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.

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.

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.

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.

When I was working on my first attempt at a novel (unfinished, never going to be) I wrote a dream sequence in which the lead protagonist examines his plight and motivations. It made me feel cheap and nasty, and not in a good way, so after allowing it to live in my Word document for 24 hours, I deleted it. I’ve never written a dream sequence since.

Now, I know I’m biased; I have no interest in dreams. I rarely remember my dreams, and those I do remember are typically memories (which I can remember when awake) or fragments of data welling up from my subconscious, which you don’t need to be a psychoanalyst to interpret. I don’t look down on people who study dreams, or believe that they offer insights into character, personal issues, the past, or the future – it’s just that I don’t believe dreams mean anything to anyone other than the dreamer. You want to tell me about a dream you had last night? Why not tell me about your commute; it’s probably as relevant to my understanding of your personality.

So, yeah, I’m a bit anti-dream in books.

I just finished a book by one of my favourite authors in which the hero gains the answer to a riddle he’s been pondering in a dream. A dream character – who doesn’t exist in the “real world” of the book, points him in the right direction.

What the hell?

With the exception of any lucid dreamers who might be reading, have you ever dreamt a scene with such coherence it could convey anything worthy of understanding that you didn’t already know?

I doubt it, which is why dreams should never be used as a device to advance plot. Not only is it a painfully tired cliché, unless your narrative requires a character to understand the relevance of a fifty-foot clown beating an ice-cream replica of Winston Churchill to death with a steroid inhaler, you’re probably faking it, and you’re definitely out of ideas.

Anyone Can Play Guitar

No, they can’t. As a musician, you’ll find yourself hanging out with other musicians, so you get the impression that everyone has a degree of musical talent. Most people, however, don’t. Not because they lack the raw ability, but because they lack the time, desire, or opportunity to learn. And, yes, some people will never be able to play, because their brains just aren’t good at that kind of thinking.

You tell someone you play guitar, they assume you’re good. The same is true of film-making at any level. You say you shot a roller derby video, people assume you know what you’re doing and that the end result is going to be awesome (it is, by the way – Steve). They don’t assume it’s going to suck.

You tell people you write, they assume you suck.

Not Everyone Can Write

Yes, they can. Not everyone can write well, but they can write. Most people use a computer at home or at work, so they all know their way around Word. They can use a web browser to research as well as you can. They can spell – maybe.

And this, I think, is the key to the different attitudes the three creative endeavours receive. Musicians and film-makers are seen to have technical skills that non-participants don’t, so even if the song or film is bad, it’s better than anything the unskilled observer could produce, which translates into a sympathetic view of the work. Add to that the significant financial investment in producing anything that can be played on an iPod or a DVD player, and the creatives are further elevated in perceived stature. Ignoring my computer, which I use for lots of things, my basic home recording setup – including instruments – cost over £3000, and I’m not quite done yet. My writing setup cost about £40. I could write an amazing book and record a terrible song, and the latter would still be seen as the greater achievement, as anyone can write a book, but not everyone can play guitar.

Customer Perception is Out of Our Hands

No, it’s not. Producing an eBook independently is never going to require a huge cash outlay unless you pay for professional editing, typesetting and conversion, but even if you do, that value perception won’t be increased, as readers won’t know. The book will be better for it, but readers won’t know why, or how much you spent. A professional cover designer adds visible value, but there are great designers working at all cost scales, so no help there.

But writers do have skills that non-writers don’t: namely grammar and typesetting/eBook conversion. The problem is, these skills are being aggressively devalued, and the group responsible is, well, us.

I’ve read way too many blogs/tweets stating that grammar is an evolving discipline – that it’s alive – and that as long as communication is maintained, anything goes. Anyone questioning this stance is branded a grammar Nazi (gotta love the internet) but a thorough understanding of grammar is what separates a skilled written communicator from the rest of the population that don’t understand even basic sentence construction. It’s a skill that makes our book understandable to anyone, and yet we seem hell-bent on throwing it away. Is grammatically correct prose seen as elitist? Condescending? Not to me. I think classical grammar combined with stilted writing can alienate readers with more modern tastes, but that’s just style; the underpinning grammar isn’t to blame.

Formatting an eBook isn’t easy either. Uploading a Word doc to Amazon is easy, but taking control of how your text is displayed on an eReader requires time, effort, and a steep learning curve. It’s a discipline most people would struggle with, yet it’s another skill that separates skilled eBook writers from the crowd. So why do so few independent authors try to do a proper conversion, or connect with someone who can help them? Even eBooks from my favourite mainstream authors are riddled with formatting errors, so this is one area in which a writer can elevate their standing, yet so few try.

As modern, independent writers/DIY publishers, we do have skills – skills we should be proud of – but as long as we’re happy to allow their devaluation, or to actively participate in that process, readers and outsiders will continue to look down on our independent trade while lauding others.

And right now, as a reader first and a writer second, I can’t say I blame them.

The key benefit of increased access to self-published work is, in my opinion, the strength of the relationship that can be forged between author and reader. It’s the indie author’s unique selling point, and it has to be respected. In this internet age, if you’re working to build a fan base, and you take a wrong step and alienate a few readers, you’re done.

There is a fine line between DIY author and DIY publisher, and author’s need to be clear about what they’re trying to be. If you want to be a publisher, that’s great – although you’re entering a field with thousands of people who are better at it than you, and you’d better have a unique angle upon which to sell books. If you’re a self-publishing author, you have to maintain your integrity – or at least appear to – as the second you resort to typically publisher-like behaviour, such as release-windowing on key retailer websites in order to concentrate sales and reviews, the trust you’ve built up with your readers is gone.

There’s nothing wrong with being business-minded, but having “indie” status doesn’t excuse activities for which publishing corporations are regularly lambasted. Ask yourself why you chose to self-publish, and answer truthfully, as your readers will spot the lie even if you don’t. A writer with a quality, yet niche or hard-to-categorise product can justify their independence without losing respect; a “me too” publisher probably can’t, and you’ll eventually get found out.

A friend of mine shared her first Kindle experience with me last week, and although the story grabbed her, and the Kindle as a reading experience has snagged a new convert to the eBook cause, the formatting errors annoyed her and undermined the experience. And again, this was from a big publisher.

I remember when High Definition DVDs first hit the shops; the review magazines would review the content – the film – but would also comment on the quality of the conversion from the usually-celluloid source. They don’t do it any more, as the quality is now a given, but at first, when the distributors were dredging the back catalogue for titles to convert, there were some films that just weren’t of sufficient quality.

That’s where I see us right now with eBooks; titles are being rushed out onto the digital shelves, and quality is suffering. There’s no excuse; it’s not hard to produce a quality conversion, but the impact of a bug-ridden text on the reader can be enough to see them leave the book unfinished. Which is why I’m going to be reviewing both the book (the intellectual property) and the conversion in each of my Goodreads eBook reviews from now on. And in the hope that you’ll write a review that will reassure me or warn me off from a bad conversion, I ask that all of you Goodreads reviewers do the same.