Tcoz Tech Wire (Kindle Edition) is available in the Amazon Store! If only the subscription process WORKED...oh wait it does but it didn't seem to...

A few days ago, when Amazon announced they were allowing all bloggers to submit their blogs to Kindle Publishing, I decided to do it; I went through the process, filled out the forms, and awaited approval. You can read that post here:

Weds., May 13th, 2009 Subscribe to my Blog On Your Kindle!

Lo and behold, today I checked in, and found that Tcoz Tech Wire (Kindle Edition) is now live. Users all around the world can have my blog delivered daily right to their Kindle e-books. Naturally, I wanted to blog about the fact that my blog is now available as a Kindle-published blog. 

Like I said in my last article, I don't really expect to make any money doing it, especially since it's been reported that Amazon gets 70% of the subscription price which in my case, Amazon set at $1.99 (Amazon sets the price for you based on what they determine the worth is...hmm...). But, it's fun, puts me in the Amazon store, and makes me searchable on the Kindle blog list, all free. I'll take it. 

Anyway, back to Tcoz Tech Wire, Kindle Edition. The screenshot below shows the splash page at Amazon:

There I am, in the Amazon store. How about that? I need a subscriber, so I may as well be the first one.  I got out my Kindle, went to "Shop in Kindle Store", went to the "Blogs" section, went to the "Internet & Technology" section...and saw 124 pages of blogs. Ugh...time for search. I typed in "tcoz", and up popped the Tcoz Tech Wire subscription offer. 

So, I subscribed; you get a 14-day free trial, so I figured if I don't like this guy's work, I can always ditch him anonymously. I clicked "Subscribe"...

...and BLAMMO. A message pops up, "We were unable to process your subscription request at this time. We are working on the problem. You can contact Kindle Customer Service at 1-866-321-8851 or try subscribing again later." 

The Kindle specialist team had this to say:

"There is a waiting time, even after it's approved and listed, until you can actually subscribe". I pointed out that I submitted the blog the day this service went live, which seemed to make the support rep a little uncertain of her first answer, so I got put on hold for a bit while she did a little checking. 

She came back with, "You appear to be subscribed to the blog.". I checked the device, and there it was, delivered to my book list. I mentioned that I hadn't received any success message or any such confirmation on the Kindle device, etc. etc., and that I hadn't double clicked during the processing (you see the little spinning icon in the upper left of the Kindle, letting you know network access is active), they said they'd look into it. She did say that double clicking on the subscription would generate the error, and even though I hadn't double-clicked, it still seems borky; it should say that your subscription is pending, or that you've already subscribed. All in all, she agreed and said they'd look it over. 

Anyway, there it is, on the Kinle. Now let's open it up; there's Saturday's article ("Turn your IPhone into a Web Server"). Easy to read, properly formatted, with my images all there. Note: my blog is very simply formatted, no gew-gaws or advanced CSS of any kind. For Kindle publishing, this might be the way to go, at least for now. 

Great, so it's working on the Kindle, let's go to my Dashboard at the Kindle Publishing site and see what happened...hmm. I don't see any way to tell how many subscribers I have, or any other such data. I'll have to put in a call about that. My vendor reports and such are all unavailable...interesting. All right, the program is young, I have some things to learn about managing it probably. I'll have to blog it another day. 

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way things are going. I do think that 70% of a $1.99 subscription is a heavy hammer blow, and there seems to be a couple of glitches along the way, but it's all FREE. People compare this to the Apple store, but they leave out the fact that, as an independent developer to register a business as an "official" iPhone developer, you pay $105 a year, and they still take some off the top of all app sales. 

For the indie blogger/software developer type, my view is, this is a great opportunity to get your stuff out there. If you're not happy with the arrangement, don't use the Kindle Publishing tool. 

Now please go and subscribe to Tcoz Tech Wire on your Kindle :)

As always, thanks for visiting.