Amazon's New 'Kindle Singles' Now Available

Amazon has introduced the first Kindle Singles titles--a new e-book product the company initially announced in October 2010--which are now available in the Kindle Store. Described by the online retailer as "longer than a magazine article yet shorter than a typical book," Singles are generally between 5,000 and 30,000 words.

"The response to our announcement of Singles has been great," says Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle content. "This first set of Singles was selected by our team of editors, and includes works by Rich Cohen, Darin Strauss, Ian Ayres, and the first-ever books published by TED."

Kindle Singles are available to both Kindle device and app users, and are priced between $0.99 and $4.99. According to Amazon, it plans to frequently launch many more Kindle Singles over time.

The first set of Kindle Singles includes:

• "Lifted" by Evan Ratliff (34 pages, $1.99): Wired and New Yorker writer Ratliff recounts the inside story of a 2009 bank heist, and the race to solve it. This is an inaugural title from publisher The Atavist.
• "The Happiness Manifesto" by Nic Marks (40 pages, $2.99): Marks, founder of the London-based Centre for Well-Being, details five ways people can nurture their own happiness. One of the inaugural TEDBooks.
• "Piano Demon" by Brendan I. Koerner (37 pages, $1.99): Koerner, a Wired contributing editor and author of "Now the Hell Will Start," tells the story of a Virginia coal miner who became the jazz king of Asia.
• "Leaving Home" by Jodi Picoult (43 pages, $2.99): Best-selling novelist Picoult explores the deep pains and powerful pleasures of parenting.
• "The Dead Women of Juarez" by Robert Andrew Powell (31 pages, $1.99): Journalist Powell went to Juarez, a Mexican border town, to investigate the killings of women there.
• "Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks" by Sebastian Rotella/ProPublica (38 pages, $0.99): The U.S. investigation of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai from ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
• "The $500 Diet" by Ian Ayres (39 pages, $2.99): A look at Yale law professor Ayres' weight-loss method.
• "Darkstar" by Christopher R. Howard (44 pages, $2.99): A pre-apocalyptic love story. Howard's fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, and his first novel, "Tea of Ulaanbaatar," comes out this May.
• "Homo Evolutis" by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans (58 pages, $2.99): Enriquez and Gullans--two authors, researchers, and entrepreneurs--explore a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, their own selves and other species. One of the inaugural TEDBooks.

"Kindles Singles has given me the freedom to write a piece that doesn't need to be cut for a magazine article or expanded for a book," said Ayres. "It lets me more quickly and directly speak to the reader unhindered by page numbers or ad space. And I love the reach of the Kindle platform. Nowadays just about anyone can read a Kindle book on their phone or their laptop, or, of course, just on a Kindle."