Kindle update
Meanwhile, having dominated the e-reader market, Amazon has previewed a software update that will come to its Kindle e-reader.
According to a web post, Amazon will roll out a ‘public notes' feature for the latest generation Kindle and Kindle 3G, which will allow users to choose to make their book notes and highlights available for others to see.
The idea seems to be to create a kind of book club community so professors, authors and fans can share their thoughts on specific passages and ideas in what Amazon has said is "a new way for readers to share their excitement and knowledge about books and get more from the books they read."
The update will also add ‘real page numbers' so Kindle pages match the page numbers in print books so they can read alongside paperback fans in book clubs and school classes. Apparently tens of thousands of Kindle books have already been changed to ‘real page numbers', including the top 100 bestselling titles in the Kindle Store.
This feature will also be added to the various Kindle apps in ‘the coming months', according to Amazon.
In a bid to encourage more interaction with the Kindle Store, the ‘before you go' function, which kicks in before readers reach the very end of a book, will let readers immediately rate it, share a message with their social network and get personalised recommendations of what to read next as well as see more books from the author.
And finally, there will be a new newspaper and magazine layout designed to give a snapshot of the news so readers can decide more easily what they want to read first.
Kindle owners can try and early preview of the features by manually downloading the software update, but all new gen Kindle and Kindle 3G owners will get it as an automatic update via Wi-Fi when it becomes available, said Amazon.
