Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) allows you, yes YOU!, to publish anything you want and put it up for sale in the Kindle Store. How cool is that?
Do you have an old novel that you wrote in college? or are you trying to find a publisher for your next best seller? Then Amazon’s Digital Text Platform is for you. So what is Digital Text Platform I hear you ask;
Digital Text Platform is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets you upload and format your books for sale in the Kindle Store.
You can read the FAQ which will guide you through setting up an account, formatting your document and how to uploading your content to the Kindle store. There is also a very active user forum for Kindle publishers to discuss the platform.
Now I think this is a very smart move by Amazon to offer this service even though we know there are a limited number of Kindles out there. Amazon is keeping tight lipped about the number of devices it has sold.
As more people get the Kindle in 2008, I think we are going to see an increase in the number of people, and companies, who decide to publish content through DTP. I don’t think its going to be just authors who use this service, its only a matter of time before blogs and print media truly jump onto the Kindle bandwagon and offer Kindle exclusive content, which I think is what Amazon wants them to do instead of just re-publishing their content in Kindle format. Think about it, soon we will be begin to see Kindle exclusive newsletters , novels, blogs entries and newspaper articles. DTP for me is what Kindle is all about, its going to give the power back to the writers. No longer is the publishing house going to decide whether you’re good enough to get published.
What do you think?
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I think the DTP service may do for writers what a lot of Internet music sites have done for unsigned bands; it is essentially a way to distribute content to a small party of interested individuals with the potential upside of capturing a large audience (going “viral”) via word-of-mouth and social networking sites. This isn’t much different from what a writer could possibly accomplish (however remote the chances) simply by putting up a web page…except there’s the ready-made prospect of a revenue stream (complete with a transaction processing system the writer doesn’t have to worry about or arrange for) and better target marketing built-in! –Yet another example of “the long tail” in action. Exciting stuff!
Exciting stuff indeed, as a writer I am most excited about Amazon’s DTP service. It will give me the freedom to write and distribute my content on my terms not the publishers.
All this is all very well and good, but there is little information for the authors themselves, aside from a forum on the DTP site wherein authors like me post about all the issues, but don’t seem to get a solution…oddly, there is no customer service to speak of–no one who seems knowledgeable about solutions to the many issues DTP presents to the AUTHOR. CreateSpace, (Amazon’s POD publishing arm) on the contrary, has outstanding customer service, efficient and competent reps and their finished product is professional and high-quality. Why can’t the Kindle/DTP folks follow their example?
There are inherent and prohibitive problems with the DTP format. I am the author of 13 books with more on the way–I still have my kindle/DTP account on a holding pattern, because I am not satisfied with the way the conversion MASTICATES the manuscript. Novels and books aren’t just text files. They have a format, typographical elements, and often, images as well. These DO NOT translate well to DTP. In the case of one of my non-fiction books, if the images don’t land where they are supposed to, or if they are not included, the text then makes no sense. I’m simply not okay with the fact that an image lands in the middle of a sentence and looks like it was taken with a toy pinhole camera made from a shoebox.
The standard for publishing is the .pdf file. It keeps the layout, formatting and typography as-is, and prevents alteration of the text when used in e-book form. This is the obvious format for DTP/Kindle/e-books of all kinds. Perhaps the Kindle was premature. Ever heard of getting the cart before the horse? To the Kindle-Developers, et al: First, make sure the horse can maneuver the cart properly, before hooking them up together.
Until then, I suppose we authors will have to offer .pdf versions of our books on our websites, but without the benefit of the traffic Amazon has.
Kelli Jae Baeli
http://jaebaeli.com
http://SynapticCircus.blogspot.com
hi amazon i’d like to get my poetry published and distributed by you. please tell me the procedure required for me to start being published.