Amazon Kindle to Receive Major Overhaul

The soon to be released Amazon Kindle Fire is generating lots of interest at the moment and rightly so. What should be generating lots of interest is Amazon's announcement that Kindle Format 8 will feature HTML5 Support.

According to Amazon, this new supported format will allow for the creation of better books and allow authors of comics, graphic novels and picture books to produce these works in the Kindle format. Amazon has announced over 150 new formatting tools will be available including the long desired fixed layouts, nested tables and Scalable Vector Graphics.

Alas, Amazon claims the KF 8 will only be supported for the new Kindle Fire but over time plans include making KF8 available on previously released Kindle readers. The good news is the new KF8 format is compatable with existing Kindle PC desktop and mobile applications including the Kindle app for iTunes, iPhone and iPad.

Amazon claims the new Kindle Fire and other upcoming apps and devices will still be able to read the old Mobi 7 format.

This is good news for authors who self-publish ebooks. I am sure there will be the inevitable kinks and quirks to work out, but it seems e-books will become more and more like "real books." 

The next evolution will probably be to include sound and video in e-books.

Is Self-Publishing Still Self-Publishing?

Morris Rosenthal, one of the "godfathers" of the self-publishing industry has a really thought provoking blog post this week. He makes an interesting argument that many self-publishers are really Amazon publishers or write for Amazon Publishing. 

It is well worth reading and thinking about what Morris has to say.  Click here to go to his blog post.

Analysis of Panda and Its Impact on Websites

Morris Rosenthal wrote an interesting and insightful post on the impact of Google's Panda on traffic to websites. Since many self-publishing authors utilize a blog or a website to promote their work, this is a worthwhile article to read.

To get to the article click here.