Chapters/Indigo just launched Shortcovers.com, a new place to buy ebooks by the chapter. Now, I love books and technology (hell, it's the topic of my upcoming PhD thesis), but I'm not sure I understand this concept. As a Shortcovers user, you can buy a book a chapter at a time (except for a number of books that can only be purchased all at once). The individual chapters are priced at a dollar or so each, but quite often, this adds up to $20 or so per book. In all honesty, I just don't understand the point of paying $20 for an ebook, and I certainly don't understand why we'd want to do it one chapter at a time.
It seems to me that Shortcovers is an odd mix of a regular ebook retailer and iTunes. While that is an interesting notion, I don't know that the model applies well to books. Certain books, such as essay or short story collections, will transfer reasonably well to the buck-a-track model, but for anything else, buying a chapter at a time just doesn't make sense. Books are generally linear narratives, and don't like being chopped up like this. Yes, this is akin to serialisation, but in that case, the books are written with the intent of being serialised, and have a different rhythm, one that is adapted to serial publication.
That said, there seem to be some interesting features immanent to the Shortcovers system. Short stories can flourish on a site like this, and I hope to see a number of authors releasing works that would otherwise have to wait to be published as part of a collection. I also look forward to giving the authors a buck or two to read their works. Also interesting is the "remix" option that Shortcovers offers. Users can create their own "playlists" of chapters and works, and show them off to friends. I've often lamented the absence of the mixbook (the perfect compliment to the mixtape), and hope that this will result in some fantastic, reader-curated short story collections.
If nothing else, Heather Reisman was able to surprise me with Shortcovers.com. It's a crazy idea, but just might be so crazy that it works. If nothing else, we can at least say that it is a unique take on ebooks, one that plays to their electronic nature.
Friday, February 27, 2009
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1 comments:
shortcovers is a hand held POS (point of sale). I agree that the likelihood is that people won't buy a whole ebook, or even want to read one chapter at a time. What they will do, however, is scroll around, find related reading, share their thoughts with their friends, all from a device they have with them at all times. Surely, at some point, we'll pick it up and say, "But while I'm here." And that results in a book purchase direct from Indigo. Genius, really. It brings the impulse buy directly to the consumer.
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