Bodley Head tries mini-ebooks: 
Brain Shots

14.05.10 | Benedicte Page in The Bookseller

Random House imprint The Bodley Head is to launch a new e-book and audiobook series, Brain Shots, featuring abbreviated and more accessible versions of its "big idea" non-fiction titles.

Each revised title will be around 10,000 words long and will be available on iTunes and Waterstones.com from 2nd July, priced at £5.

The first titles are new versions of Misha Glenny's McMafia, Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, John Barrow's Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know, Philip Augur's Reckless, Philip Ball's The Music Instinct and Irving Kirsch's The Emperor's­ New Drugs.

Assistant editor Kay Peddle said the idea behind Brain Shots was to "capture the essence of the book". In most cases the Brain Shots version is a completely new work, with the author summing up the heart of their argument, she added.

Each launch title contains a hypothesis which could easily be picked out from the rest of the book, and the new versions use more accessible and less academic language "suitable for the medium and a potential new audience", Peddle said. "The idea is that it should be like reading a long, interesting piece in a magazine," she added