Back when Charles Dickens and his cohorts were publishing, books didn’t come fully formed. Instead, they came out in regular instalments, and that’s why each chapter tends to end with a cliffhanger. Today, Amazon announced that it’s bringing that proud tradition back with Kindle Serials.
It works like this: you pay upfront for an entire series and receive all future episodes as automatic downloads as they become available. The types of books that will be available as a Kindle Serial are the usual mysteries, thrillers and genre pieces that are best suited to the serial format. They’ll be priced at a very reasonable $US2. While Bezos says it should spawn a new genre of books, in truth it’s more of a blast form the past.