View From the Publishing Trenches

OK, Amazon has released the beta version of its new Kindle for PC application. As a Kindle owner and Kindle book designer, I naturally immediately downloaded, installed, and tried it out.

The program’s Home page displays the books you’ve downloaded from your Kindle account to this new device.

If you click on the “Archived Items” button next to the Home button, you will see a display of all the books you’ve purchased from the Kindle Store.

If you click on one of the archived books, the application will immediately begin downloading it to your PC.

It will also immediately open that downloaded book as soon as the download completes (and, as you can see below, color images display in color unlike the B&W images on the actual Kindle).

To page through the book, you have two options — use your mouse (a key for that pops up for a moment when you open the program) or slide your cursor to the left or right of the displayed page and click on the white arrow that appears in the gray margin.

The text reflows just as it does on the actual Kindle, in this case to match the size of the window.

And you can, of course, change the font size — although this application allows 10 size options (as opposed to the six available on the Kindle).

You can also show or hide any notes or bookmarks for the pages.

The application includes the same navigation menu options as does the actual Kindle.

In addition, there is an application-specific menu, on which many of the options will open an Amazon page in your default browser.

PROS

The application is a relatively small download file and installs quickly and painlessly. The application opens very fast and works great, with pages cycling through much faster than on the Kindle. You can synch a book to the last read page (whether it was read on the Kindle, the iPhone Kindle app, or this Kindle for PC app) and all notes and bookmarks are shared. Color images do, indeed, display in color (something to take into account when creating a Kindle book).

CONS

There is only one real negative aspect, but one I think is very serious. There is no way to import any Kindle-compatible books that you might have on your hard drive into this application. In fact, you can’t access any Kindle books you might have on your Kindle but which were not purchased through Amazon. I can see, however, where the downloaded files are stored in my Program Files directory (I’m running Win XP Pro) but they are in a format I can’t access (probably encrypted). I can think of no reason for Amazon not to include a provision to upload non-Amazon books in a Kindle-compatible format to this app’s library (other than they did it just because they could). I can still read all those books in Mobipocket Reader, of course, but it is nonetheless very annoying.

UPDATE: I just discovered that, although I cannot import a Kindle-compatible file from with the Kindle for PC application, there is a workaround. Just find the file on your PC’s hard drive and double-click it (assuming you have installed the application). It will automatically open in Kindle for PC and also now will be included in that application’s Library. Kindle for PC did not ask if I wanted all those MOBI and PRC files to be associated with newly installed application; it just did it.

For authors and publishers, this new desktop app does offer another avenue for buyers to purchase and read our Kindle’ized books.

So, go download it and give it a workout. Then come back and tell me what you think about it.