Day One, to be published weekly for Kindle, will include a short story and a poem by debut authors
Feared by independent booksellers, decried by writers as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Amazon has announced startling plans to champion unknown poetry and short stories with its own literary journal.
The journal, called Day One, will be a weekly digital publication featuring a single short story and one poem a week, among them works in translation, from aspiring, debut authors around the world, as well as original cover art commissioned from emerging artists and illustrators.
Literary fiction publisher Simon Prosser, whose Hamish Hamilton imprint, which is part of Penguin Random House, has published the likes of Raymond Chandler, Georges Simenon and Zadie Smith, saw it as "definitely not a competitor" to the imprint's own, high-end literary journal, Five Dials, which is distributed free of charge.
"A weekly literary journal with one debut short story and one poem? Well, I salute their commitment. It's very ambitious to do it weekly," Prosser said. "We spend a long time preparing Five Dials, and we try to do it monthly, but it's a much longer publication."
However he welcomed Amazon's initiative saying "the more ventures trying to get good writing out there, the better".
The first issue of Day One will include a short story, "Sheila", by Rebecca Adams Wright, a graduate in science fiction and fantasy writing from the University of Michigan, which "explores the relationships between an elderly widower and his cherished (and robotic) spaniel, Sheila", and "Wrought", a poem by Wichita graduate Zack Strait, about love and identity told with "vivid imagery and a wry lyricism", according to Amazon Publishing.
"They seem to have chosen young, hip-looking people for the first edition," said Neill Denny, who is chief operating officer of Read Petite, an online short fiction and non-fiction subscription service that's being set up in the UK by Tim Waterstone, the former boss of the high-street retailer. "For the young end of the literary market — the smartphone generation — it could work. It would be churlish not to welcome an attempt to build an audience for short literary fiction. It's a noble aspiration."
Day One will be delivered straight to Kindles or Kindle reading apps, and has an initial annual subscription fee of $9.99 (£6), rising to the full price of $19.99 at a later date. "Whether people are willing to pay for content delivered in this manner, we'll see," said Prosser.
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