Ian Freed, Amazon's VP for Kindle, Interviewed in TechFlash

Despite the Kindle's success to date, interviews about it with senior level Amazon execs seem few and far between. That's why I was delighted to see this recent Q&A with Ian Freed, Amazon's VP for Kindle, on the TechFlash site.

Here are some of my own comments on what Freed had to say:

The notion of discovering a book and getting it in under a minute remains one of the killer features for the Kindle, IMHO. I'm still amazed that Sony hasn't implemented a wireless option. Heck, the Kindle has been available for almost a year and there are still no signs of a wireless competitor! I benefited from this again last Friday. My wife e-mailed me the title of a book she thought I'd like and I saw it as I was hopping aboard a 2-hour flight home. I managed to buy and download the book in the time between buckling my seatbelt and hearing the announcement to turn off all electronic devices. Let's see you do that with a Sony Reader!

Interesting that he notes the unexpected success of the periodical products. If that's true, why the heck can't they add more magazines to the list? I just checked again this morning and they still only have 18 to choose from. My guess is Amazon has been unable to get the big magazine players to agree to their terms. Bummer.

Freed also claims blogs are working well on the Kindle. That's surprising, given how low the blog product rankings are. Also, I'll never understand why anyone would pay for a blog feed on their Kindle when a totally free wireless service like Kindlefeeder works just fine.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Amazon to open the platform up to third-party developers. Freed talks about how "supporting a wider ecosystem for applications is nontrivial", but he also notes that Amazon might be open to it down the road.

Be sure to read the entire interview. It offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a device we've all come to know and love.

Kindle and Audible.com

When Amazon bought Audible awhile back I didn't think too much about it. I figured the deal made sense because Amazon strives to be the leading book retailer, regardless of what format the content is delivered in.

For as long as I've owned my Kindle I've thought about how it too should be a device that delivers content in multiple formats. The written word is the most obvious example for the Kindle, but it also has a headphone jack and is capable of playing MP3 files, for example. If you've ever played around with this "experimental" support of audio you probably had the same impression as me: it's nice but I'd like more control rather than just letting the device randomly play the next track.

Because of this experience I automatically assumed an audio book would be almost impossible to use on the Kindle. How could you listen to a book in random chapter order?!

Fortunately for me I finally wound up trying Audible on my Kindle. And because it's not the same as loading MP3's on your Kindle it's a much better experience. In fact, it's opened my eyes to Audible as an alternate content purchase solution for me.

I tested Audible only because they recently launched a Facebook campaign where they let you download a free audio copy of Seth Godin's latest book, Tribes. (This promo was a smart move by Audible since it undoubtedly opened the eyes of a lot of other Kindle owners.) Once I created an Audible account it was a snap to download their content manager app and grab the free book. Then it's a simple drag-and-drop from my computer to my Kindle, which was connected via USB cable.

Once the book is loaded it appears on your Kindle like any other type of content (e.g., book, magazine, newspaper, etc.) The only difference is you'll see a little speaker icon next to the title, noting that item is in audio format. Open it up and a nice audio interface is displayed where you can start from the beginning or go forwards/backwards by either 30 seconds or to the previous/next section.

The listening experience is what you'd expect and it's nice to be able to rest my eyes while still using my Kindle. Be forewarned that the audio files can be rather large, much more so than you're used to with print format. In fact, I had to clear a bunch of older stuff off my Kindle in order to fit this one audio book on it; IOW, you won't be carrying dozens of audio books around unless you've got a boatload of SD cards.

Audible has been an excellent experience overall. If you haven't tried it you ought to give it a shot. Now if they'd just fully integrate it so that I can buy a book and it's available to me in both the written and audio format, all for one price...

Book Samples Expire?!

Every time I see an interesting book I think I might like to read I immediately check to see if it's available on the Kindle. If it is, I always download the sample even if I if I can't get to it for a bit. I figure it's a good way to build a list of books I might like to read in the future. I never bothered to check whether these samples have an expiration date. After all, time-bombing samples would be silly, right?

Wrong. I recently discovered that some Kindle samples do indeed time-out. I downloaded the sample content for Pro LINQ a month or so ago and blogged earlier about the interesting zoom feature it includes. Imagine my surprise when I went to show this zoom feature to a colleague and was greeted by the following message:

End of this sample Kindle book. Enjoy the sample? Buy now or see details for this book in the Kindle Store.

At first I assumed it was a nag screen and I figured that's fair. I don't mind a gentle nudge in sample content, but it wasn't just a nag screen. I can no longer access the book's sample content. Worse, despite a couple of attempts now I can't even re-download the sample material. Stupid feature, very stupid.

Amazon, I have two questions for you. First, do you really think providing unlimited access to sample content will hurt Kindle edition sales? Second, do you also honestly believe you'll sell more Kindle content by time-bombing samples like this? (The answer to both questions is "no", btw.)

185K+ Books, But Where are All the Magazines?

I got an e-mail from Amazon today touting the fact that they now offer Kindle editions of "more than 185,000 books, blogs, newspapers and magazines." What it really should have said is they have more than 185,000 books, 26 newspapers and 18 magazines for the Kindle. (I don't focus on their blog offerings since I get all the ones I need for free from Kindlefeeder.)

I'm thrilled that the amount of Kindle content available continues to grow but it's obviously all about books. One could argue that the number of newspapers isn't likely to spike till the Kindle installed base grows dramatically, particularly in areas outside NY, LA, Chicago, etc.; I figure I'm the only Kindle owner in the entire state of Indiana, which probably explains why the Indianapolis Star isn't available yet.

What bothers me most is the thin assortment of magazines for the Kindle. 18?! Where's BusinessWeek? FastCompany? Wired? All of these would be excellent choices for Kindle editions. I currently have paper subscriptions for the latter two and would gladly drop them for the Kindle edition, even at a higher price. I also get Time and MIT's Technology Review on my Kindle and I'd gladly add more.

Given that the Kindle is still in its early adopter phase, why aren't there more technology and other early adopter magazines available for it?

Oprah's Favorite New Gadget

And so it's come to this. I suppose it was unavoidable. Oprah is apparently going to gush about the Kindle on her TV show today, so much so, in fact, that Amazon is offering $50 off the price of a Kindle for Oprah viewers. If you don't want to visit that page, just use the promotional code OPRAHWINFREY at checkout between now and November 1st.

It will be interesting to watch Kindle sales rates over the next few days. Oprah has proven to be extremely influential in the book world and I have no doubt she'll cause Kindle sales to spike. Then again, it's one thing to hype a $20 or $30 book, but will her magic work as well on a $300 dedicated e-reader?

I Want a Kindle with Twitter Built-In

Now that I've reentered the Twittersphere I have a request. Amazon, would you please integrate Twitter with the Kindle? Yes, I know that with enough patience I could Twitter from my Kindle; after all, it has a browser and a web connection already. I'm talking about something more usable.

I can't tell you how many times I've recently had the urge to grab a piece of Kindle content and Twitter it. Some of my recent tweets have been about Kindle content. For example, I'm in the midst of reading Lawrence Lessig's Remix and I've tweeted a number of times when I ran into an interesting point. I would have tweeted even more if it wasn't so cumbersome.

Here's what I'm talking about... Every menu on the Kindle should include a Twitter option. No matter where I am in The New York Times, a magazine or a book, I should be able to click on the Kindle wheel and immediately Twitter the experience. Better yet, Amazon needs to figure out how to incorporate tiny links to all this content. If I want to share an excerpt or a story, give me a tiny url to embed in my tweet.

That's not such a big deal with a newspaper like the Times, which is already accessible online...but what about the content I want to excerpt from a book? Ah, that's where Amazon needs to integrate their "Search Inside" feature with this new functionality I'm describing. I'd love to link to brief excerpts in these various tweets. I don't plan to give the entire book away...just mention a few interesting pieces of it.

This last component will require buy-in from both Amazon and all their publisher partners. Open minds will immediately appreciate all the grass roots marketing this can generate for their content; others will simply get their clocks cleaned by their open-minded competitors!

Come on, Amazon...make my day and fold this into a Kindle software update!

Kindle Web Browser

I just spent the weekend on the road without a PC. The only technology I had was my Kindle and Blackberry. The bottom line is neither of these are worthy replacements for a good old web browser on a computer.

The Blackberry's browser generally worked OK but at painfully slow speeds. I wish that were the only fault of the Kindle's browser. I realize the Kindle browser is still considered "experimental", but I couldn't believe how many times I got errors loading pages.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks Amazon and Sprint are starting to lock out certain web pages on the Kindle, particularly those that either (a) result in a lot of data traffic and/or (b) replace a paid service Amazon is trying to sell. Because of the browser's experimental state I suppose it's fine for Amazon to do this sort of thing, but they should at least tell customers what they plan to restrict. Then again, maybe it's just me being paranoid...