Indie authors in Grenoble, a small city in France now have a viable way to distribute their short stories, vending machines. The stories are free and are printed on thin receipt paper, making them easy to discard or store.
The stories are randomized and stem from a new startup named the Short Edition. There are a few thousand authors and over 150,000 registered users who spend a few minutes on the site to read a few short stories in French.
One of the founders of the company said the idea came to him as he was standing in front of a vending machine selling chocolate bars and candy: “We said to ourselves that we could do the same thing with good quality popular literature to occupy these little unproductive moments.”
This project got off the ground quickly due to the interest of the major. “We are trying to re-imagine the city center as a place of shared experiences,” the mayor said in an interview with the AFP. “We are trying to launch a revolution, and the objective is to build a wider and calmer downtown area.”
The vending machines are currently only available in Grenoble, but since they first became available earlier in the month their has been a lot of interest from other cities.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
