The New York Times is getting into the business of selling bite-sized digital books based on its reporters' work, giving it entree into a growing market for inexpensive "e-singles" that can be read in a couple of hours.

The Times' first mini book went on sale on Monday. It's an 18,000-word piece about skiers caught in an avalanche by Times reporter John Branch. The story, called Snow Fall, expands on an upcoming piece in Monday's newspaper.

It will sell for $2.99 in Amazon.com's Kindle store, Apple's iBooks and on Barnes & Noble's Nook.

E-singles fall somewhere between magazine pieces, which can top out at around 10,000 words, and full-length books, which can run around 100,000 words.

The product meets the rising demand for content as people buy tablet computers like the iPad and Kindle Fire in increasing numbers. IHS expects global shipments of tablets to hit 120 million this year, just two short years after the iPad jumpstarted the category in April 2010. Tablet shipments are expected to hit 340 million in 2016.

And people aren't just watching movies and surfing the Web on their mobile devices.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism said in October that half of US adults own a tablet or smartphone, and two-thirds of them get news on their device.

The quick turnaround of digital publishing means nonfiction work remains timely.

Gerald Marzorati, the Times' editor for editorial development, says the company is betting the new format will make long-form journalism easy to read and reach people who don't visit the Times' website or read the newspaper.