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Kindle Singles: Amazon Announces Shorter E-Books at Smaller Prices

by Lee Bains on October 13, 2010 at 06:30 AM

kindle singlesLong before the 30-minute time slot defined the TV show, and the 45-minute LP defined the album, aspiring authors were constrained by how many, or how few, words a publisher was willing to print. Such has largely been the case for our lifetimes, but, if Amazon has anything to do with it, it may not be the case much longer.

Today, the company announced that it will begin offering shorter e-books, known as Kindle Singles, at an unspecified point in the near future. The books will inhabit their own section of the Kindle Store, will lie somewhere in the range of 30 to 90 pages, and will feature lower price tags to match. Amazon hopes, and we don't think grandiosely, that the new electronic page guidelines will invite a new form, much as the EP did with music. Of course, in the meantime, Singles will likely be the domain of novellas, treatises and the like -- works that are too long to be considered articles or essays, but too short to be novels or non-fiction tomes.

So, there you have it, young writers. Your work is before you. Don't worry; it's not too much.

Tags: amazon, amazon kindle, AmazonKindle, books, e-reader, ebook, ereaders, kindle, kindle singles, kindlesingles, top, writing

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