Amazon Sells Shorts (Find Your Own Stock Joke)

I'm putting the last touches on my latest PW feature story, but I took a break to read all the emails that piled up over the weekend, including a note fromJ Milligan (who debuted earlier this year with the novel Jack Fish) about "The Viking," a new short story that's being published by... Amazon.com?

Yep, Amazon Shorts is a platform for retailing "alternate chapters and scenes to well-known stories, personal memoirs about everything from food poisoning to contact lenses to potty training, one-act plays, and, of course, classic short stories." All of which are priced to move at a uniform 49 cents.

John Scalzi was impressed with the program from a reader's standpoint, especially since Amazon has decided not to coat the merchandise with digital rights management blockers. Once you buy a story and download the PDF file, check out the web page, or have the plain text sent to you, it's yours to copy or reformat as you see fit. He also raises some significant questions about the economic costs and benefits for writers who might like to take part in the program, ultimately seeing it as "a potentially healthy alternative market for writers, and particularly for authors who bring their own fandom to the party."