Dec 24 2009
iTunes-isation?
From The Guardian, with reference to Amazon
Atlantic Magazine, a literary short story magazine, has started to make short stories available for the Kindle (mind you, it’s $3.99 a pop, which is quite steep in my opinion).
The Guardian article alludes to the possibilities of creating a ‘mix tape’ – a sort of self-edited anthology – of short stories that you think go together.
The difference is that a mix tape is the sort of thing you create for a friend or loved one, and give it to them. The publishing industry is currently so paranoid about pirating and ‘sharing’ that this is a one-off: you’d be able to create the mix-book for a present, but you wouldn’t be able to share stories you already had (at least, not without some DRM-fiddling).
Probably not a goer. Now, if you were able to collect some extracts (say, 3 chapters or 20 pages), there is far more likelihood of the recipient going on to buy the complete ebook (maybe even using tokens / vouchers included in the gift?)
The publishing industry really needs to get less precious about its content.
