transfer to your bank account if you are based in US. If you want Amazon to send a check, there is an $8 fee. If you live outside the US, Amazon will pay you via check at no charge to you.

Kindle SDK – Writing code for the Kindle

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Posted by Crumbtopia on January 22, 2010 – 12:29 pm
Filed under Kindle Development Kit
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This is VERY EXCITING NEWS!!!! I have a Kindle DX, and I wish for an email client, a twitter client and an RSS reader daily. Now i might just have the chance to develop my own!

KSDK Kindle Development

Developing Applications for the Kindle

Some highlights of the KSDK Program

Revenue Share

User revenue will be split 70% to the developer and 30% to Amazon net of delivery fees of $0.15 / MB. Remember that unlike smart phones, the Kindle user does not pay a monthly wireless fee or enter into an annual wireless contract. Kindle active content must be priced to cover the costs of downloads and on-going usage.

Pricing Options

Active content will be available to customers in the Kindle Store later this year. Your active content can be priced three ways:

  • Free – Active content applications that are smaller than 1MB and use less than 100KB/user/month of wireless data may be offered at no charge to customers. Amazon will pay the wireless costs associated with delivery and maintenance.
  • One-time Purchase – Customers will be charged once when purchasing active content. Content must have nominal (less than 100KB/user/month) ongoing wireless usage.
  • Monthly Subscription – Customers will be charged once per month for active content.

Active content applications have an upper size limit of 100MB. Applications larger than 10MB will not be delivered wirelessly but can be downloaded from the Kindle Store to a computer and transferred to the user’s Kindle via USB.

Developer Guidelines

Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed. In addition, active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code.

We will work to refine the above guidelines throughout the beta.