litfarm » the atlantic http://www.litfarm.com get writing. get published. Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:00:15 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 kindle the itunes of short fiction http://www.litfarm.com/2009/12/14/kindle-the-itunes-of-short-fiction/ http://www.litfarm.com/2009/12/14/kindle-the-itunes-of-short-fiction/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:00:46 +0000 chris http://www.litfarm.com/?p=316 The NYTimes reports that The Atlantic, formerly The Atlantic Monthly, will publish short stories on the Kindle at $3.99 a pop.

This is potentially really exciting news for short fiction, a form that used to be hugely popular (F. Scott Fitzgerald was considered to have squandered his talent writing short fiction for ready cash). Personally, I think the price tag is wrong–it should be $0.99, like an iPhone app.

It could be a great little money-maker for magazines who have enough reputation to give the experiment their editorial imprimatur, not to mention market it to their subscribers. It’s a good thing for authors too, as one author points out:

had she sold it to a small academic journal, it would have had “limited distribution anyway.”

It’s unlikely that unknown authors will be able to break into the Kindle on their own… for now. But if this is the first step towards an iTunes-like distribution model for fiction, then it could be.

In any event, it’s another market for short fiction and that ain’t bad.

(From bookninja.)

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