Or something.
Back in March James Patterson and Hachette announced
BOOKSHOTS by James PATTERSON"]BookShots[/URL]. (
1) and it looks like in June they released the digital side (
2). I am surprised I didn't see this around here already, I only noticed it because
Penny Arcade mentioned it today.
BookShots is described as a "reading revolution", plot driven stories that are "under 150 pages" and "under $5." Basically, novellas. As the NYT says
Quote:
...
Publishers and writers have tried to engage fickle readers with bite-size digital fiction in various ways, from unbundling short stories and selling them for 99 cents apiece, to serializing novels as short, plot driven e-books.
Still, no one has tried to apply the same bite-size commercial fiction model to print, at least not in a sustained way. It is tough to sell a single short story in print. And while some of the most beloved American literary classics are novella-length works — John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” — the format has largely fallen out of favor with publishers, who make much of their money from hardcover books, which have higher profit margins and tend to get better store placement.
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Here is their Youtube introductory video:
There is an app (
Android,
iOS) to get new exclusive* stories.
Other features of the BookShots apps:
- Read Anywhere,
Anytime with the BookShots mobile
app on iOS and Android.
- Customize your experience Choose your favorite text size, font and lighting for a perfect experience, day or night.
- Your books are synchronized
between all your devices Switch between your devices and keep your books,
bookmarks and reading activity synced.
So, they are not only inventing the novella (or at least trying to make it seem like a new concept), they are providing a completely new way to read (another app to have to deal with) that actually syncs where you are in the book across devices (just like a Kindle, and probably others). Isn't that exciting?!
On the other hand, JP books are certainly popular so maybe this will help people who don't normally read get into books. Maybe there will be books from other authors, completely separate from JP, available in this format too? Hopefully it does something other than prop up Hachette.
*
Spoiler:
*Per the Youtube video "New Alex Cross and Zoo 2 only available in BOOKSHOTS" making these sound exclusive. Of course these are also available at Amazon, Kobo, and elsewhere as ebooks and paper books, so they are apparently using a different definition of "only" than I am familiar with.
For people that aren't familiar with Penny Arcade, they also publish a
short article about their comics, in this case it is fairly interesting.
Should I have put
write in quotes when I said JP wants to
write even more books a year? At least he acknowledges he has a team of writer's working on his books.
Also, if you view the closed captioning on the Youtube video there is an amusing transcription error around 8 seconds in.