MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Amazon Singles

fjtorres · 10-12-2010, 03:12 PM

The folks at ZDNet make several good points about Singles:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazon...20?tag=nl.e539

The one I find most compelling is that the shorter content would be a good fit for the Kindle apps on smartphones. For commuters.

I've also seen several people suggest we might see the return of serials.

The business case I find most interesting is for back list short fiction. In many (most?) cases authors retain rights on those stories so there's no need to get the BPHs involved. And for a lot of older magazine-published stories even a few hundred copies sold could deliver move revenue to the author than the initial sale. There's a lot of author good will coming Amazon's way if this thing takes off.

As for organization, well at a minimum, Kindle has Collections so setting up a tag for shorts is easy. Or maybe there will be a firmware update that will physically segregrate them the same way news and magazines are.

Any way you look at it this is going to be a relatively high-visibility channel for short-form content which has few if any outlets these days.

10-12-2010, 03:12 PM	#9
fjtorres Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,732 Karma: 128354696 Join Date: May 2009 Location: 26 kly from Sgr A* Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000	The folks at ZDNet make several good points about Singles: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazon...20?tag=nl.e539 The one I find most compelling is that the shorter content would be a good fit for the Kindle apps on smartphones. For commuters. I've also seen several people suggest we might see the return of serials. The business case I find most interesting is for back list short fiction. In many (most?) cases authors retain rights on those stories so there's no need to get the BPHs involved. And for a lot of older magazine-published stories even a few hundred copies sold could deliver move revenue to the author than the initial sale. There's a lot of author good will coming Amazon's way if this thing takes off. As for organization, well at a minimum, Kindle has Collections so setting up a tag for shorts is easy. Or maybe there will be a firmware update that will physically segregrate them the same way news and magazines are. Any way you look at it this is going to be a relatively high-visibility channel for short-form content which has few if any outlets these days.