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Amazon Debuts Kindle Textbook Creator

Amazon has unveiled a new segment of Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), KDP EDU, targeted at educators and authors of textbooks and other educational content.

Publicly available as a beta, Kindle Textbook Creator is designed to allow authors to use PDFs "easily prepare, publish and promote e-textbooks and other educational content for students to access on a broad range of devices," according to a news release. Once created, the resources can be uploaded to KDP for use by students anywhere in the world on Kindle Fire tablets, iOS and Android devices, Macs or PCs.

Features of textbooks created with the tool include:

  • The ability to highlight in multiple colors for easy reference;
  • A notebook tool for storing notes, key passages, images and bookmarks in a single location;
  • The ability to create flashcards;
  • Dictionary with definitions and Wikipedia information for difficult terms; and
  • The ability to read on multiple devices.

"With KDP, authors can earn royalties of up to 70 percent, while keeping their rights and maintaining control of their content," according to information released by Amazon. "They can also choose to enroll their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions."

"I'm in love with Kindle Textbook Creator! It's a great solution for the issues I had with converting many of my math-intensive print books to Kindle format," said Chris McMullen, author of Full Color Illustrations of the Fourth Dimension, in a prepared statement "Educational content often includes many equations, graphs, and tables. Kindle Textbook Creator made it easy for me to convert the print version of my geometry book to Kindle and reach even more readers."

More information is available at kdp.amazon.com.

About the Author

Joshua Bolkan is contributing editor for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe. He can be reached at [email protected].

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