How do you define a book for an Amazon Kindle?

Amazon sells books and the kindle is a reader for digital books. But some of the books available for download from kindle seem to stretch the definition of the word "book".

How short can something be if it is considered to be a book? I have looked at the free downloads and often there are wonderful books to download and there is no limit to how many free ones you can get.

This would be fine except that kindle now allows self publishing. Actually this is a mixed blessing. I had an unpublished novel on my hard drive and it is now available on Amazon as a kindle download should anyone want to read it. (If you are interested my novel "Capcir Spring" (UK download link) will be available for free download on 17th and 18th March 2012 as a kindle promotion) The downside is that the system is not being moderated.

As a result of this lack of moderation all sorts of pieces of writing are being published as books where they would never get off the trash pile in a traditional publisher. One I downloaded looked like a college report. Another that I downloaded was so short that I had read all seven chapters in fifteen minutes! I am glad I never paid for any of these - I would have been seriously miffed if I had.

Perhaps it is inevitable that such open access to publishing will make available all sorts of material and it is up to us to chose.  We have to be discerning as we are not protected by quality control filter of the publishers. Looking at one memoir I saw poor spelling, poor grammar and a confused structure but the old man who had submitted the book admitted that he had never been a writer. He was proud to just write like he spoke and if you didn't like it - tough. There is a democracy in this widening of access to publishing if it allows people who's voices have never been heard to speak to a wider audience. But it is a problem if the genre is swamped by those who paste a few wikipedia entries together and call it a definitive guide. Their only motive is to persuade people to buy an ebook made up of information that is freely available on the Internet. 

Then again if the content had been strictly moderated would I have got a rejection slip for my novel!

If you have a kindle, please download my novel during the free promotion period. If you like it then leave positive feedback on Amazon. If you don't like it or think it is not so good then please don't leave feedback and just be glad you haven't paid anything for it! ;-)

Click here to go to the download page for "Capcir Spring" at Amazon in the USA