The Seattle-based Fortune 500 company Amazon just expanded the “Earth's biggest selection” of merchandise online by offering customers the option of buying the 49 cents a piece short-form literature dubbed Amazon Shorts that are unlikely to be ever found in print. Promising customers a whole new way of enjoying and sampling the written works of various authors on a wide-array of subjects, the Amazon Shorts offer an exclusive read, that can only be delivered digitally.
Amazon Vice President of Digital Media, Steve Kessel said of Amazon’s efforts to make the new form of literature widely available, "Amazon Shorts will help authors find new readers and help readers find and discover authors they'll love…to fuel a revival of this kind of work". Unlike Publishers who have a tough time trying to sell or market short-form works like the novellas, novelettes and novelinis, Amazon believes that these works are best suited for the digital media. Author Daniel Wallace in hoping for the success of Amazon’s new effort said "It's my hope that their Shorts program brings a renewed interest to the genre”.
The Amazon Shorts will include works from well-known authors in a range of genres, subjects and formats, about everything from potty training to plays, and the expected short stories. Even as works of Robin Cook, Danielle Steel, and Pico Iyer, jostle for a bit of shelf-space in traditional bookshops, their copyrighted short forms will be available for less than the price of Coke drink. And customers who part with their 49 cents have three options to read each piece – “view now” that allows an immediate read or print, “download” that stores the work in its PDF form or “email” that gets the piece emailed to the specified email id. And if customers want another read, they can always access their Amazon Digital Locker to print out hard copies their purchased Shorts.
The “Amazon Shorts” a concept amazingly similar to Apple’s idea of iTunes is only different in that it takes the text form that needs to be read rather than heard, making it as not portable as music. However, with a Bluetooth-equipped handheld, even that gap can be bridged as customers can literally read the gripping pieces even on the go. Though not expected to be profitable at 49 cents, it is an experiment in a niche market that may augur the development of literature for newer mediums like cell phones, notebooks PCs, handhelds and what say even iPod like devices in the future.
