Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Amazon.com starts selling exclusive digital “shorts”

Amazon.com Inc. started selling new works of short literature and nonfiction on Friday from authors who write them exclusively for the Internet retailer.

It’s not offering printed editions, just digital copies that can be e-mailed, downloaded or printed from a Web site for 49 cents a pop.

“Publishers have always had a hard time selling and marketing the single, short-form work,” author Daniel Wallace said in a statement released by the Seattle-based e-commerce titan. “Amazon.com has created a new way for authors to get that kind of work out there, which is incredibly exciting.”

About 60 authors have signed up so far, including novelist Danielle Steel, who writes about her life in a 13-page short titled “Candy for the Soul.”

Shorts range from 2,000 to 10,000 words and are sold in six categories: literature and fiction, nonfiction and essays, biographies and memoirs, mystery and thrillers, editor’s picks and one dubbed “Maybe You Know …”

which is kinda weird, ’cause Amazon let’s you download some novels (ie Accelerando) for free.. (albeit in .PDF format), but now they’re charging for short-stories..