Why Amazon should open up kindle Now?

More e-book readers are coming in the market. Amazon will face a new level of competition in the market in selling digital text. Right now kindle 2 have uniqueness in terms of having e-books downloadable over the whispernet without any need of computer, and to the ability to whispersync books across iphone/ipod touch and blackberry. Not to say, amazon has the largest collection of e-books including NYTimes bestsellers.

Others are also trying to follow amazon. If that happens amazon can never ensure it’s dominance in the market no matter how sophisticated device amazon try to release. I believe it is the availability of content that matters for the a reader to establish winning success.

Yes, amazon has won the hearts and minds of so many readers even though it’s book formats are proprietary (.awz and .tpz formats) and DRMed. kindle doesn’t support a lot of other formats natively, especially, industry standard EPUB.  The availability of content should not be always interpreted quantitatively. Yes, amazon has an edge in terms of numbers of e-books available for kindle; but it’s competitors can always catch up with amazon’s number. Amazon can’t win the market running that race for long.

We should remember that hardcopy books have only one format – that’s paper format- letters are printed on paper no matter they are hard-cover or paperback. With the digital revolution texts have embraced so many formats in the name of accessibility or in the name of restricting the ability to prevent piracy. Yet piracy couldn’t be stopped, can’t be. And in this process, the real owners of the e-books are screwed up. The whole point is that kindle can’t be and shouldn’t be considered as an end product, it is a means or medium, and digital contents are the end products. In case of  hard-copy books the medium and content can’t be separated. In this digital era, if a single means or medium cannot give control of thousands of e-books of contents to the end-users it is doomed to be a failure. But if you can’t get and read multiple formats on a single device natively or can’t convert formats for your convenience it’s not a user-friendly device. Amazon should think about this for kindle to be able to exist in the long-run.

Moreover, there are many enthusiastic developers who are eager to develop applications for kindle. Think about the screensaver hacks, font hacks or savory hacks that have improved kindle’s usability. If amazon opens up the kindle or release development API, the developers can release a lot of applications related to book reading. Remember apple’s decision to open up iPhone or iPod Touch for developers. Sometimes it’s not good idea for amazon to decide what applications are more desirable; let the consumers decide what is good for them. That’s the way amazon can qualitatively change the e-book market scenario, and establish the reputation so that it can survive in the coming competition.

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