Amazon.com Offers Book Lovers 'Digital Shorts'

Online retailer Amazon.com is offering short-form literature in digital format from new and established authors.

The Seattle-based company is selling Amazon Shorts for 49 cents each. The works include samples from new authors, or alternate chapters and scenes to well-known stories, one-act plays, classic short stories and personal memoirs from writers that cover everything from food poisoning to contact lenses.

The shorts have no printed editions and are only delivered digitally.

"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, " Steve Kessel, Amazon.com's vice president of digital media, said in a statement.

Among the authors whose works are available include Audrey Niffenegger, James Lee Burke, F. Paul Wilson, Ann Beattie and Walter Jon Williams.

Customers can read the works or print them from an Amazon.com web page, download the writing as a PDF file or have the work emailed as a plain-text message.