Kindle e-books are being redesigned to be more interactive and visually appealing, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Amazon announced Kindle Format 8 (KF8) Tuesday, a new HTML-5 supported format for e-books that helps design-centered books pop.
“As showcased on Kindle Fire, KF8 enables publishers to create great-looking books in categories that require rich formatting and design such as children’s picture books, comics and graphic novels, technical and engineering books and cookbooks,” Amazon said.
Kindle Format 8 will replace the existing Mobi format Amazon used previously, and allows designers to choose from 150 capabilities such as embedded fonts, drop caps, line spacing, alignment, justification, margin, color, style and border. That means bright new visuals and good design for books that rely on images, the Christian Science Monitor said.
The new format is currently only available with the new Kindle Fire, but Amazon said it will eventually be available through Kindle apps and other latest generation e-ink devices like the Kindle Touch.
The new Kindle capabilities now threaten visual works like coffee table books and cookbooks, which the Christian Science Monitor called “the last bastion of publishing.” Technology Review blogger David Zax agrees, saying that “KF8 threatens to be the first format to frighten even those in publishing who have believed that the paperbound book-as-art-object will always have pride of place on the coffee table or nightstand.”
