Publishing on the Kindle - Amazon DTP (part 1)

I blogged previously about the Kindle and e-readers in general. The blogosphere and the twitterverse are still awash with people debating whether these devices will ever replace the papery books we all love. I, for one, suspect they will, although by the time they do, I'm sure the technology will have evolved considerably. We may well even end up with an e-reader that bears a very close resemblence to a paperback. I think the technologies will converge. Because, after all, the paper book is just a technological artefact : a way of delivering the words of a story to a reader. It isn't the story itself; we're just all so used to thinking in these terms as the book is so ubiquitous.

Future e-readers will, I imagine, be able to transform themselves into any one of thousands or millions of books they hold in their memory and/or which they can download. When we get to that point, the book vs. e-reader debate will have gone away. But that's for the slightly SF future. Clearly, we're a long way from that right now. I mean, the Kindle at the moment is so drab. Set it aside all those delicious, colourful book covers in the bookshop and it just looks embarassingly dull. And, while I may be proved wrong, the super new Apple iPad looks to me just too clunkily big and expensive to replace the book right now.

Still, devices like the Kindle are a start. And they aren't going to go away. As has been well documented, Amazon sold more electronic "books" via the Kindle last Christmas than it did paperbacks. The implications for all writers are enormous. Publishing houses, I'm sure, are putting vast effort into coming to terms with this brave new world. But I'm intrigued to see if I can publish something to the Kindle myself, right here, right now.

It turns out, as of January 15th, I can. In fact, anyone can. Prior to this date, only US citizens could upload content to the Amazon Digital Text Platform (DTP) and so publish to the Kindle. There were third parties in the USA who would publish for you for a percentage, but otherwise the rest of the world was excluded. That's all changed now and anyone can use the service (although currently only in English, French and German.) And there are, according to some estimates, 1.5 million Kindles out there.

Now, I don't see this as a way of bypassing the traditional find-an-agent-then-find-a-publisher route that most writers adopt for their novels. That's certainly the approach I'm going to continue to take. But I'm also intrigued to know how well publishing to the Kindle works. Partly it's the techie in me, partly the writer. So here's my plan. I have a number of short stories and novelettes that have been published in the past via a more traditional route - by magazines with proper submission and editorial policies. Some of these stories haven't seen the light of day for a while and I still own the copyright to them. So, I'm going to see how easy and effective it is to republish them via DTP on to the Kindle.

Stay tuned! In part 2, coming soon, I'll let you know how the process goes ...