eBook Kindle Editions
Are eBook Kindle editions readable by everyone? If purchased from Amazon, the answer is “no.” Whether you’re using a Kindle device, an Android device with the Kindle app, or an Apple device with the Kindle app, you can read eBooks from Amazon. What about eBooks you purchase from BooksOnline.Club? We have some answers for you.
In the beginning (in the beginning of this online bookstore, not the beginning described in Genesis) we created and published Amazon Kindle editions and Apple Books editions, and you could buy and download and install either edition. But we soon realized that something like 70% of us buy our books on Amazon, not from Apple’s bookstore. Most people have no idea how to find Apple’s bookstore, let alone purchase books from it. Sorry Steve Jobs, but Tim Cook has done nothing to improve the Apple Books experience since you left this world.
The reality is that the vast majority of book readers purchase from Amazon directly, whether they want digital, paperback, hardcover, or audiobooks. You can see the dramatic stats in the graphic to the right. Notice the eBook Kindle editions sold and the paperback editions sold by Amazon.
What made matters worse for Apple was the horrendously difficult experience authors have had for years and years trying to get their Apple Books account set up and upload books to the Apple Books store. It’s about 10 times more cumbersome than using KDP to upload books to Amazon. Apple has literally had two decades to clean up their software code and the interface, but they have not.
This means that the Apple Books experience has not been a happy experience for authors. It also translates into much greater difficulty for consumers who want to add an Apple edition to their own reading device. None of these difficulties exist with the Kindle books, and I’ll tell you briefly why.
KDP (the Kindle service for authors) is a very good interface for authors who want to upload their books to Amazon. And for consumers, it’s easy to shop for books in any edition, including Kindle editions, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook, on Amazon’s site.
Kindle & Audiobooks on BooksOnline.Club?
In the beginning we could offered only eBooks here, and then we stepped up our game by improving our technology to offer audiobooks with our incredible free mobile app, and then we added paperbacks editions of our books. That turned out to be anti-consumer because of price, so we deleted that option as it made no sense for our readers. Why? The outsourcing to print books costs us and you more than what Amazon charges for printing and shipping for Prime customers. As far as print books, it makes sense for consumers to purchase their paperbacks and hardcovers directly from Amazon.
All our eBooks at BooksOnline.Club are readable on any device, including a dedicated Kindle reader, an Android device with the free Kindle app installed, and an Apple device with the free Kindle app installed. Most of these books are available in paperback versions on Amazon. Many of our books have an audiobook edition on our site and readable with our MySoundWise mobile reading app, and if BooksOnline.Club doesn’t have an audiobook version, we link you directly to that Amazon audiobook. For our Affiliates, they just need to be aware that the 30% affiliate fee they earn through their affiliate links applies to the books we host on BooksOnline.Club and not any books purchased directly from Amazon. This is all explained in our Affiliate Instructions: Conditions and Terms.
Without going into a long story about why our print edition partnership with Lulu.com did not work out, I’ll get right to the point with few words. While Lulu offered a way to connect our store with their printing service and your orders through our payment system which also is connected to our affiliate software, Lulu got greedy and started charging gigantic fees for shipping. They charge so much for shipping, it makes no sense to buy the print books. Amazon will sell the same book and ship it for a fraction of what Lulu charges. Realizing consumers are not going to pay ridiculously high shipping prices, we decided to eliminate that as an option. If the book is available on Amazon, we do include a direct link. This works find for consumers, but it also means that any print edition purchased directly from Amazon is excluded from our Affiliate program.
Our key goal is to make all these wonderful books available to you in a very convenient and non-technical interface. We design everything we do with our customers’ best interest as the #1 priority. Period. Everything we do is subservient to our customers and clients’ best interests. This is something we work on continuously, and your suggestions to improve your experience are always welcome. In fact, you can leave comments below this article, and we thank you in advance.
Differences Between Apple and Amazon eBooks and BooksOnline
Both Apple and Amazon convert all of the eBooks that authors submit into their own proprietary code, which is engineered to be read best on their own proprietary reading devices. Not so at BooksOnline. Our eBook code can be read by all dedicated eReaders and reading apps that are not proprietary, and also by many that are proprietary.
For your information, Apple epubs are much larger than Kindle epubs, and the reason is that Apple uses a much higher resolution for images than Amazon does for their eBooks. I don’t see any difference, but that’s one big difference. A Kindle eBook can be read on the Apple Books app, but the front cover image doesn’t show up, at least as of the last time I tested eBooks on various devices. The formatting is different also.
BooksOnline gives you the greatest freedom to use whatever dedicated reading device or reading app that works for you.
