Sunday, February 13, 2011

Shorter E-Books Show Promise for Mobile Devices - NYTimes.com

More changes in the book business

The Atavist is among the growing number of organizations that are cultivating a certain niche of writing — stories and articles that are longer than a typical magazine article but shorter than a novel — in the hope that they will find a comfortable home on the glassy screens of evermore prevalent mobile devices. “Word counts are getting shorter in most magazines,” said Mr. Ratliff, who is also a contributing editor to Wired magazine. “On a mobile device, we shouldn’t be bound by those constraints.”

The attention spans of readers — many of us, anyway — are actually not getting shorter, Mr. Ratliff says. The problem lies elsewhere, he adds: “It’s the platform.”

Shorter E-Books Show Promise for Mobile Devices - NYTimes.com

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