WA serial woos world ebookers

ALL ebook enthusiasts this Christmas can download a serial hailed as "the best since Dickens".

Run Maggie Run, a digital title, wears its publisher's audacious boast with optimism.

It coincides with rivalry between several electronic reading devices that are competing for a place in festive stockings. In this marketing skirmish, content is a vital ingredient and Maggie's spicy adventures are available in all, or most, of the appliances.

The serial joins digital-format bestselling novels, and could outsell them if a trend favouring short texts continues. The West Australian author, John Ivor, holds star rating for historical fiction from Darling Newspaper Press.

Ivor's digital serial, following successful hardbacks and paperbacks, blends thrills, humour and outrageous characters.

"That is why we liken it to Charles Dickens," said publishing executive Charles Bryce today, in Perth, Australia. "It is also interesting to recall that the Victorian novelist used serial form to popularise his novels.

"We have found that ebooks (electronic books) are particularly suited to short-span scrutiny, say text up to 6000 words. People are still coming to terms with reading on a screen even if it is hand-held. Our short-stories sell well in digital format, mostly mystery and romance. We offer lengthy novels too, but these tend to lag compared to our traditional hardback and paperback sales.

"Thanks to the Internet, the essay has also made a comeback, although nowadays people call them blogs."

Run Maggie Run begins with a heroine aged 9 sentenced to hang for murder in the 1830s. Her odyssey to womanhood begins in Scotland and culminates in The Great Southland, as Australia was then known.

The serial is one of the goodies nudging readers towards ebooks this Christmas.
These can be read on any computer screen, or on most hand-held designs. There are several appliances, such as Iliad (British), Cybook (French), Sony (Japanese), Bebook (Dutch), and others. All have small individual differences. A planned launch in Europe of Amazon's Kindle, after success in the United States, has now been postponed until "at least next year".

Internet retailers heavily into ebooks, and easy to access and search, include Mobipocket, Cyber Read, Ebook Crescent, Books on Board, and many more that can be found via Google.