Kindle Singles: Shorter books with (hopefully) a smaller price

Hi all!

Part of the big buzz on the internet is that Amazon has come out with Kindle Singles, a platform that will allow authors to publish shorter books or stories (30 to 90 pages). While Amazon hasn't announced what they'll be charging these books, it should be less than what normal ebooks go for.

The only part of this that makes me wonder is what is meant by "normal ebook prices". Amazon has had more than their fair share of complaints over ebook pricing (the whole $9.99 boycott thing), so I'm assuming that the new pricing would be at & under $5. The more well known authors would sell for higher while the newer & the more obscure authors would be able to have lower price points so they could appeal to a broader audience. Hopefully this will take effect also on the newspaper articles that are regularly sold through Amazon normally for about $10. I'm sure that buyers would appreciate being able to purchase newspaper & other articles for lower prices as well. I'm also wondering if this would also impact the sale price of CreateSpace books, Amazon's own self-publishing avenue. (The prices there go for as low as 99 cents.)

In any case, this is an interesting development & I can only hope that it also helps to eventually lower the prices with other ebook companies as well.