I received the following news from a little press release I got, so I haven't been able to check out this program extensively myself but it sounds interesting:

Gather.com is featuring a new short-form writing contest and the winners will have will be given the opportunity to have their stories sold on Amazon.com through the Amazon Shorts program.

Amazon Shorts is a year-old program offered on Amazon.com, where authors with previously published works are able to sell short stories of 2,000 to 10,000 words. On the site, located at www.amazon.com/shorts, writers can sell their shorter works for $0.49. The buyer receives a digitally downloaded copy of the story to read whenever they're ready - it doesn't expire. Visitors to the Amazon Shorts site can find short stories in all genres. Before today, authors who had not published works (currently for sale on Amazon.com) were not eligible to sell their works in the Amazon Shorts program.

Through their new contest, unpublished writers (published writers are also eligible) can submit their short form work to Gather.com and compete to have their story sold on Amazon Shorts alongside bestselling authors. Each month (through September 2006) they will select 4 winners - 3 members' choice, based on audience votes, and 1 editors' pick.

Why are they doing this? "Just like last fall when we introduced our first Short Fiction Contest, we continue to look for ways to help writers gain visibility on the site, provide contributors some benefit from their writing activity on Gather, and engage our audience with great content.

We also believe that user-generated content is changing the landscape for publishing text - in much the same way eBay empowered individual sellers or MySpace helped change the music business for indie bands. Amazon Shorts is a great example of this, where writers can test a new story and see if the market is interested. Think of this collaboration as a way to see if 'independent' writers are able to sell their work as well. Writers can test their efforts with peers, rather than with the busy editors at publishing houses. The ability to easily download and read these stories will increase interest in them, reach new audiences, and benefit the sale of the content. We believe this will help Gather members who have not gotten a book published to compete with those who have - a major step forward for the publishing profession in this digital era."