Los Angeles — Hot on the heels of announcing that it will have a Kindle app for the upcoming Blackberry PlayBook tablet, Amazon on Tuesday moved forward in its attempt to cover-all-the-bases approach to digital books online with the test launch of a new product called Kindle for the Web. The new program will allow users to access e-books through the browser without having to download the content.
Kindle for the Web, which has been labeled with the “beta” tag, shares some resemblance to Scribd, a company that has been billing itself as the YouTube for documents and has become a popular destination for viewing and sharing documents and book samples, many of them free.
Kindle for the Web has a big social-networking component. (Credit: Amazon)
“Kindle for the Web” is featured on the online retail giant’s website, Amazon.com, and will allow Web site owners or bloggers to embed a portion of an e-book into their websites or shared through Facebook and Twitter as part of the Amazon Associates Program.
It empowers digital book enthusiasts to first read books on the Web without having to install any software. Users can click on a “Read First Chapter Free” button on selected Amazon books and a browser window opens featuring the sample chapter. The book can also be purchased directly from the browser. If a user clicks through that embedded content and purchases the e-book or physical book, the Web site owner will earn a referral fee.
“With Kindle for the Web, it is much easier than ever for customers to sample Kindle books — there is no need to download or install any application,” Amazon Kindle director Dorothy Nicholls said in a statement.
The sample opens in a separate browser window; no software installation required. (Screenshot by eBrandz)
“Kindle for the Web Beta is configured for the latest web standards and is best viewed with Firefox 3.6, Safari 5, or Chrome 5,” it adds.
Amazon already enabled users to read the beginning of most books it offered, however, these previews are based on scanned versions of the books.
The online book retailer has already made Kindle books accessible on a host of devices beyond the company’s own Kindle e-reader. The app also empowers you to customize the way the pages are displayed, font sizes, colors and so on, just like with the Kindle device and mobile or desktop apps.
On Monday, Amazon announced a Kindle application for an upcoming tablet computer from Blackberry maker Research in Motion.