How to publish your blog on the Kindle (and why you should do it asap)
Amazon have now made their Kindle platform available to all bloggers. Publishing via the portable book reader was previously open only to big blogs, but a new self-publishing tool means that just about every blogger can have their blog available through the Kindle store.
Sign up for an account at Kindle Publishing. All you'll need to add are details of your feed, a screenshot and logo, and info on your blog's content, and it'll be on sale in store in just a few minutes.
Yes, readers have to pay to get your blog on their Kindle. Most blogs seem to be priced at $1.99 per month, of which blog owners see 30%. I'm not convinced many of us are going to get massively rich 60c at a time, but if you have a blog that particularly appeals to Kindle readers, you might do alright here. Let's not all rush to start Kindle-related blogs tonight.
Whose blog is it anyway?
When you add a new blog to Kindle, you have to click a box to say you have the right to make the blog available. There's no further verification of ownership at the time of publishing, which apparently leaves things open for anyone to claim any blog they feel like claiming. In fact, this has already happened to TechCrunch, who were notified by another blogger that he'd claimed their feed as his own to see if he could, and was "flabbergasted" when Amazon let him.
Right now, there doesn't even seem to be any check to stop even the most basic abuse, like duplicate feed submission. I've managed to add this blog's feed twice without query from Amazon on the same seller account, so I'm not sure what's to stop me submitting something that might be more lucrative and claiming it as my own.
Amazon have removed the unauthorised TechCrunch blogs from the Kindle store, but it's probably only a matter of time before some enterprising scammer writes a program to automatically add unclaimed blogs to their own account. I'd expect Amazon to start tightening this up pretty quickly: we can probably expect to have to add meta tags or verification files (similar to how Google Webmaster Tools do it) as proof of ownership. Even so, it's worth claiming your own blog sooner rather than having to claim it back later.
Posted by Sue on May 17, 2009 in News.
