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Digital Publishing: Short Fiction’s Renaissance?
With all of the talk at the moment surrounding digital publishing and the transformation of publishing as a whole, a contradiction in the norms of publishing has emerged for me when discussing short fiction and in particular, short story collections.
See, the norm in publishing is that short fiction collections do not sell as well as novels. Big publishers won’t touch them, with only some small presses interested in collections by unknown writers. All of this while we’re told that our attention spans are growing shorter and shorter, we’re becoming wired to the Internet and that the eBook is going to take over from the printed one.
The conclusions may be a little dubious in light of the popularity of books such as Twilight and Harry Potter, forests worth of pages, but I digress.
If we’re all reading blogs, Twittering and waiting for the takeover of the eBook, then surely there is the basis for a revival of short fiction – and indeed the younger brother, flash fiction.
One of the barriers for a lot of people to using the eBook is it being harder to read for long lengths on a screen. It hurts the eyes with the glare. So a novel seems like a daunting thing to read on a screen, but a short story could be the length of a news article that most people read multiples of each day.
Digital books or works of literature are less confined to the laws of economics where the cost of printing a couple of pages of short story wouldn’t be worth it. Amazon Shorts comes to mind. I can imagine selling shorts online for a fraction of the cost of a novel, or even readers subscribing to short story writers. It’s like with iTunes; you can sometimes just buy the single instead of the whole album.
And the shorter length would satisfy our shrinking attention spans. It seems so obvious to me that I’m wondering if I’m missing some vital pieces of the puzzle. Or is just another example of how the desires for profit stifle innovation because publishers aren’t willing to take a risk?
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This was probably NOT what I wanted to read at the moment (about the Amazon Shorts Program) but perhaps also good in a way.
Paul and I have been tossing around ideas for a short story platform for more than 18 months now. But from my reading through the forum posts there – it doesn’t seem like Amazon is really that interested in selling short storires out right. And I feel that 49c is a bloody rip off for a short story – given most of it probably goes to Amazon for the priveldge of having the bloody thing on their site.
I agree with you Ben – the time is ripe for the re-emergence of the short story as a tour de force. Now to get CW finished for this year and begin work on that platform.
Probably said to much – but you get that late at night. Hope your writers group went well tonight.
I think that it might not be about risk taking, more about allowing the human mind to catch up with technology. This is an interesting post, because it brings up so many other arguments about technology, the span humans can pay attention — over-stimulation and such… and just where we are moving in the future with our language (texting is a new language that many schools are going to have to start teaching for example.)
There are many people who are not ready to give up the luxury, or who are stuck in their own/old habits… afraid to try something new or different simply because they don’t understand it. Once people open their minds to the possibility of something new, anything can be accomplished cheaper or not… sadly, sometimes it holds us back. But other times it moves us forward.
Will it be even harder to get published once ebooks become the new book? Anyone will able to place their work on the internet… will it change the way/pace/quality of how things work in the publishing world? Probably.
But it is coming… “they” (meaning publishers) will just have to figure out how they can get theirs too…
The concept of the e-Book has been around for a long time, with devices able to play, if that’s the right word, them appearing in the mid 1980s. It simply hasn’t caught on, or perhaps the time hasn’t yet come for the e-Book. Right at the moment I think it’s dead technology, how many devices do we actually want to lug around?
Amazon are pushing it as part of their business plan, boo US corporate strategy. but quite frankly I’m not seeing a fall off in sales or releases of hard copy books currently.
The short form of lit has always been viable for a few genres, and a dead end for others, not’s simply not going to change.
I can quite happily read stuff on my laptop, but not entirely sure that would stretch to a 500 page novel.
With the advent of the internet in terms of mass marketing and the decline in price of means of printing books etc, expect the further rise of the small press shops as a vital part of the publishing world. Am already seeing some small print runs of 300 soft cover, so the business model must be there.
Jodi, I think Amazon Shorts has been executed poorly and the writers have been ripped off in a major way from what I’ve heard. But the concept has promise.
I hope CW takes off. I’ll be buying a copy and promoting it here when it’s released.
Kara and Jeff: I think you’re right about catching up and it not having caught on yet. The eBook still hasn’t taken off yet so I guess time will tell. It’s so hard to predict what will happen with publishing in the short term.
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