Amazon?s Kindle Singles program, which specializes in e-publishing written works of short to intermediate length, has sold in excess of two million Singles over the past 14 months, indicating yet another sweeping financial success for the gargantuan e-distributor and hinting at the revitalization of several literary formats that had previously been, for most financially struggling writers (a phrase that is almost redundant), not quite worth their time.
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Since January 2011, Kindle Singles has served as a platform for, as Amazon claims, ?compelling ideas expressed at their natural length,? publishing 165 titles that range from 5,000 to 30,000 words in length, in a variety of narrative forms including essays, short fiction, and longform journalism, as reported by PaidContent. Titles are featured on the Amazon website and can be downloaded straight to the Kindle at prices ranging from $ .99 to $ 2.99.
The success of this format has attracted big names like Stephen King and Lee Child. More importantly, in the eyes of many, it can serve as a testing ground for eager new voices. (Photo: Amazon)
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Say what you will about Amazon?s predatory business practices ? many have, and perhaps with just cause ? but Kindle Singles has published three new titles each week, and in the process sent forth into the reading world a shock of short fiction and long-form journalism that otherwise may have been relegated to the pages of an unread magazine, or worse, left unwritten.
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Literary magazines still publish excellent short fiction, and websites like longform.org and longreads.com work to highlight the best long-form journalism from around the world, but none of thes venues has the distribution capacity to pay authors as much as Amazon can. It is both crass and true to say that if authors can?t make money doing what they love, they are less likely to love it so.
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Startups like Byliner.com and Atavist.net have also taken up the cause of short to mid-length literature and journalism, advertising themselves as boutique publishing houses that curate short pieces and make them available for download at prices similar to Amazon?s.
(Last year, Byliner caused quite a stir when it published Jon Krakauer's "Three Cups of Deceit How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way," charging the "Three Cups?of Tea" author of untruthful statements in his bestselling book.)
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Hopefully, the success of Amazon?s Singles platform will inspire more and more publishing houses to adopt their model, or even improve upon it, thus diversifying and improving the content available to readers as well as preventing the notoriously slippery Amazon from eventually lowballing authors.? But if this does not happen, at least Amazon has us talking about short fiction and journalism again in terms of potential rather than demise.
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Long or short, fiction or non, corporate or boutique -- we here at Page Views support anything that increases the sphere of good writing?s influence. The world could never have too much of that.?
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Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/03/amazon-kindle-singles-reaches-two-millionth-sale
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