UR, by Stephen King

I love it that Stephen King is willing to experiment with new content models. Do you remember The Plant, a serial novel King started writing and releasing in pieces back in 2000? I loved it...or at least I loved the handful of chapters he released before abandoning the project. It was probably ahead of its time. King relied on the honor system and not enough readers paid up so he never finished the project. Bummer.

King's latest experiment is a Kindle-only story called UR. At first I couldn't help but think it was nothing more than an advertorial for the Kindle, but the story still managed to pull me in. It's an intriguing read and well worth the $2.99 you'll pay for it.

It's also a very quick read. I'm a slow reader and I still managed to get through it in little more than an hour. You might call that "short" but I call it "perfect." I spend most of my Kindle time reading short pieces of content. Newspaper articles, magazines, blog posts. Those are the things I like reading most on my Kindle. For some reason I tend to lose interest with longer Kindle books.

Jeff Bezos originally pitched the Kindle as a way for all of us to get past "info-snacking" and get back to reading long-form works. UR is another great example of how the Kindle is still feeding my info-snacking habit, I'm afraid.