Earlier this week DailyLit announced its first pre-publication deal for House Rules which will be published in 139 installments for $9.95. This marks the site’s first opportunity to syndicate a book before the print release.
DailyLit began with mostly public domain works, syndicating them to readers in snack-sized chucks via email and RSS. Recently, the site began offering books from a variety of publishers at prices that range from free to just under $10.
I must admit that I didn’t pay much attention to DailyLit initially (shame on me.) But with this recent announcement, they are certainly on my radar. I’m trying out the service, and reading Cory Doctorow’s Scroogled via RSS on my Blackberry.
For the majority of publishing my group does (computer programming titles) this model of distribution might not make a lot of sense, but for other types of books it might work very well. Only caveat I can see is in the scheduled delivery. You can control the time and frequency of the updates, but it seems to be limited to only 1 installment a day. If I want to read a book on a long flight, I am sure to want more than just the day’s installment, and I am not likely to “store up” installments in anticipation of a long reading session.
What about you? Would you read books in this fashion?
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