One of the benefits of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle reader is portable access to content. There’s a deep library of books and an increasing pool of subscription content. One of the detriments singled out by some camps is the Kindle’s closed environment. Readers looking for blog content, for example, could only select from a predetermined list of high profile publications. You might find Tech Crunch or the Huffington Post but you wouldn’t necessarily find a smaller site like Metue and probably would have no chance tuning in to the soapbox of your favorite personal pundit. Amazon chose the stations, not you. Now, that’s changing.
Wednesday, Amazon began allowing any blogger to publish to the Kindle platform. Through a separate account set up as a Kindle Publishing for Blogs beta, authors can load their blog, identify and describe it and leave it to Amazon to convert from its RSS feed to a Kindle-friendly form factor.
Ad supported sites will lose the revenue stream generated by readers who trade the old web format for the new but the site owner will make back 30% of any subscription fee Amazon sets for the content. That assumes readers want to pay a subscription fee for content they can usually access freely through the web - which is a big assumption. (Blogs have typically been priced at $1.99 a month on Kindle.)
Blogs to Kindle isn’t likely gold at the end of anyone’s rainbow, but for pundits looking for a new channel of audience distribution, Amazon’s officially opening its doors to give it a try.
