Sunday, June 29, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
What writers are up against
Informative if somewhat depressing background piece on the publishing world in flux:
From bestseller to bust: is this the end of an author's life?
(The Guardian)
The credit crunch and the internet are making writing as a career harder than it has been for a generation. Robert McCrum talks to award-winning authors who are struggling to make ends meet.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/02/bestseller-novel-to-bust-author-life
Inasmuch as this site is an effort to look for solutions to problems of the sort, I thought the article worth linking here. The question behind this site: How can good writers put their tales before the public, with a good shot at making more than coffee money?
Of course storytelling, the second oldest profession, is not going to die out, but it will need to adapt to a new and bizarre cultural landscape, where copyrights are not respected because 'information should be free,' where book publishing is turning into a legacy technology and, due to unrelated developments, people are not spending as freely as they did on luxuries like books.
Information, perhaps, should be free, but groceries are not, and that is the fork the writers are caught in. Anybody still unclear on why "may you live in interesting times" is a curse in Chinese?
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
To those who wait
The intended content hasn't shown up here yet, but it will. There is a difficulty. Posting short stories here vaporizes their first rights, and dilutes their value as reprints. Paper publishers, and e-book people too, are understandably not enthusiastic to try to sell stories that anyone can read on the Internet. Thus the question of whether to post any given story is a bit complicated. But, and it seems an inescapable question, how will I prove this site's concept without risking (win or lose) the royalties on what appears here?
Furthermore I have had only tepid responses lately when I have tried to drum up publicity for myself; too many people trying to do the same thing, I suppose. Still, I think my concept for this site is a good one. Check back in a while; I'll get it all worked out.
A positive development is getting this site excluded from archive engines, so that when a story is taken down from this site, it is (or should be) gone for good, so far as the Internet is concerned. This is an important step toward preserving writers' stakes in the resale value of their work.
So we shall see what happens. The idea here is to offer high quality short fiction in a format that pays the writers and delights the readers, and ideally sparks a renaissance in short story fiction, a form now stifled by the shortage of good markets for good writers. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
What this is about
Some time back, a number of writers came up with the idea that web pages would be ideal venues for serialized long fiction. We were very much mistaken. We thought there would be flocks of readers who would come back for each installment; they did not. We misjudged the online readership. The internet surfer is all about getting quick hits of information and rushing on to the next new thing.
Long fiction cannot be thrilling every minute; to create a satisfying story world takes thousands and thousands of words. Telling a complex story takes lots of events, not all of them thrill packed. These factors were at odds with supplying pop and sizzle in every post. If the writer filled in needed details, the result was a post that bored readers; if the details were omitted, and the episode sweetened instead with action that did not need to be there, that weakened the story line.
The most successful of the online serials were outrageous in one way or another, in language, in far fetched premise or, sometimes, in sheer smuttiness. But even the most successful of them fell short of what we all hoped for, which was income comparable to the rates in print fiction. The long fiction market on the web belongs to the e-book; that was the main lesson.
So I started thinking. The online reader likes things a bit outrageous and he is not keen on returning over a course of months or years to find out what finally happened to the magical princess, her slightly bumbling father the king, or her kindly wizard friend. People who like that sort of thing like printed and bound books, or e-books they can load on their Kindles.
Still, there must be a market for web fiction; it is a matter of bringing the right product to market, that's all. So, here we go with web fiction, second attempt. On the available evidence it would seem the audience wants things that are short and outrageous. Short fiction, and most people do not suspect this, is actually more difficult to write than long fiction. Never mind: One does what one must. As for outrageous, that's easy. Hold my beer and watch this.
An ongoing problem with web fiction is that it is hard to monetize. Online ad services depend on context--what the posting is about determines what ads show up, via a sophisticated computerized process. That works splendidly for nonfiction. Write about lawn care and you get ads for lawn mowers. Write about recipes and you get ads for pots and pans. When you write fiction it does not work so well. When I write about kings and nobles and so forth riding around on horses, the ads that show up are for horse shampoo, riding clothes, tack and even horse laxatives. Most readers do not own horses--some do, but the ad response (click rate) was abysmal.
That's why this new site is going to work on the tip jar basis. If you like the short stories, click the donation button.
Update (August 2013): I have become aware of some advertising options that are better suited to what I'm doing than the ones I was using a few years ago. Maybe some of those will appear here if they prove workable.
Long fiction cannot be thrilling every minute; to create a satisfying story world takes thousands and thousands of words. Telling a complex story takes lots of events, not all of them thrill packed. These factors were at odds with supplying pop and sizzle in every post. If the writer filled in needed details, the result was a post that bored readers; if the details were omitted, and the episode sweetened instead with action that did not need to be there, that weakened the story line.
The most successful of the online serials were outrageous in one way or another, in language, in far fetched premise or, sometimes, in sheer smuttiness. But even the most successful of them fell short of what we all hoped for, which was income comparable to the rates in print fiction. The long fiction market on the web belongs to the e-book; that was the main lesson.
So I started thinking. The online reader likes things a bit outrageous and he is not keen on returning over a course of months or years to find out what finally happened to the magical princess, her slightly bumbling father the king, or her kindly wizard friend. People who like that sort of thing like printed and bound books, or e-books they can load on their Kindles.
Still, there must be a market for web fiction; it is a matter of bringing the right product to market, that's all. So, here we go with web fiction, second attempt. On the available evidence it would seem the audience wants things that are short and outrageous. Short fiction, and most people do not suspect this, is actually more difficult to write than long fiction. Never mind: One does what one must. As for outrageous, that's easy. Hold my beer and watch this.
An ongoing problem with web fiction is that it is hard to monetize. Online ad services depend on context--what the posting is about determines what ads show up, via a sophisticated computerized process. That works splendidly for nonfiction. Write about lawn care and you get ads for lawn mowers. Write about recipes and you get ads for pots and pans. When you write fiction it does not work so well. When I write about kings and nobles and so forth riding around on horses, the ads that show up are for horse shampoo, riding clothes, tack and even horse laxatives. Most readers do not own horses--some do, but the ad response (click rate) was abysmal.
That's why this new site is going to work on the tip jar basis. If you like the short stories, click the donation button.
Update (August 2013): I have become aware of some advertising options that are better suited to what I'm doing than the ones I was using a few years ago. Maybe some of those will appear here if they prove workable.
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