Of course, this isn't the most original of innovations. Two of the titles with which Amazon are launching the range are Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, which were initially released some 160 years ago in serialised form, along with many other Victorian novels. It is also not true to say the practice has died out in the meantime, as anyone who tunes into Eastenders or Casualty (or indeed, any episodic television series) can attest to.
But what is really exciting to me about this announcement though is it's obvious relation to new technology. The announcement was made alongside the release of the new Kindle Fire, which is more akin to an iPad than the first generation Kindle, and serialisation perfectly suits the new digital age - you can download and read a bitesize chunk, accessing more if you so choose, with neither reader nor publisher having to worry about the hassle of multiple printed documents.
