Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
I think we need to be a little careful about our terminology here...
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More than a little, actually.
Notice that amazon isn't using the term book at all. As pointed out above, until now, a lot of content sources have done nothing to sort out short form "ebooks" from the "full-length" volumes. Once you factor in pricing issues, you can and do end up with a buyer-beware situation where you find short content sold side by side and priced comparably to longer content, leading to unpleasant discoveries.
As I said, "single" is not a term I'm thrilled with but *something* is needed to distinguish and segregate the unbunded short form content.
Amazon seens to be taking a dual track (I think) by setting up a separate wing of the Kindle store and by putting a $2.99 list-price floor on "full-length" content. Until they announce pricing for the Singles we won't know if there will be a Ceiling on those but it wouldn't surprise me if there was. (Say $1.99)
Over on the gaming side, Microsoft has similar segregation for downloadable games on XBOX Live, with the Indie/Community games separated by both section and pricing from the corporate offerings and the downloadable versions of disk-based games. That way buyers always know whether they're buying a casual diversion or a multi-week challenge. When consumers know what to expect, there is less heartburn to go around for everybody.
As publishing moves deeper into the digital domain these kinds of distinctions are going to become more and more important. Ideally we'd have an industry-wide set of terminology and conventions but the odds of that are just about zero.
