Good: Amazon launched a new beta program that lets you offer your blog on the Kindle. I love that. I always wondered how certain blogs got in there and the rest of us were left without an option.

If you go to the Kindle Blogs page, you’ll see a link for the beta program in the left-hand colum. Just click it to to sign yourself up. Fill out all the required information, include images, and agree to the Terms of Service, and your blog will be available within 12-48 hours.

Amazon sets the price (not you) and there’s no way to give your blog away for free, which I might have done had I the option. Instead, Amazon set the price for my blog at $1.99 and I get 30% of that subscription price whenever I acquire a new Kindle reader.

This is not a viable income option, really, so don’t go there. It’s more of a nice surprise. Once your blog is approved, it’s available in the Kindle store. I have to admit, it’s kind of neat seeing my blog available for the Kindle but at the same time, I dread any user comments that might appear. Once you’re on Amazon, you open yourself up for user reviews.

Bad: I could have added any blog. Any. Bub.blicio.us is technically Brian’s blog, but I could have added it and collected the money for myself. As TechCrunch discovered, anyone can add TechCrunch even though it’s already one of Amazon’s featured blogs. Amazon is depending solely on the Honor Code (the ToS states you must own the blog).  Hmm … how trusting of Amazon.

Amazon told TechCrunch that

Occasionally, people publish material to which they do not have rights, in violation of the Terms and Conditions for Kindle Publishing for Blogs. In these cases we react vigorously to remove unauthorized copyrighted material.

The listing of a few unauthorized blogs was unfortunate and we have subsequently removed those titles.

So whether you decide to publish to Amazon or not, make sure you pay attention that no one else publishes your blog for you.

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