Authors can use Amazon Shorts as a vehicle for publicizing new books or promoting backlist titles. Readers pay 49 cents to download the Short in plain text or PDF format.
For example, historian David McCullough used an Amazon Short to build awareness of his 2006 hardcover 1776. His Short was a 1,700-word essay titled "Faces" on how Revolutionary War leaders are perceived today. The Short included links to 1776 and nine previous McCullough works sold on Amazon.
Each Amazon Short includes an author biography and photograph, and links to their other books sold on Amazon. Shorts are a good way for readers to try new authors because the low price encourages reader experimentation and impulse buying.
Some authors have used Shorts to serialize works, or to update readers with extensions of their books, or an entirely new story with familiar characters.
Some nonfiction authors have used Shorts to generate new customers for other products. In one longtime bestselling Short, Why Authors Are Cranky, author Bruce Holland Rogers promotes his own Web site, where readers can purchase a one-year e-mail subscription to Rogers' short stories for $10. The Web link in Rogers' Amazon Short is live, so readers can click right to the site: