Amazon opens beta of publishing platform for periodicals, ups royalties

Amazon on Tuesday announced it will begin paying 70% royalties to magazine and newspaper publishers who release their periodicals on the Amazon Kindle starting in December. The move follows a similar royalty increase Amazon made in June, when the company began offering a 70% option for books published through its Digital Text Platform (DTP.)

Coincidentally, the company today launched the Beta of the Kindle Publishing for Periodicals tool, which is similar to DTP, but lets publishers add content and preview Kindle formatting prior to making their titles available on the E-reader.

For publishers to qualify for the increased rate, magazines and newspapers must be uniformly presented across all Kindle devices (e-reader, mobile app, or PC application,) in all regions where publishing rights are held, must match its print counterpart 95% (including the order of the sections,) and it must be published to Kindle 3 hours before print copies are delivered via XML, RSS 2.0, NITF, or XHTML feeds.

If there isn't a print counterpart, the periodical falls into the blog category, which will retain 30% royalties because, according to Amazon, "existing terms are generally more advantageous for them."

"Building on the recent introduction of Wi-Fi-enabled Kindles and the upcoming availability of newspapers and magazines on Kindle Apps, we're pleased to add an increased revenue share and a great new tool for making Kindle better and easier than ever for publishers," Peter Larsen, Director of Kindle Periodicals said in a statement Tuesday.