Quote:
This week Apple has introduced a new section on the iBooks store that bears the title Quick Reads. The section contains shorter, cheaper ebooks that aim to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Singles. The books are much smaller in size than your average iBook and range in price from $0.99 to $4.99.
The new section features a mix of genres that span both fiction and non-fiction selections. Many of the offerings are novellas or short stories, some are essays. There are some recognizable names on the list though, like Lee Child, John Scalzi and Anne Rice. There are other types of offerings on display too like recipe books and bundles of instructive websites like IKEA hacks.
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What does this mean?
The first thing it means is that Amazon was definitely on to something when it pioneered this type of offering with Kindle Singles. I thought it wouldn't work at the time, because I didn't think there was a market for "intermediate form" reading (although I happened to like such forms). I thought that it was clear the people liked either "book length" or "article/short story length" but nothing in between.
The success of "Longreads", "Kindle Singles" , etc. seems to show that I ( and most publishers) were wrong. Apple has followed with "Quick Reads": can B&N, Kobo and Google be far behind?
I'm looking forward to the return of the novella/short novel form to prominence. Us old fogies can remember the ACE Double : two short novels bound in one book. Finish reading one novel, turn the book upside down, start the next.
Of course, you don't do that with e-books, but the idea is that authors can explore ideas at the length that fits these ideas, rather than the either/or of the novel/ short story.
I'm also intrigued by the idea of the SERIAL maybe returning to replace the SERIES as a way of telling the epic story.SFF seems to be wedded to the idea of the SERIES-the trilogy ( or more) of 1000 page novels, each coming out every 3-5 years or so. The extreme example here is ASOIAF, but there are plenty of lesser examples. It maybe better if the story is told like the old magazine SERIALS, in which the story is told in novella length form doled out every six months or so.
Any thoughts about the return/rise of the intermediate form?