New Digital Publishing House, Atavist, Takes a Leap into Publishing Opportunities

The New York Times Business section has an article on Atavist, a digital publishing house that is selling non-fiction articles directly to smartphones, e-readers, and computer tablets. The article delves much more into businesses such as Amazon which are developing shorter works, short stories or long articles, for sell to these new digital media. What I find fascinating is that actual publishing houses are being created to serve this market. What could this possibly mean for say short story writers or poets who have even smaller opportunities to reach readers? Could it be possible that this technology can create a new business model for selling and promoting poetry or short stories? And what will this new technology mean in terms of creating new literary styles? A lot remains to be seen. The article itself reminds readers of such techno-inspired literary hype like hypertext fiction (remember that?) and how that has fallen far short of its promises as a dominant literary form. Still new technology is opening up ways in which people can relate to reading, ways that as a new generation raised on the Internet, text messaging, smartphones, and the like, will find much easier to navigate.