News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #129…
Wild about Harry? Not so fast! First, what’s hit the bookstores and brought out wizards, muggles, and so forth wasn’t written by Rowling—her name is prominently featured on the cover in a blatant show of brand borrowing designed to entrap the naïve. Second, it’s a play, not a novel, the written version of a drama that has already opened in London. Third, Harry is all grownup and sending his own kids to magic school. This exploitation of a brand name is as flagrant as when the Chines bought Lenovo from IBM and still called it Lenovo (although “Rowling” and “Harry Potter” generally offer more quality than anything manufactured in China). I wonder how much the play’s authors paid J. K. Rowling.
Short is the new long? I never start a story thinking, “This is going to be a novel.” Or, short story or novella. Some zines have limits for short stories, lower and upper bound; so do some traditional publishers for novels they publish. The author has to respect that, of course. But let me quote marketing guru Penny Sansevieri:
“Shorter books rock. I’ve said before that short is the new long, but that applies even more with your avid reader groups.”
Is she right? Robert Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy books, for example, are long novels; most of his books are long (The Ambler Warning, one of his books I found handy on my bookshelf, is 489 pages). (The Bourne movies only shared their titles with the Bourne books—the new movie is simply called Jason Bourne.) Clancy’s A Clear and Present Danger is 688 pages long. OK, these books were all written long before the ebook revolution, but the question still is important: how long should a genre X be, where X = short story, novella, or novel. Clearly, the answer is genre-dependent, and a wide variation can be found.
Perhaps what Penny is hinting at is our change in reading habits. While I read Michener’s Hawaii before high school, I didn’t have computer games and streaming video TV soaps available at all hours of the day (all those HBO, Netflix, and Amazon series are exactly the latter). These, music videos, streaming music, and so forth offer immediate satisfaction and perhaps make sitting around with a long novel less appealing to younger generations (they might never know about the pleasures of reading a good book while sipping some Irish whiskey). With the few exceptions of fads like Harry Potter (see above) and Fifty Shades, readers’ numbers are diminishing overall, but avid readers, young or old, perhaps don’t have the patience to go long anymore.
Maybe Penny’s right, but, as an author, I’ll still follow Clancy’s advice (paraphrased here): I’ll just write the damn story, whether it turns out to be a short, novella, or novel, and I won’t worry about the length until the end. That doesn’t mean I won’t cut a short story down to 5k words if that’s what a zine wants, or not worry too much about paring things down while content editing when a publisher wants a longer novel (you can still do that and be a minimalist writer, by the way—that’s not about word count). As an author, you have to be always wary of endangering the flow and integrity of your story, but you also have to get that story told and told well, no matter what form the story finally takes.
Do you still use an e-reader? With new devices like tablets and smartphones, users of e-readers might be becoming an endangered species. But there are still many readers out there who use them. SONY started making theirs, B&N made its Nook division a separate business, and various versions of Kindles still dominate the market (the Fire is a tablet, of course). Amazon has a free app that handles Kindle-formatted files, so most devices can now use .mobi files. Many formats are also available from Smashwords—you choose the format when you buy the ebook. That’s my main reason for ending Amazon exclusivity and beginning to add the remainder of my ebooks to Smashwords—I want to and can entertain more readers that way.
Hemingway contest. No, I’m NOT talking about that short story contest, which is a waste of time and money. I’m talking about this contest in the Keys for the best Hemingway doppelganger, and a Mr. Hemingway won the latest one (he says he’s not related). I’m thinking of entering next year because some people say I look like the old man of the sea. I think I look more like Kris Kristofferson (my kids did too), but it’d be nice to channel Hemingway (but only in the writing). I can’t say he was a minimalist writer, though.
The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan on sale. This sci-fi thriller will be on sale at Smashwords for $0.99, reduced from $2.99 (67% discount) from now until September 1. Use the coupon code FU54W. First question: what will the U.S. in the future do with retirees with Top Secret information? Second question: how do you prevent the assassination of a presidential candidate? Third question: is there room for romance in the life of an old agent? This fast-moving story’s main character is a woman who shows perseverance and strength to survive while unmasking a terrible conspiracy. Don’t miss the thrills!
In libris libertas!
