A St. Patrick’s Day Toast
MAY THOSE WHO love us, love us.
For those who don’t love us, may God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles,
So we may know them by their limping.
Deep Thoughts
The Infinite Wordstream: Part II
(This is part two of a two part series. Read The Infinite Wordstream: Part I here!)
The Infinite Wordstream
If reader satisfaction is to mean anything to the budding epublishing author, it’s going to require hitting the moving target of reader desire. To reverse myself for a moment, the old 3,000 word and 300 page limits were and still are awfully handy as guidelines because the teeming mass of our reading public has been indoctrinated to expect these formats and sizes. It’s comforting for both readers and writers to know exactly what the expectations are.
It’s as we move out of the realm of standards that things get hairy. Spend some time with writers who have published their short stories electronically and you will hear horror stories of 1 star ratings, angry comments, and negative reviews…not for the stories’ merit but because of their length.
“Charging money for this is insulting” is one comment leveled at fantasy author David Dalglish‘s short story release, Guardian of the Mountain (get it here) from an admitted fan of his other words. At the time of this article’s writing, the 13,000 word short story—the equivalent of 50 paperback pages—was selling for just $.99, yet this reader was offended at the length. Crime fiction writer Ed Lynskey released a novel length collection of 15 short stories, Out of Town a Few Days (find it here), and received a 2 star review. The comment? “Not a real fan of short stories.” Full stop. Nothing about the collection’s merit.
With that preface, things might seem gloomy for short story and novelette writers the world over. But indie writer Deborah Geary might disagree. She writes a popular urban fantasy series (the “Modern Witch” series) that has garnered great reader reviews, but also constant fan pressure to release more, sooner. To keep the hordes at bay, she published several “Novel Nibbles”: stand-alone, 20,000 word stories not meant to be part of her regular lineup. Rather than an angry response at the length of the nibbles (which are about ¼ the size of a novel), she’s received positive feedback and now new chants of “we want more” and “turn this into a novel, too”.
It’s speculation on my part, but I have a feeling that Deborah’s releases would have been considered “unpublishable” five years ago: too long for magazines, too short to be novels, too awkward to be collected in an anthology. Yet, even in today’s climate, they might’ve been 1-starred had they been half their length and released as “short stories” in the digital market. Through hard work and careful cultivation of her audience she’s found a non-traditional word count that works. She’s helping to break the old standards.
Tapping the Stream
The point for writers is that the face of not just publishing, but writing itself, is changing. Reader bias for standard lengths will continue as long as there are print books (which I hope is forever). But as the digital market evolves, so will reader tolerance for unusual formats and non-standard lengths until, at some magical moment, we’ll just be talking about “story”. And that’s good news for writers everywhere, because the craft of writing shouldn’t be pushed into a corner by the cost of paper, the weight of a book, or the width of your spine.
The Infinite Wordstream: Part 1
Mention a number to writer who’s been at the craft for a while and you’ll probably get a Pavlovian response in word count.
700? Flash fiction.
3,000? Standard main-stream magazine short story length. 8,000? The “one-per-issue” exception if the fiction editor likes your work.
15,000? Novelette. 25,000? Novella. 50,000? Short novel, a slim volume you might be able to sell to an unsuspecting—or forgiving—public.
75,000? Industry accepted minimum length for a debut novel, about 300 paperback pages.
150,000? Unless you’re Stephen King or George R. R. Martin: an agent’s rejection slip followed by a suggestion to find a good editor.
Despite the immense spread, however, these numbers have two things in common: they are the industry-accepted perceptions of what the public desires for a “good read” at particular moments. And they are all restrictions imposed on story-telling by the physical limitations of the medium in which they are delivered.
The Finite Wordstream
Let’s put aside the first point for a moment. The second is an interesting thing to ponder for a second. Short stories are, well…short, because historically magazines were expensive to print. Putting out 35 glossy pages every month is costly and it took years of experimentation for publishers to triangulate the sweet spot of issue length, reader interest, and expense. The formula they arrived at allowed for three to five 3,000 word short stories with room left over for a novel excerpt, a couple of book reviews, and a letter from the editor.
At the other end of the scale is the novel. 75,000 words translates nicely into a 300 page paperback which, when placed on a bookstore shelf, has a one-to-two inch spine that is narrow enough to leave room for the latest 480 page New York Times best seller release and long enough to keep a customer from feeling cheated.
Anything in-between these lengths (the long short, the novelette, the novella) was eventually found to be either too long or too short—and here’s the point of this article—physically. It either didn’t meet the compressed economics of a magazine or it didn’t give value on the bookstore shelf by merit of its heft.
The Missing Link
The much more important half of the equation, reader satisfaction, has been the poor, unwashed cousin in this relationship. Our tastes in literature over the last century have been shaped as much by the 300 page standard as they have by story-telling, literary merit, or creative genius. Or, put another way, since those attributes can be shoe-horned into a predetermined, one-size-fits-most model driven by economics…they have.
What’s changed? Electronic publishing. Certainly, the old tropes of historic publishing remain—the feel and smell of a book, the pleasure of holding it, the sense of tradition you get sitting by a fire with a novel. This isn’t the place to argue those points (which I agree with, anyway). But if epublishing has done one thing—and it’s done more—in the field of literature, it’s that it has broken the chains of physical limitation on the creative process of writing.
In a digital medium, format as expressed by word count is not just irrelevant, it’s meaningless. It’s like asking someone how much air they breath. A lot? A little? The important thing is that you’re breathing. Old monikers like short story and novella begin to slip away. And with that side of the equation gone, what are we left with?
The only thing that should matter: reader satisfaction.
KDP Select: Promised Land or Indie Armageddon?
An announcement made earlier this week by Amazon sent shock waves throughout the indie author world–and through the publishing world, no doubt. The event was the grand unveiling of KDP Select, a program that was being sold to indie authors as a way of increasing exposure and possibly bumping up royalties as well.
The deep pro’s and con’s have been discussed on the Kindle Boards, David Gaughran’s blog, Passive Voice, and many others, but the general gist is this:
What indie authors agree to
Indie authors that opt-in to the KDP Select program must remove their participating titles from all other electronic distribution channels (Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Smashwords, Kobo, etc.) including their own website for a minimum of 90 days. There is a 3 day grace period to opt out.
What Amazon does
Amazon enrolls the title in the Amazon Prime Lending Program. Amazon Prime customers, in addition to the continuing benefit of free 2-day shipping, get value-added in the form of being allowed to borrow one book per month for free from participating authors. Since Amazon was rebuffed by many Big Six publishers when asked to participate in the Lending program, they turned to indie authors to fill the digital shelves.
What authors get
The sure thing that authors opting-in to the program get is a slice (the size of which is based on the total number of downloads in a month) of a $500,000 pie. It didn’t take long for authors to figure out–when total opt-in titles topped 30k–that those slices would be small indeed. As a result, most indie authors see it as a tool for increased exposure for their titles. Helping with that is the option for authors to make their title free for up to 5 days of the 90 (a common tool for promotion that was unavailable directly through Amazon until now).
What is still unclear
The $500,000 pot is an arbitrary amount chosen by Amazon with no particular reasoning being given for the choice. Numbers such as “$6 million in 2012” have been hinted at for future pots, but–again–this is an arbitrary number seemingly unattached to other factors: downloads, rankings, retail cost of the book, anything. There’s also a conspicuous lack of guarantee behind this number.
The division it’s caused
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that KDP Select is an attempt by Amazon to drive its competitors out of the ebook business, or relegate them to such a minor role that they might as well be gone. For most authors, whether this move by Amazon is ethical or not takes a backseat to the question of whether it benefits that author. For most indies, they have Amazon to thank for creating the independent book space in the first place and many report that the overwhelming majority of sales (often 95% or more out of hundreds or even thousands of downloads) come from Amazon. Amazon is also credited with having the best reporting, financials, search functionality, distribution model, and chance for exposure. They point to Amazon’s competitors’ lack of sophistication in these areas and shrug.
Looking out for Number One is a natural tendency, and especially so among indie authors who have to make hay when (and where) the sun shines. And it’s not often shining anywhere but on Amazon.
The long view
Those that take the longer view fear that the decisions we make today–and the concessions we agree to–will forge the future of all independent authored content, even if Amazon doesn’t become a near or true monopoly. They encourage restraint and caution; if authors send the signal to corporations that they will run to any deal that improves on the last one, they only have to dangle the carrot just enough to get the majority of authors to bite. And if one company does rise to become the dominant player, you can bet those terms (the carrot) will favor the company and not its content providers.
How I see it
The current situation can be divided into two major areas that are not mutually exclusive.
The first (looking out for #1) is “how, as an indie author, do I respond to Amazon’s overtures to tempt me away from their competitors and is the way they’re doing it fair?” And the overwhelming answer is pretty easy and self-evident: if 99% of your sales come from Amazon, competitors aren’t willing to match A’s distribution and exposure successes, and KDP Select is on a 90 trial, there’s no argument
The second and less easily answered question (the “long view”) is: if no competitor can or will respond to Amazon’s moves and it does corner the Ebook/indie market, where does that leave the future of indie publishing? And the uncomfortable truth seems to be that it doesn’t matter, because the only thing an indie author can do at the moment to push back against this possibility would be to refuse to join KDP Select in (a somewhat symbolic and empty) protest. Doing that, however, might signal to Smash, Apple, B&N, that there’s no need to compete or improve, that there are enough indies out there willing to stick it out against Amazon.
Which leaves me feeling distinctly like the horseshoe on the anvil. I don’t want to be beholden to Amazon, no matter how good they’ve been to me in the past. Call me a cynic, but as much as I owe to Amazon, I can never forget that our goals right now are aligned, not identical. Indies have proven to be a nice revenue stream for the behemoth, but I can’t help but think that we are also the tool that Amazon has tried to use to bring Big Six publishing to heel. We are the wedge that’s begun to dislodge antiquated business practices from the publishing industry. But a wedge is still a tool.
When that process is done, we will only be a line item on the ledger sheet. And if there are no other competitors around when there’s some accounting to be done (say, the need to impress Wall Street or the majority of shareholders), indie authors will see their presumably inviolate rights mutated, transferred, or taken away as the situation demands.
I also don’t want to be stuck with the other distributors who don’t seem to care about making a sound business model. Each main competitor seems to have one component of the puzzle, but no more: Apple has the money and the reach but not the desire; Smashwords has the desire but not the know-how, clout, or reach; Barnes and Noble has the pedigree and the desire, but can’t seem to keep from tripping over itself. If none of these blind giants gets their act together, Amazon is going to nudge them over–because they’re already stumbling towards–the cliff.
The subversive in me thinks the only solution is an author co-op where writers take control of their own future. Call me crazy, but an online store that is owned and funded by authors would be able to generate higher royalties while benefiting from the synergies of aggregated promotion and distribution. No exclusivity contracts, instant opt-in/opt-out. Advertising abilities that would dwarf any single author’s efforts.
Unfortunately, the idea is so far from reality that it’s hard to even talk about it with a straight face. But the landscape is changing and things we thought impossible yesterday (like independent electronic publishing, for instance) will become commonplace tomorrow.
Creative Tithing: The old 80/20
I was nearing the end of a seven-week writing class held at the Smithsonian. The teacher was wrapping up both the evening and the course and was trying to leave us with some food for thought.
The advice ran a familiar gamut: write every day, read what you want to write, work through rejection. Then, the instructor veered into foreign territory.
“Tithe,” she said, paused, and said again, “You have to tithe.”
She went on to explain what should’ve been a simple–but for me what was at the time, a radical–concept: in order to get a little (or a lot) you have to give a little (and sometimes a lot, too).
All artists enter their craft hoping and believing, at some level, they will be a success. That belief sometimes promotes a self-centered, solipsistic view of the world. Sometimes it takes someone else to point out that the rest of the creative world is trying to do the same exact thing…and we could all help each other if we glanced up from our own road map once in a while.
You want that magazine to accept your short story? Buy a copy. Desperate for a 5-star rating and gushing review for your latest epub novel or short story? Write a couple reviews yourself. Sad that your local indie book store is going out of business? Buy something there, even if you could get it for $4.99 $1.99 on Amazon.
Recently, the concept has been put more crudely as the “80/20” rule: put 80 percent effort in to get 20 percent out. It’s a stark way of quantifying what should come naturally: that we should be supporting fellow artists, outlets, and industries by giving something back. I prefer the more archaic term tithe, as I think it implies more about the relationship of giving and receiving, of obligation and reward, than the industrial digital inputs of the 80/20 rule, but the gist is the same: if you want success, hold out your hand, not for a gift, but to help.
If you’re a writer or artist, consider doing the following:
- Buy a copy of the journals, magazines, or the books of the publishers (especially small publishers) that YOU would like to see yourself in. If you can afford it, subscribe.
- Tithing can be time, as well. If you belong to a writers organization, suck it up and run for office or participate on a board or panel. You’re busy? Guess what, we’re all busy. Don’t know what it takes? No one does. The important part is to breathe life into the organizations that keep your craft going.
- Attend book signings, readings, and panels of fellow authors in your organization or just your local area. Introduce yourself, thank them for their work and time, offer your congratulations, buy their book and get them to sign it.
- Share insights and tricks you’ve gleaned on your blog, in chat rooms, listservs, and in meetings.
- Introduce others at events, work at making connections and bringing creative people together.