Dive Brief:
- Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing launched a beta version of a tool for textbook authors to publish e-textbooks.
- The tool, Kindle Textbook Creator, also enables educators to use PDFs to provide students with access to content anywhere in the world via Kindle Fire tablets, iOS and Android mobile devices, and Mac and PC computers.
- Authors can earn royalties of up to 70% with the Kindle textbook tool but still keep their rights to the material and control over content, Campus Technology reported.
Dive Insight:
Amazon is touting the tool as an easy path to convert printed textbooks to e-textbooks, but some authors will question why the price is at least 30% of revenues. Authors can earn additional royalties through other Kindle products, and they are also provided access to Kindle marketing and promotion tools. Textbooks created with the tool can have multiple-color highlighting, the ability to make flashcards, difficult terms referenced to Wikipedia or a dictionary, and a notebook tool to store notes and highlighted passages or images.