If you own a Kindle, you know that reading most books and magazines on this device can be boring. While the Kindle will provide you with all the important text, you’ll be missing out on some great artwork if you opt for the e-version of a book or magazine. Up until this point, there really wasn’t a good way for publishers to add graphic content to e-books and magazines. Now, Amazon has released HTML and CSS tools for publisher of e-books to use.

Not only are these tools easier to use, but Amazon hopes that adding graphics to some content will make e-books more appealing. Soon, it seems, you won’t have to be a graphic designer in order to create e-content images. All you’ll really need to do is get hooked up with Amazon’s latest publishing feature in order to create a graphically designed masterpiece (of sorts).

Cost Concerns

While the idea of adding colorful graphics to some books (admittedly, a graphic-based War and Peace is simply an insult) like children’s books and magazines is sure to appeal to many e-book readers. However, when publishers add any additional content to e-books, the price of those e-books tends to climb. If you take into consideration the fact that most e-content is already expensive, you may begin to wonder how much a newly illustrated e-book will cost consumers.

For some, buying an e-reader, such as a Kindle, just doesn’t make any sense money-wise. This will be especially true if the cost of buying e-content is much higher than the cost of buying a hard copy or paperback. Amazon should tread carefully when it comes to pricing for the new e-books or the content giant may find a lot of consumers backing away from Kindle purchases.

The Design Angle

Needless to say, some graphic designers are less than thrilled at Amazon’s new offering. Book art, to many, is something that should be created by a professional designer. Seemingly, Amazon’s new graphics tools will make it easy for any publisher to cut out professional designers altogether, and this has many worried about their livelihoods. Amazon’s new tools haven’t been openly explored yet, but a few designers have voiced some worry over the new additions.

Then again, only a professional designer will be able to come up with graphic concepts that really stand out. So, publishers can use Amazon’s new tools as much as they like, but a truly great illustration (even using these new tools) will not surface without the help of a professional. Writer too are concerned that e-books might turn into highly illustrated offers that include less and less words as consumers become more adept at reading images (simply speculation though).

It doesn’t seem to be too much of a stretch for some publishers to offer illustrated versions of classic books (badly illustrated is also a possibility). As you might have guessed, Amazon will be opening up a lot of different questions surrounding these new tools. On the publisher side of things, at least, Amazon’s new graphics options sound promising.