The Focus and The Freak, Concentrate
I’ve been working for some time with the eminent Vancouver-based writer and sibling of mine, Darren Groth on a series of short young adult novels. The first of these is now available on the Kindle platform.
I’m often asked how we go about collaborating on a work of fiction. While all books are collaborative to some extent, shared authorship duties are relatively rare in our game. To be honest, it took us quite a while to figure out a collaborative approach that worked for us. We tried a few approaches unsuccessfully. Although our styles of writing are not that different from each other, the trick is finding a way to make them flow together. What we realised is that every project needs a champion and, while sharing text is relatively easy, a story’s vision can’t be doled out in a 50/50 split. Concentrate, a young adult novel, marked the first time we worked as a writing team, each of us taking on roles as necessary to serve the story. Here’s how I described the process three years ago:
Read MoreWe have tried collaboration before a few times. We tried taking alternate chapters. We tried taking on different characters. Nothing really worked and I consigned the whole endeavour to the ‘revisit one of these days’ file. Little did I know Darren was hatching his own variation on the concept.
What we eventually hit on was taking alternate drafts. The result was similar to writer-editor only with the editor taking a far more active role adding character layers and additional narrative. Our model was less ’50 per cent text each’ and something more like what Joel and Ethan Cohen do: share the writing credits where one or the other might take the lead on any individual project. Seems to work well for them. Why not us? We are already brothers after all.
Hand Made High Tech
Throughout 2011, if:book Australia commissioned essays from ten Australian writers on the future of writing and reading in a future tilted towards the digital. Each writer drew on his or her experience in fields diverse as publishing, transmedia, gaming, and comics to observe the changes taking place in ‘books’ and discussing where this might lead for authors, readers, and reading culture.
Originally posted at the if:book web site, the articles have now been compiled (some updated) into a single volume under the title Hand Made High Tech with an introduction by me and a brilliant cover design by Daniel Neville.
It’s free to download in any format or to read online. If you have any interest in books and publishing futures, it’s worth a read. Check it out.
Read MoreOff the Record Now Available in Digital
After much technical jiggery-pokery, Off The Record is now available in digital form, including the Kindle store for all you kindlers out there. The book is also coming soon to Apple iBookstore and Google eBooks.
In time it will also be available from all major vendors, including Baker & Taylor, B&N, Borders, Bowker, Ebooks.com, Ebrary, Follett Digital Resources, Kobo, Lightning Source (Ingram), Netlibrary, Overdrive, Sony, and Tecknoquest.
The ebook for Off the Record will be available to customers worldwide, so if you have had any trouble finding yourself a print copy (you obviously haven’t tried here), now is your chance to pick yourself up copy in fully recyclable pixels.
Read MoreConfessions of an accidental print fetishist
Things appear to be speeding up in the digital publishing world and finally the eBook is beginning to matter. No sooner does Apple announce their contribution to the continuing argument around what an e-reader should actually do than Amazon and MacMillan dive at each other’s throats in a way that would make even shareholders blanch. MacMillan won the stoush, but only because Amazon (somewhat uncharacteristically) caved. Nevertheless, this is a sign of things to come. Both publishers and technology vendors want control of the market. Which means the product is important. Who would have thought?
For so many years everyone dabbled in digital publishing, whether as an insurance policy or through Quixotic righteousness. Suddenly the big six are in the game and Amazon is attempting to impose its vision on the rest of the world whether through muscle or threats, while Apple attempt to make a product that will hit the market like a neutron bomb.
I have a sense that the current rash of insanity from the big end of town is still premature. No offence to the people who already enjoy their Kindle or Sony, but everything hinges on Apple selling truckloads of iPads. And I’m yet to be convinced they will. I wouldn’t call the device underwhelming—it does a hell of a lot for its price tag—but I still suspect the device—like all e-readers—solves a problem that doesn’t exist. It’s a better overall package than the Kindle, no question, but can it possibly live up to all that promise?
Then again, my partner mentioned something pretty enlightening the other day (she does that sometimes):
‘If they offered, say, ten free eBooks with the iPad, I’d definitely consider buying one. For much the same price you get all the books and the computer.’
I’m yet to see evidence that they will offer this, but it would seem to be an easy enticement to generate sales, even though the iPad’s price—especially in Australia—will be well off the price of ten books.
So where does all this leave tiny, single artist-operated ventures like mine? To be honest I don’t know. The title of this post comes from the sense that, in my championing of the PDF format as the most appropriate digital publishing platform, I have been thinking of the ultimate reading device as a static book-like thing where the publisher controls all aspects of the experience: the text, the formatting, the font, the page breaking. Since reading more and more on my iPhone apps Stanza and the gorgeous Classics, I’ve actually realised that texts need to be far more flexible and publishers (and authors) need to hand over to the reader their control of font, text sizing, and layout. If a reader wants my stories in magenta coloured Comic Sans on a raging red background, who am I to say no?
In offering beautifully formatted and strictly tamper-proof PDFs of my stories from this site, have I missed a fairly important point about the experience of reading on screen? Am I just limiting my potential readership? Am I shooting myself in the foot?
More and more, I suspect so.
Read MoreThe iTunes of short stories
Well, Motoko Rich is convinced this is a harbinger. Christ, I hope not. Let me explain. The Atlantic monthly magazine has made moves to ‘partner’ (ugh) with Amazon to offer short stories for the Kindle. A price per story at $3.99 sounds a bit harsh until you realise that one story at least is 15,000 words. Short? Really? I can’t find publishers prepared to take on stories more than 5,000 words, and anyone accepting over 2,500 is pretty rare these days, so I question whether this is really a novella, but anyway…
Rich declares, rather excitingly:
Let the iTunes-ization of short fiction begin.
Really could have done with an exclamation mark, but it’s the New York Times—they use such punctuation sparingly. So the analogy works like this: the iPod is the Kindle is and iTunes is…what exactly?
Added to that this horrifying aspect:
The authors with the Atlantic agreement have been paid a four-figure fee and will split sale proceeds with both The Atlantic and Amazon. Although the authors may at some point obtain the rights to republish the stories as part of a collection or in another magazine, the stories cannot appear in any other e-reader format.
You are joking right?
I’m not sure people have grasped why the iPod has been as successful as it has. The iPod built on the success of iTunes, both of which were built on the success of the open and freely available mp3 format. To play songs in iTunes and sync them with an iPod, you didn’t need to buy your songs from the iTunes store (indeed the store was still a good two years away in the USA and about four or five in Australia). The framework was already there and it didn’t depend on Amazon or anyone else locking the songs into some ham-fisted exclusivity deal.
One of the authors, Christopher Buckley, has said:
“Sure, ideally, I would like it printed on archival paper and bound in red morocco with gold embossed for a limited edition and signed by the author,” Mr. Buckley said. But if the Kindle edition “grabs some eyeballs — and I guess grabbing eyeballs is what the Internet is all about — then I’m all for it.”
Nice idea, but Mr Buckley is kidding himself. The internet is all about grabbing eyeballs: potentially billions of them. Locking yourself down to one single e-book reader (grabbing maybe thousands of eyeballs at best) is about something else entirely.
So, yes, let the iTunes-isation of short stories begin. Let it flourish regardless of any back room attempts to tie readers down to any single platform or device.
Read MoreThe Books
