Amazon adds five Indian languages to Kindle Direct Publishing

With Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), authors can now self-publish their eBooks in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, and Malayalam to customers in India and across the world.

This free service allows authors to get to market fast, keep control of their books' rights and set their own list prices while earning a royalty of up to 70% on the sale of their eBooks.

"I have been a KDP author for 5 years," explained author Sundari Venkatraman who has all of her eBooks on Amazon. "Having KDP support for Indian languages is fantastic. I have published in English and planning to release my books in Hindi and Tamil. KDP has given me a way to make my stories available to a wider audience."

According to Sanjeev Jha, Director of Kindle Content in India, "We launched Indian language eBooks in 2016, and with the addition of Indian languages to KDP, we will offer readers a wider selection of titles. We are excited to bring the work of Indian language authors to millions of readers in India and across the world."

KDP has been available for English authors in India since 2012, with tens of thousands of authors benefiting from its services. At any point, up to 20% of the top 100 eBooks on Amazon.in are from KDP. Authors simply need to log in to https://kdp.amazon.com and upload their manuscript to publish their eBook. Once published, these books are available for download everywhere-on Kindle e-Readers or on the Kindle App.

Amazon has also added Indian language titles to Kindle Unlimited, the subscription service that allows customers to read as much as they want from over one million Kindle eBooks, with plans starting from Rs 150 per month.

The company has also filed a patent for a new technology that would let Alexa analyze a user's voice to determine whether they are sick or depressed. The company will then sell products based on consumers' physical or emotional condition.

"For example, physical conditions such as sore throats and coughs may be determined based at least in part on a voice input from the user, and emotional conditions such as an excited emotional state or a sad emotional state may be determined based at least in part on voice input from a user," the patent says. "A cough or sniffle, or crying, may indicate that the user has a specific physical or emotional abnormality."