The Bookseller.com

5th December 2008

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Random to sell chapters online

11.02.08

Random House US is to begin selling the individual chapters of a popular book to gauge reader demand for bite-size portions of digital texts, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The publishing group's experiment appears to be the first time a major consumer publisher has offered a title on a chapter-by-chapter basis. It will sell the six chapters and epilogue of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die for $2.99 each.

The move comes, says the WJS, at a time when retailers and publishers are looking for clues into how readers want to access digital content. Most recently, Amazon Inc. announced that it was buying audiobook seller Audible Inc. for about $280 million. Late last year, Amazon introduced its Kindle electronic-book reader, a device with built-in wireless Internet access that quickly sold out upon debut.

Wall Street Journal

US Random House