Amazon announced on Tuesday the launch of “Kindle Singles,” e-books that bridge the gap between magazine features and novel-length works – and what the company hopes could do for book publishing what the $.99 “single" did for iTunes.
In its announcement, Amazon described the “singles” as “Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book.” The company said they will be between 10,000 and 30,000 words, or roughly 30-to-90 pages in length, and will be priced accordingly.
Amazon did not specify what that pricing would be, and the company did not immediately respond to a pair of requests seeking comment. Full-length e-books typically cost $9.99 in the Kindle Store.
“Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book,” Amazon said.
The company is calling on “serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world.” Amazon is asking “interested parties” to contact digital-publications@amazon.com.
"Kindle Singles" is an interesting idea, though there are plenty of hurdles — namely, who's gonna write them? Are authors going to be interested in writing for an Amazon-created format, yet sell or split proceeds at a rate less than they would get writing for a magazine or publishing a full-length novel?
Amazon is already facing stiff competition from the iPad, which has been able to lure magazine publishers with its flashy presentation and promise of being able to sell monthly subscriptions, eventually. And "Kindle Singles" seem to be aimed at both content producers and consumers with attention spans that — like magazine-reading on the iPad — are more suited to shorter-length works. RELATED: Price War: Amazon Introduces $139 Wi-Fi Kindle
"Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format," Kindle content VP Russ Grandinetti said in announcing the initiative.
Amazon says it “might be the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated–whether it's a business lesson, a political point of view, a scientific argument, or a beautifully crafted essay on a current event.” But it remains to be seen if there’s enough interest among Kindle owners — or even content producers — to back up that business rationale.
