Amazon’s Kindle For Web: All Flash And No Substance?

Amazon is doing its best to extend the Kindle reach into all kinds of devices. With apps for iOS, Android, and the BlackBerry PlayBook (coming soon), plus a desktop app for PC and Mac, the bookseller can create the appearance of openness and diversity without actually being any more open than they were before.

For example, the new Kindle for the Web service that beta launched this week has some interesting elements to it – the ability to embed samples of Kindle books into a web page, for instance – but is not super exciting overall. Samples of the first chapters of books online is nothing new as publishers have been doing that for years. A direct link to buy the book and send it to your Kindle is handy, but is more about driving sales than widening Kindle’s reach.

It’s great that this new service is platform agnostic, but Amazon’s own Look Inside This Book service has been doing something similar for a while. So why is everyone acting like this is a big deal?

If this really is a move by Amazon to stay more relevant in the eBook space, why aren’t they doing something more radical and game-changing? Giving authors new tools to help them sell books is certainly a plus. But it’s not fundamentally different or markedly better than the tools available to them before. Giving users a way to sample a product before they commit to buying is another plus, but with the same caveat.

What I wish Amazon would do is give up on proprietary formats and embrace ePub. Right now that doesn’t seem likely.