Amazon offers short stories for 49 cents
At BBB we are usually disinclined to post what are essentially press releases when anyone releases a new feature/product but this new thing from Amazon made us sit up. Apparently Amazon has gone into the micropayments for literature world by initiating a service allowing short story authors to sell short works for 49 cents each. But the real interesting tidbit is the following:
No digital rights management software is needed to download and read Amazon Shorts.
Customers have three options for reading a piece:
-- View now: Takes customers to a Web page to read or print out the Amazon Short.
-- Download: Initiates the download of a PDF file.
-- E-mail: Sends the entire Amazon Short in a plain-text message to the specified e-mail address.
Kudos to Amazon for creating a system to help authors profit from short works and not fear “piracy.” Copyright holders of Books are notoriously frightened of the internet and have even gotten Google to delay their massive library scanning project. The ridiculousness is that the internet has actually saved the book marketplace from almost total obscurity and Amazon realizes that by not putting locks on the content they can promote the service more.
Has Bezos got a few more tricks up his sleeve?
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Thank you for posting this. Not all press releases are bad. This is extremely significant news; neither bad nor good, but very important. It’s essentially about bringing iTunes to the publishing world. I have no idea why the mainstream media didn’t pick up on this. Now, I wonder how Amazon are going to handle the product supply chain for this… Will customers be overrun with a heapload of self-published third-rate work they have to evaluate for themselves, or will it all be good stuff fit for the mag market?
Posted by Jason Gonzales on 09/05 at 09:36 AM
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