Amazon.com Inc. started selling new works of short literature and nonfiction Friday from authors who write them exclusively for the Internet retailer.
It won't be offering printed editions, just digital copies of short stories 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."
The top selling title late Friday afternoon: Harry S. Dent's "Bubble After Bubble in The Ongoing Bubble Boom: Oil Bursts, the Housing Bubble Fades and Now Stocks Emerge Into a GREater Bubble that Finally Ends in 2010."
Amazon.com started out as an online bookstore 10 years ago and now sells everything from bird feeders to brake fluid. The new "shorts" range from 2,000 to 10,000 words.
