Big Publishers Team Up Against Kindle Format

Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader and it’s proprietary document format is facing new competition. 5 of the biggest U.S. publishers of newspapers and magazines announced a joint venture to develop technology for display of publications. Yesterday, Conde Nast, Time Inc., News Corp., Hearst Corp., and Meredith Corp. outlined their plans as an alternative to Kindle’s black and white electronic ink concept, with color display and multiple devices supported.

The idea is to highlight visuals, often seen as a strongpoint of the magazine format, in order to reinforce the unique look of each publication. Videos would also be featured, as well as games, social networking and a magazine layout that can be paged through with a finger’s touch. The new format under development would allow consumers read electronic publications on certain tablet computers, portable electronic readers and smart phones able to display color images.

In addition to being able to set their own subscription terms by breaking Amazon’s current lock on the electronic publication market, the 5 joint venture companies would stand to benefit in other ways, such as gaining greater access to subscriber data. Whether the cost of developing new formats and manufacturing, distributing and supporting reader devices would be offset by the increased revenue remains to be seen. Another unknown is what will happen to existing online content. If the publishers put their content behind a pay firewall, they risk losing all their traffic to other publishers who keep content free.