Monday, February 07, 2011
kindling a new wave in mission?
Interesting news just out that Amazon are launching Kindle singles. I love the tag line –
Compelling Ideas Expressed at Their Natural Length.
The current book has a certain genre – it needs to be so many words to be taken seriously and to make economic sense. Yet quite a few books I read are simply puffed and padded to meet the genre. Much better surely to let the idea dictate the size, rather than the various expectations.
They are talking about prices of less than a dollar and seem to be suggesting that anyone can submit a piece for inclusion as a Kindle Single.
So the Kindle single concept opens up the market for a different type of writing, the short story, the pithy essay, the developing case study, the storytelling of local mission in local communities, the short course – and thus some new possibilities for sparking mission thinking, reflecting, storytelling.
(Hat tip mighty (:) ) skinny Kiwi). For other commentary see Wired and Tech news.
PS What I don’t like about Kindle is the way that it is so linked to one seller. Why can’t we have open source e-reader? Wouldn’t that be a good investment for a number of sellers to pool R & D over?
PSS What would also be really useful is if Kindle allowed books to be unbundled. I sit here preparing distance material. Often I want folk to read not the whole book, but one or two chapters. It makes no sense to pay for the whole but I’d love to pay for a chapter plus distribution rights that I could then distribute to students.
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