For a long time, there has been an empty space for texts that are not long enough to make a book, but are too long to be an article in a magazine. Those kind of text, with their “Natural Length” didn’t have a place to be, so, in order to put them on the market, the author had to cut down words so that it could be used in a magazine, or add to it unusual or previously unwanted information, to make a book out of it.
This happens especially with some kind of journalism, the one you put a lot of investigation and effort to, but don’t find the proper way to share to people.
Gladly, Amazon came out with a solution to this problem; the Kindle Single. Named Single in relation to the musical singles, records longer than a song but shorter than a full cd. Kindle Single is a format that allows users to keep the original length for their texts, accepting texts from 5,000 to 30,000 words.
But, how does it benefit you as a journalist? Why should you consider writing for a Kindle Single?
There are at least five advantages of the Kindle Single program, and you should keep them in mind before choosing the format you’ll write for:
- Economic: The Kindle Single program lets the user choose the royalties percentage, the maximum being 70%, which is in a way a lot more than usual editorials give to their authors.
- Legal: To submit to Kindle Single, your work can’t be on any public website that allows you to keep the rights for your texts.
- Reach people: There are a lot of people looking for your kind of work, and this can be an opportunity for you to reach those people, looking for an article longer than a magazine one.
- Keep your work as you want it: Kindle Single work as an editor but they give the author the option to choose how to publish his work, giving them a lot of control on the final result.
- The massiveness of Kindle: Related to point three, Kindle not only shows your work to the people interested, but it shows it to a lot of people, almost all kind of device has a Kindle app to download and use, you’d reach users of: MAC, PC, Android, etc.
After looking at the advantages of the system, you might want to give it a try, there are a few conditions to fulfill to make your work a Kindle Single one:
• Length: 5,000 to 30,000 words
• List price: $0.99 to $4.99
• Original work, not previously published in other formats or publications
• Self-contained work, not chapters excerpted from a longer work
• Not published on any public website in its entirety
• They are currently not accepting how-to manuals, public domain works, reference books, travel guides, or children’s books.
• No story collections.