The Twitter Effect - Your favorite novel in 2000 words or less

Posted by Daniel Shain

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Companies like FT Press have come up with the idea of shortening already published novels to 1000-2000 words, and then offering them on eReaders for $1.99. As a reader and on again, off again aspiring novelist, I was outraged at the idea. As a tech lover who is thoroughly familiar with the appeal of the mobile life though, I thought it was ingenious.

Imagine this scenario: You're on the subway, about to head to a business meeting. You've got about 25 minutes to develop a solid grasp of some basic business fundamentals, and all you've got is an eReader and a 3G connection. Head on over to the FT Press store, buy a 5 page condensed version of "Business 101," nod along a few times and BAM - you're an expert, or at least enough of one for your meeting, still 10 minutes away.

The English major in me can't stop shaking my head at this "Cliff's-notes" approach to life. I certainly made use of summaries and guides while I was a student, but I can personally vouch for the fact that I got less out of those books and classes for which I did this than for those that I didn't. Now, perhaps I got half as much out of them but only spent 10% of the time on them as I did on full readings, and in the business world you might call that being efficient.

I still don't know what to do with the information overload attitude of Twitter and the social networking world. Sometimes, it seems great to be able to do something like read 5 books in an hour, and even at my speculative 50% efficiency, that's a lot of knowledge. Then again, do we really want everyone running around knowing exactly half of what they're talking about and nothing more?

What do you think?

On the flip-side, there will also be a section devoted to 5,000 word essays for $2.99. That seems like a tolerable size for essays (rather than a whole book being half as large). Amazon is already discounting the prices to $1.59 and $2.39, but other eReaders have held pat on pricing. Via NYT

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