In the middle ground of page counts, it’s a case of retail price versus reader expectation, but at the extremes of the range, it’s about the physics of printing. A 3000-word short can’t be bound with a flat spine, as there’s not enough depth of paper to glue the spine onto, and using an effectively flat jacket – as with most weekly magazines – looks cheap and devalues the product. A 200,000-word book can theoretically be bound, but it’ll break its spine the first time you open it.

My point is that the nature of printing has dictated page count. Until now.

eBooks increase in size at a very small rate as word count increases. A quick look at my book on Amazon reveals a file size of 488KB at 105,000 words with a to-spec, 221 KB  cover image and no other graphics. If I’d written 210,000 words, it’d be about 750 KB. A million? Just shy of 3 Meg. Hardly big numbers, given that a song from iTunes comes in about 10 Meg, and we throw album-fulls of those onto iPods without thinking twice.

In terms of distribution cost, there’s nothing stopping a writer producing books of a length far in excess of what is currently considered the norm. But why the hell would you?

eBooks are still subject to limitations within the market, and right now, that’s the price you can expect to charge. Text books and event fiction titles from name brand authors appear to be following the existing pricing curves, but publisher promos and self-publishers do seem to have established a new baseline cost for fiction, namely $0.99, or $2.99 if you think you can sell at that price. The curious twist is that that price point appears to be accepted as the fair rate for a title, regardless of how long that title is. With $0.99 as the minimum you can charge for a Kindle book, you can find quality short stories, novellas and novels at that price. At $2.99, you’d struggle to sell a short, but a novella or novel both fit. Beyond $2.99 is the realm of short story collections and full novels, but without a strong reputation and name recognition, you’d probably struggle to make significant sales at that price.

As a new writer publishing his own work, I’m firmly stuck in the $0.99-to-$2.99 camp, which is fine, as I have some distinguished company amongst my independent peers, but with such a limited scope for earnings on a single book, the equation (more books) > (longer books) makes clear business sense. In researching my next project, I’m looking for enough ideas to fill a book of 150 pages max, as what’s the point of writing it longer, when I could spend the time writing another title, which then has its own shot at that $0.99-$2.99 per unit?

Stories need to run their course, so there will always be long books, but I can’t be the only writer thinking this way, and I honestly believe that books are going to get shorter, on average, as a result. That’s fine with me, as I love shorter stories around the 150-200 page mark, but it may come as an unpleasant surprise to those eBook buyers currently sniffing out bargains.

Sam Thomas and I had discussed parodying the BBFC black card more than once, but it really did seem to fit the need this time – specifically, if I was going to include all of each episode’s identifying text on the cover, I’d need a layout that supported it. This was the demo version I sent to the BBFC when asking permission to parody their intellectual property, and it was approved as being ok, but no closer… Nice people, and a nice experience.

Unfortunately, the nagging doubt that it’s just not that iconic outside the UK got to me, and I decided it wasn’t the right project to use the idea. That, and it’s illegible and unidentifiable in a product thumbnail.

Thought I’d share it anyway, not for any reason other than I think it’s cool.

Roz’s post holds some great advice on how to publish serial works (although I’m not comfortable with the idea of categorising a work of fiction using non-fiction categories – that feels like gaming the system to me, and has the potential to annoy readers), so it’s well worth reading if you’re planning to split a novel into episodes.

While I’ve been working this week, some cool news came out of Amazon regarding their new French Kindle store, which is great news for all authors (bigger market) but particularly great for me, given the French focus of my book. With the launch of the Amazon.fr channel in the back of my mind, and while otherwise thinking of the benefits of serial publication:

• Greater visibility/discoverability
• Greater number of potential tags/search results
• Option to give part one away for free if publishing on Smashwords too

another benefit occurred to me.

Amazon’s KDP program allows 7 keyword tags per book. That’s not a lot, so you’d never want to waste a single one on a redundant tag, but with a serialised book, you have (in the case of Make a Move) 6 times the number for the episodic releases, and another 7 for the collected edition. That’s 49 tags, and I can definitely “waste” a few of those. Now, while French and German book buyers will be looking for English language books (the rates of English speaking in those countries is orders of magnitude higher than the number of Americans/British with a second language), that doesn’t mean that they aren’t performing a significant number of native language searches too, which will completely miss your book. By taking some of your tags, translating them into French and German (I recommend Google Translate) and spreading them across a couple of episodes of your book, you can get your work to feature in those searches.

It’s not a major leap in discoverability tricks, but if you had a book you thought would appeal to readers in those markets, wouldn’t you want to give them every chance to find it?

I had one of those choices to make today.

I didn’t think it would happen so soon; my son only turned three last month, and I figured I had another year, maybe two, before this happened. I was wrong.

With hindsight, it was an easy call to make on his behalf. You analyse and weigh up and generally over-think it, but in your heart, you know the answer. You know which of the two choices is morally, spiritually and philosophically the the right one.

It might be a coincidence, but my son told me he loved me for the first time today. It was a shock when he said it, and the emotional impact on me was huge, but now I’ve had time to digest the details of the event, regardless of whether he said it knowing how close he came to taking a different path in his life today, a path I decided was not his to take, I know, as much as anyone can, that I truly deserve that love.

No child of mine is starting the series with The Phantom Menace.

But which is it?

I ask because I’m not too bothered about my author brand. As a writer in control of my own output, I’ve no one telling me what to write, and I intend to exploit that opportunity to the point of abuse. I don’t, however, want to alienate readers by “conning” them into believing I’m only going to be one type of writer, when the next book could share no trace of DNA with the previous one. Yes, it’ll always be my voice, but is that enough?

Given the metadata surrounding eBooks – the myriad opportunities to communicate with a potential buyer before they commit to a purchase – do they provide digital-only writers with a blank canvas upon which to paint their career, or does too much freedom dilute the relationship between authors and readers, to the point that the readers lose trust and look elsewhere?

Sent from my iPhone

What the hell? That was a real email I received. A “professional” email. And it’s not even a rare occurrence any more. The race to acquire the new shiny is peaking, as Apple define new markets and competitors scramble to catch up, but if this is the kind of content that’s generated as a side effect of the move to smaller and smaller devices, the bubble has to burst soon.

When I look at hardware/software, whether it’s a phone, a computer, an audio plugin, a microphone, I have to ask myself “what will it enable me to do, that I currently can’t?”. The answer may be that it won’t bring me new capabilities, but it may let me do an existing thing better, which is fine if the price is right.

But what’s the point of chasing the bleeding edge of consumer electronics if the end result is a degraded experience? Smartphones are supposed to aid communication by making your email and social networks available anywhere, but if the form factor makes rendering a coherent response a chore, is it really worth it?

Maybe the thoughts you have to share while commuting/eating/defecating really aren’t worth communicating to the wider world, and the exchange would be best left until you’re sat at your computer screen, with a full-size keyboard, considering both the content of your communication, and the tone.

Sent from my computer, after some considered thought, and a dash of Morgan’s Spiced.

When I decided to put Make a Move out myself, eBooks were still the next big thing, and print was an obvious choice for me. I don’t regret that choice, and I’ll release a small print run of the next book when it’s done, but it did steer me down a path that undermined what Make a Move was meant to be. It was never supposed to be a novel – it’s six stories – but the cost equations of print forced me to squeeze it into that container, and defused some of its impact, its originality. I compromised.

I’ve never been happy about that, but now eBooks are mainstream, and give me all the flexibility I need to deliver the story as it was intended, which is what I’m working on. The hard part is the pricing, but I’ve got some ideas on how to get the numbers to balance. It’s going to take some more work, and probably some time booked off my day job, but it’ll be worth it as it will free me to create book two the way it should be done. Think of this processes like when Apple released Mac OSX Snow Leopard; a re-architecture step to make what follows even better.

So what else have I been up to? Well, something strange happened about 6 months ago, when I said yes to doing something I had no real idea how to do, namely shooting a video for a local Roller Derby team (YouTube link). I said yes because I was bored and thought it’d be fun, which it was. I learned so much about shooting and editing video, and even more about recording, mixing and mastering music. That was a period of extreme creativity for me, and I loved every second. It was also a lesson in the benefits of just saying “yes” and working out the details later; as long as you can outline what you need to learn in the time available, taking risks is a great way to get fired up.

I’m really happy with the result: the music-video-speed edit, the over-compressed colour palette, the punk-rock-meets-High-School-Musical soundtrack… I think it came out great.

And so did some other people…

I was asked off the back of that to do a studio shoot for a newly formed burlesque troupe (www.burlettes.co.uk) including stills. We had no idea how to light a shoot like that, but we knew we could work it out in time, and we nailed it. We’re still editing the dances together, but the quality of the footage is something the whole team are proud of.

Another derby video shoot came up, and we were happy to do that, as this time it included interviews, so the audio recording/processing gave us another learning opportunity, and it was off the back of that shoot that we were invited to work with some local magic practitioners, shooting a street magic show on a full set of broadcast-quality gear. And this show is targeted for more than YouTube…

So what has this got to do with Make a Move? Well, everything.

I can’t work in a vacuum, creating derivative plots and characters, recycled from all of the other media I’ve consumed. I just don’t see the point. I have to live these adventures, meet these people, breathe in these places, and capture those experiences, all enhanced with a touch of fantasy to elevate the narrative beyond the limits reality can endure.

You might be surprised how much of Make a Move is based on experience…

But I have a mortgage, and a child in nursery, and a day job to support them both, and the opportunities for adventure are harder to find. So when I get a chance to explore this life, and meet new people, and create something cool, I’m going to say “yes”, and fight that nagging thought that I should be writing, knowing that the only way that I’ll write anything worth my readers’ time will be to live it first.

But that doesn’t mean that there’ll be magicians in Make a Move 2, and you might be thinking that a show about magic might be boring (it won’t, not the way we’re going to shoot it) but you have to remember the fact of which I remind myself daily:

This is only the beginning.

If I buy/read a thriller, it’s always in spite of the clichéd cover design – the vague photographic representation of something mysterious happening somewhere, coupled with the non-ironic heavy fonts and moody colouring – but is that just me?

Is it best to stand out or try to fit in?

But rather than be negative, I’ll try to be balanced by suggesting a fix. Saying something’s “broken” is pointless commentary unless you can state, clearly and with neither emotion nor agenda, what “fixed” is.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking on Amazon for a book on audio mixing. I’d already bought one title for my Kindle (the well-written and professionally converted Zen and the Art of Mixing by Mixerman) but I wanted something more in-depth. A friend of mine did a degree in audio engineering, and has a load of books on the subject, but they’re all over ten years old, and a lot of the technology described within has moved on to the point of being unrecognisable, so I wanted something published within the last couple of years. I found Mixing Audio – Concepts, Practices and Tools by Roey Izhaki, and it has a Kindle edition, but I decided to go for the print copy for a few of reasons:

• It was only £2.21 more than the Kindle version
• It comes with a DVD, that I then won’t have to download
• I can lend it to my friend when I’m done

The second point is just laziness on my part, but the first and third could have been predicted and negated by the publisher. The point about lending is a contentious one, as legally, I’ve bought the book for personal use, and don’t pay the publisher for lending rights. Fair enough, but it’s a bit… backwards. Many software programs allow you multiple installs within certain, fair, scenarios. I’m thinking of audio plugins from Stillwell and Cytomic, but that’s just where I’m at right now. Other, much larger, companies are moving to the same kind of thinking. And that got me thinking.

I’ve bought books that teach software or technology, read them, and each time a new version of the product is released, I’ve just read up on the changes from the website; I’ll never buy a new release of that book again. But eBooks, in their simplest form, are software. You don’t buy a full license each time a new version is released; you buy a much cheaper upgrade. And you always buy it, because you like software, and you want the latest and greatest.

I ordered the Roey Izhaki book, and I’m reading it now, but once I’ve read it, I’ll never buy a subsequent edition. It’s too expensive for the 20%-or-so of updated content you’d get in that full-price printed book. If the eBook came with updates – new editions at discounted prices to the owners of previous versions, as confirmed by your Amazon purchase history, I’d have bought it. I’d have bought it because the eBook, even at the same price, offered better long-term value. Never mind colour, or video, or embedded sounds (I can download them from the website once I pull my finger out…) upgrades to content that becomes quickly outdated are a serious value-add, at little cost to the publisher, that don’t impact future sales, of which there won’t be any anyway.

So that’s my suggestion for a new business model; find out how your customers want to use your products, and work with your distributor to allow them to do it, and pay you for the privilege.

I’m not calling this a turning point in the self-publishing (r)evolution, as my perspective is not as detailed as it should be right now, but it’s definitely a beat – a notable mark on the line from obscurity to… who knows?

Any artistic movement (and that’s all self-publishing really is – a group of creative people working outside of the accepted norm) needs acceptance from the mainstream in order to achieve any degree of longevity, but this acceptance comes in broad stages, rather than tiny increments, hence the title of this post. The way I see it:

• Round one was Vanity Publishing. Everybody lost in round one.
• Round two was the birth of self publishing. Lots of people trying things out and seeing what worked. A few companies saw the opportunity to monetise this uncoordinated creativity, and clear paths to market emerged. I joined the game near the end of this stage, just as things were getting interesting.
• Round three saw a number of self-publishing authors emerge as names; these people were making money. Real money. The disparity now was between how those successful writers were viewed by their peers (inspirational, affirming, self-serving, you choose) and the mainstream (J.A. who?). Outside of the eReader early adopters and the eWriting cognoscenti, most people still had a pretty low opinion of self-pubbing writers.
• Round four… well, we’re not quite there yet, but the linked USA Today article suggests, to me, that we’re very, very close. Round four will be the point where mainstream readers will start to give self-published works a chance. These will almost all be eBook readers – given the lack of print copies of most self-published work – and low price will be the primary reason they’ll take a chance on a new writer with no name-publisher backing. This is the point where solid writing, good cover design and careful, thorough eBook conversion and formatting are vital to winning mainstream acceptance, which is still a long way off.
• Round five is where things could, in my opinion, get nasty.

The biggest threat to self-publishing success is anonymity, and the worst thing anyone with an interest in keeping self publishing off the radar could do is say something to draw attention to it. When no one knows you exist, there is literally no such thing as bad publicity, and the complete lack of commentary from mainstream publishing regarding indie authors has helped to keep self publishing from breaking out.

Now, though, indie authors are out of the margins and across the page. Nobody, no matter how ingrained their stance on indie-vs-mainstream publishing, can argue with Amanda Hocking’s sales numbers, and anyone reading about her in the press is going to see those sales as, at worst, interesting, or at best, validation. Very soon, there is going to come a point where those whose livelihoods depend upon mainstream publishing are forced to defend their place in the publishing food chain, and hence the higher prices of their authors’ books versus indies, and in the absence of positives to argue on their part, their only option will be to point to the negatives – real or perceived – of buying indie.

I’m not saying that anyone’s going to write opinion pieces slamming the production value of indie work, or that negative reviews of celebrated indies’ work will appear in publications that previously wouldn’t touch a self-pubbed book, or that the most successful indies will be offered book deals to show that these “hidden gems” were carelessly overlooked and can now reach new heights of success with the proper backing, while simultaneously removing the authors’ voices from the debate. No, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, because I hope it’s left for the readers to decide for themselves what authors they buy, and what their books mean to them. But this is business, and sometimes people in business have to play rough, so if it happens, I won’t be surprised, and I hope no other self-publishing writer, no matter how successful, is either.