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Amazon has started selling digital copies of short stories from its online store.
Buyers in the Amazon Shorts store receive the work either as a PDF download, via email or they can print out a page with the story text. The documents will also be stored in the user's account for later access and there are no limitations on subsequent printing or forwarding.
Amazon already sells e-books and e-documents on its website that use Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Reader. But where those documents used digital rights management to restrict their use, the short stories are offered without protection.
For now the stories are available from
The web store has signed up about 60 authors including well known novelists such as Danielle Steel.
Short stories traditionally have been lacking in popularity because they are hard to sell and market. Delivering them in a digital format allows Amazon to significantly cut down on distribution costs.
"Amazon Shorts will help authors find new readers and help readers find and discover authors they'll love," said Steve Kessel, Amazon.com's vice president of Digital Media.
"We hope that by making short-form literature widely and easily available, Amazon.com can help to fuel a revival of this kind of work."
Amazon's US website only and cost 50 cents each. Each work is only several pages long.
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