Penguin Books has launched short, digital only reads of its catalogue called E-Singles for consumption on hand held digital devices. The company is beginning this initiative with 47 e-singles and intend to expand the catalogue to include poetry, short non-fiction, plays and fiction. The company says that the E-Singles are presently available for purchase through Flipkart and Google Books at Rs 25 per story. It is not clear if these e-singles will be listed on Penguin's mobile app but it only seems logical that they add the E-Singles to their app. When we checked, we noticed that these e-singles are available only on Flipkart and not on Google Play Store. The company said that the books are awaiting Google's approval and are expected to go live shortly. Remember that Flipkart currently offers only an Android app to read their e-books which limits the buyers on Flipkart to Android devices only. Is serialised content the future of digital publishing? Speaking to Medianama, Amish Tripathi, author of the Shiva Trilogy had said that serialising of content could be a big future in digital publishing and has in fact already caught up in a big way in China. It seems that this trend may be slowing catching up even in India. Amazon already offers Kindle Singles which are one-off essays and short stories which range typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words i.e. longer than a magazine article but shorter than a novel. In November 2012, Amazon had launched the Kindle Serials which enables publishers to offer stories in a serialized format…
