TED's New Chapter in Spreading Ideas: TEDBooks

NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, today launches TEDBooks, an imprint of short nonfiction works designed for digital distribution.  Shorter than traditional books, TEDBooks run 10,000-20,000 words each, long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting. TEDBooks are available today from Amazon.com as Kindle Singles (www.amazon.com/kindlesingles).

"The success of TEDTalks has demonstrated that millions of people around the world are hungry to absorb new ideas," said TED curator Chris Anderson. "But not everyone has the time to go out and read an entire book on an interesting subject. TEDBooks fill that gap. Their shorter format allows someone to see an idea fleshed out in a satisfying way -- without having to set aside a week of reading time."

"Our goal with Singles is to allow compelling ideas to be expressed at their natural length. TEDBooks fit nicely within that mission," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "TED has a great history of bringing important ideas to a wider audience, and we expect TEDBooks will add to that legacy."

The first three TEDBooks are written by TED speakers, and expand on ideas voiced from the TED stage, furthering the reach of a single idea, discovery or vision.  These three titles are available for download from Amazon today as Kindles Singles, with more to follow shortly:

• Nic Marks, The Happiness Manifesto: How Nations and People Can Nurture Well-Being 

• Gever Tulley, Dangerism: Why We Worry About the Wrong Things, and What It's Doing to Our Kids

• Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans, Homo Evolutis: Please Meet the Next Human Species

TED's mission is to facilitate the sharing of great ideas. With their short, punchy format, TEDBooks will empower a new type of author: people who have something really important to share with the world, but who are too busy to author a long-form book. For where a traditional book might take a year to write and a year to publish, a TEDBook can be written in a month and published shortly after.

TEDBooks will also tap into changing reader behavior. By making ideas accessible in a way that matches modern attention spans, TEDBooks aim to stimulate and satisfy the curiosity of a new generation of time-constrained knowledge-seekers. With fewer hours in the day to read, people can finish a highly focused TEDBook on a single plane flight or morning commute.  

Added Anderson: "The world of ideas has never been more interesting. I look at the community of people who've given a TEDTalk and see hundreds of possibilities for mini-books that would make a fantastic contribution to our shared conversation about the world's future. I can't wait to get them out there, and I can't wait to read them!"

With a list price at $2.99 each, TEDBooks are available for download as Kindle Singles (www.amazon.com/kindlesingles) from Amazon.  Customers can purchase these books and read them on Kindle devices, on iPads, iPod touches, iPhones, Macs, PCs, BlackBerrys, Windows Phones and Android-based devices.  To learn more about TEDBooks, visitors can go to: http://www.ted.com/pages/tedbooks.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. At TED, the world's leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Two major TED events are held each year: The TED Conference takes place every spring in Long Beach, California (along with a parallel conference, TEDActive, in Palm Springs), and TEDGlobal is held each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action; TEDx, which offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world; and the TED Fellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

TED's media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily, and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide.

TED2011, "The Rediscovery of Wonder," will be held February 28- March 4, 2011, in Long Beach, California, along with the TEDActive simulcast in Palm Springs, California. TEDGlobal 2011, "The Stuff of Life," will be held July 11-15, 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Follow TED on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle, Kindle 3G and Kindle DX are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle 3G and Kindle DX utilize the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. Kindle is the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on Amazon.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, and www.amazon.it. As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

SOURCE TED