Thursday, May 24, 2007

Books by email in snippets

Never had time to read Moby Dick and want something weightier than spam to read on your Blackberry on the way to work?

A new Web site is offering to send classic books in bite-size instalments to your handheld device or email every morning before you go to work, or whenever you want, for free.

The emails from www.dailylit.com are designed to be read in under five minutes. Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days" comes in 82 parts while Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" could take nearly two years of working days to read at 430 parts.

"Our audience includes people like us, who spend hours each day on email but can't find the time to read a book," DailyLit co-founder Albert Wenger said.

The company was launched in May with a list of around 370 mostly classic titles, though the Web site has been operating on a trial basis for several months. Wenger said 50,000 people had signed up, registering for over 75,000 titles.

Since the books are out of copyright the company can offer them for free, but it plans to expand and start charging a fee for newer titles licensed by major publishers within four or five weeks. The emails are free of advertising and the revenue model will depend on fees, sharing revenues with publishers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So how are you suppose to remember the plot with a snippet a day? Seems it would take years to get through a book. War and Peace better not be on the list.

We're so lazy as humas we just can't read anymore?

dom said...

I'm glad your comment wasn't any longer