I'm going to piggyback on Jeff's topic since it seems like every day we are getting news of an author making the leap to e-publishing, or jumping from e-book success over into traditional publishing (and, methinks, we in "traditional" publishing will have to find a way to erase that distinction if we want to keep making enough money to get by). There's lots of chatter about this on the blogosphere, and there should be. We have this amazing new tool available to us that lets us send content at the speed of your T1 line (or dial-up AOL, hi Grandma!), is comfortable to read, and can be bought on impulse at 2 in the morning when you just have to know what happens next in Naomi Novak's Temeraire series. Will the British dragons be overcome by the French dragons? Will the Chinese enter the war to revenge themselves for the stolen dragon egg? And often, e-publishing will make sense for authors, especially those who have already developed a following from years of being in print and can use that lower price point and high royalty rate to jump to another level.
But in the discussions on Barry Eisler's blog and elsewhere, I hear a lot about e-publishing giving writers time to write and get their material out there quickly. Speed is the name of the game. When something costs 99 cents or $2.99, you have to sell a lot of units to make money. And you need to keep writing lots of "units" to keep your audience interested and remembering you; for example, who reads a blog that only posts once a month? I can't help but think that there's a certain amount of quality that's being sacrificed by this "more is more" approach. Books are being sold as a commodity, not an art- of course, I know they are a commodity, and of all of the genres of writing, it's the commercial triumvirate of mysteries/romance/YA that seem to be the most successful in e-publishing.
If we're going with analogies, like the candlemaker being in the candle business and not the lighting business, let's say writers are craftspeople- in particular, they are chairmongers (ok, I just made that up, but it sounds cool). Some of them will produce a large quantity of chairs quickly for sale at a low price. Some of these chairs will break when you sit on them. Some will go in people's garages. They are ok chairs, and there is nothing overtly wrong with them, but there's nothing particularly special about them either. Also, the chairmonger (ha! again!) will not improve much at their craft of chairmaking, since they are mostly trying to get them out the door. On the other hand, there will be some Chair People who need more time to make their chairs. They will carefully sand every surface, make sure the joints align properly, and add a sense of elegance. This chair, you would be happy to put in your living room. You can sit on it and not only does it hold, it is comfortable. And that particular Chair Person will be well regarded for their craft, and people will sign up for a waiting list in order to be able to buy one of their chairs.
Most of the writers I know want to write not only to be paid, not only to be famous, but because they care about the craft of writing. Even if they are writing commercial fiction, they still want to be good at it, and give each book the care, attention, and maturation time that it needs to make them feel accomplished and proud of their work. So much of the conversation these days is about business models and distribution platform and "units" that it totally bypasses the art aspect of the equation. Some may say that this is me being romantic, but it's not. I'm an agent. I wouldn't know romance about books if it sat down to tea and introduced itself. Better books are better books, period, and those tend to last over time. And having worked with many writers of different stripes this past decade, almost all of them turn out more thoughtful, well-crafted work when they are allowed time to think and revise. Perhaps had I more time, I would not have prattled on about chairs quite so much, and we would all be happier!
-Michelle Brower
