Source : Scroll.in
Penguin Petit will publish short, low-priced books tailored for phone-reading.
Publishing giant Penguin Random House India has announced the launch of a new digital imprint called Penguin Petit. Designed for “ease of reading across digital devices”, the Penguin Petit series of ebooks will be low-priced short reads of approximately 50 pages each, the publisher said.
To begin with, the series will repackage Penguin Random House India’s extensive list of existing titles by authors including Premchand, Gulzar, Devdutt Pattanaik, Ramachandra Guha, Sudha Murty and Anita Nair into short ebooks. “It’s designed for an increasingly mobile India that might want to be able to read anywhere and at any time. With its easy downloadability, wide range of content and accessible pricing, Penguin Petit should appeal to many readers. Our books and authors will also benefit from the easy discoverability and increased visibility that comes with making great reads available in a shorter and more affordable format,” said Rukun Kaul, Associate Vice President, Digital and Initiatives, Penguin Random House India.
With prices starting from Rs 15, the digital books are available to read on Kindle and will range across genres from fiction, non-fiction, children’s literature, mythology to self-help, history and current affairs. With this move, Penguin RandomHouse will enter a digital publishing space that has mostly been enjoyed uncontested by Juggernaut Books, whose digital model is focused on low-price, topical ebooks tailored for mobile reading. The publisher often repackages sections of longer books as digital shorts, much like Penguin Petit aims to do, although getting readers to pay for online content remains a challenge.
