The Kindle Instant Preview ( or #KindleInstantPreviews) was launched in USA in January 2016. It is a new feature instituted by Amazon that lets third-party blogs, sites and apps give their users the ability to browse excerpts from books without leaving their sites or apps. The idea behind it being if you give readers a little taster of what to expect in the book they are reading about online there is a greater chance of impulse buying. The application is installed as a widget in the article or blog post that allows the reader alighting on the icon to “flip” through the book and if they like it, then they can move to the “buy” button and make an instant purchase. The feature is integrated with the Kindle so it is available only for those books available on Kindle + Amazon. Here are a couple of articles on the application from January 2016:

http://www.geekwire.com/2016/embed-a-book-amazon-starts-offering-kindle-book-previews-for-third-party-websites/ and http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2016/01/kindle-instant-preview-reinforces-amazons-dominance.html .

On 24 May 2016, the Kindle Instant Preview application was launched in India too. The press release is here: http://amzn.to/1OKIeIm . Amazon India has partnered with my blog. Some of the blog posts that have been integrated with the widget for the launch are visible on Ashwin Sanghi’s The Sialkot Saga ( http://bit.ly/1UEe1lq ),

Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome ( http://bit.ly/1RDJvFr ) ,

Paro Anand’s Like Smoke ( http://bit.ly/1XDbxSF ) ,

Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood ( http://bit.ly/27R434L )
Sunil Khilnani’s Incarnations ( http://bit.ly/1OKqAEt ) ,

Meg Rosoff’s Jonathan Unleashed ( http://bit.ly/1paBhcw )

Chitra Bannerjee Divakurni’s Before We Visit The Goddess ( http://bit.ly/1NBeYsC ),

Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life (http://bit.ly/1YV1jxd)   and
LEGO books published by Scholastic India such as Lego Movie (http://bit.ly/1UaS9v2)

I am happy to partner with Amazon India for the Kindle Instant Preview application particularly if it helps in strengthening the publishing industry by benefiting the ecosystem. IMHO it gives readers a taster of what they can hope to read and offers authors & publishers the opportunities for more platforms to sell their books.

Support for my blog/website is by Akhil Namboothiri (http://akhilnamboothiri.com/ )

24 May 2016