Amazon’s been testy recently, ever since it nuked the ability to download purchased Kindle Books back in February. I wouldn’t say they made up for that egregious move with their latest Kindle update, but it’s a welcome update, nonetheless.
As of right now, Amazon’s various Kindles have picked up a new party trick called Recaps. These are rolling out across at least some books that are part of series. Amazon compares them to the “Previously on…” parts of TV series’ episodes that recap the main plot points of previous episodes.
Recaps will serve up a”quick refresher on storylines and character arcs,” as Amazon puts it, for readers who’ve taken a long break between novels. Given that Amazon says it’s available for “thousands” of best-selling eBooks, it seems like a rather limited rollout.
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“By adding a new level of convenience to series reading, the Recaps feature enables readers to dive deeper into complex worlds and characters without losing the joy of discovery,” reads Amazon’s presser on Recap’s release.
I don’t know, Amazon. It sounds like this is exactly the opposite of the joy of discovery. Wouldn’t reading the actual book be the act of discovery? Recaps isn’t a bad idea. Let’s just not dress it up more than what it is.
Amazon says nothing about whether Recaps is AI-driven or written by real-life, old-fashioned humans. Greasy, sweaty, labor-rights-demanding meat automaton (meatomatons). Bleh. However, the company confirmed to TechCrunch that they are, in fact, AI-generated (surprise).
Download the latest update to your Kindle manually in order to get Recaps on your device if you don’t feel like waiting for an over-the-air update “within the next several weeks” that’ll push it to all Kindles.
Recaps is available on Kindles only for English-language ebooks in the U.S. right now. Sorry, rest of the world. Screwing you over seems to be a trend this year. Oh, and Recaps will come to the Kindle iOS app (sorry, Android) “soon,” in Amazon’s vague words.
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