The Kindle is revolutionary

[Connor]

In case you hadn't guessed by the title, in my opinion the Kindle is revolutionary. Why? Because of it's short story market. Before, short stories were either published free on the web, or were put into anthologies with other writers, with a tiny share of the royalties whereas on the kindle you can publish for around $1 / 1 pound (sorry no pound symbol on this keyboard.) I've recently read an amazing book on kindle which was about ten pages long. What's everyone else's opinion on the short story kindle market?

[glyndwr99]

I like it, though people only seem to "buy" my stuff when I do the free promo. That's fine with me... but I do like being able to push out shorter works--shorter editing, review, even the covers are fun to do, since they are shorts they don't have to be elaborate.

[kennyc]

I agree that the ebook (not limited to Kindle) is completely changing the face of publishing for the better. Unfortunately those in power (the Big 6 traditional publishers) are doing everything they can to preserve the status quo.

[Burton]

So you can publish any length of work for Kindle? How would this affect pricing (novel vs. short stories)?

[Zach0622]

The kindle's a great piece of technology, I'm in love with mine, I can assure you of that. But I doubt it really revolutionizes independent and self publishing. A lot of what I saw in the store was the same stuff your neighborhood Barnes and Nobles will have on the 'bestseller' rack. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but it isn't always a good thing. Especially when contrite horsesh*t like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey are getting published.

Good stuff is on it though, and it's for quite a bit less than the actual book, which is nice for we starving artists. I'd recommend the 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' series. Stieg Larson is a stud of a writer. And his name is Stieg... that's awesome.

[Gaines]

In terms of revolutionizing the publishing industry it already has. Sure there will be as much crap as always but there will some nuggets in the mix that otherwise would wither in the dark obscurity of never published land. From the morass of tripe and trash good voices will rise above the din to be heard. That in itself constitutes a revolution worth fighting for. Who knows..those voices could easily be yours and mine.

The current publishing technologies, ebooks and POD books, have revolutionized publishing far more than the the Gutenberg press.
The press made it possible for people with money to get wide readership, the current stuff makes it possible for ANYBODY to publish.

Whoever said amazon has the same stuff as their local bookstore just hasn't looked. I get email lists of hundred of free ebooks every day, and THOUSANDS of line-listed free ebooks. It's so much wider than a bookstore, it's a whole higher order of count.
And that's just free books.
Which range from absolutely excellent reading you never heard of before to grotesquely messed-up weirdness to jaw-dropping incompetence.

[kindleheart]

Personally, as a reader, I love the idea of short stories for Kindle. We are able to do things traditional publishing won't. I think there's a market for short stories. We can't deny the fact that there are people out there who don't read novels.

I just learned a lot about Kindle Shorts today. Look into it. One nice thing is that you can put one up for 99 cents and get the 70% royalty, unlike books where you can only get 35%

Very handy tool for expression and marketing as well.

Regarding people only buying when you put them free, don't worry about that. Put ads for your other books in the back, and a link where they can sign up for your mailing list or notification for next book.

[Devon]

Didn't know about the 99 cents/75% royalty on shorts. Huh. I thought it was still 35%. I haven't gotten that far in my Kindle publishing research yet.