Kindle Singles: Kindle’s Secret Weapon
Every digital book reading platform, like the Kindle or iBooks or Google Books or Kobo or others, has the same lock-in environment that iTunes has. The more books you buy for one platform, the more painful it is to switch. In this way, they are all pretty much equal. That means the differentiator must be something else. And in the case of digital book platforms, that means having the most available content with the most popular titles. Here, Amazon wins, but that’s not Amazon’s secret weapon. Kindle Singles I’ve become addicted to Kindle Singles. They’re like little literature snacks; bite sized pieces of good writing for $3 or less. They come in all forms, from short stories to nonfiction to poetry collections to novellas. As far as I know, no one else has them. Last month I read My Wife’s Story, a short story written from the perspective of a man who’s wife told the same story to every person she met for 40 years. It was a 20-minute read for me (a notoriously slow reader) in a dark lounge late one night, accompanied by Maker’s Mark (neat) and soft house music. If you like quirky fiction, you’ll love the denouement at the end of this one. Every time I consider switching to another digital books platform, the one thing that keeps me with Kindle is their Singles product. Singles are no-brainers to buy since they’re always under $3, curated so that you know you’re getting something good, and new ones come out daily. There’s even a Twitter account that tells me when good ones hit the digital shelf. And Amazon runs specials often enough to keep me downloading and engaged with the product. It’s freaking genius. I’d like to see Amazon recruit more high profile authors to bring some attention to the product, and more great titles of course. It’d be amazing to have a series of short scary stories from Stephen King, for example. Or a fast paced suspense from Dan Brown. This is the kind of business model that the New York Times or The Economist should adopt. Hire great journalists to create long form breakdowns (with opinions) of current events; something between a long op-ed and a current affairs book. Sell them as digital downloads via an app that syncs across mobile platforms (and online). They have the audience and the clout to launch something like this without much investment or risk, just like Amazon did with Kindle Singles. In fact, this is the kind of product that would feed into a subscription model that the NY Times already has, creating a fortuitous revenue loop.
