The perils and pitfalls of publishing

When I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest earlier this month, part of the process called contestants to include a 10k excerpt. The first ten thousand words of the novel would be available for preview by reviewers and anyone who cared to read it. This made me pause. Putting it out there makes me uncomfortable, frankly. And not because I’m afraid someone won’t like it.
Harper Collins recently launched Authonomy, similar to the above, except authors post their entire manuscript there. According to a recent GalleyCat post, HarperCollins purchased three novels “straight from their online manuscript site.” Technically, no, according to the comments that follow the post. One was an agented submission, and the editor didn’t know until after HarperCollins accepted the book for publication that it was one of the novels posted online. Still, good for the other two, right? Absolutely. It’s better than winning the lottery.
But what about all the other manuscripts posted out there, in their nakedness for all the world to see? Will posting the mss on Authonomy make it a pariah in the land of publishing? A leper that no other publisher will touch? An author friend of mine likened the process to the literary version of American Idol. My friend also said the Christian market has a site similar to Authonomy, but charges $90 to host your manuscript for six months. Oh no. No, no, no. Never never never never never pay a fee. Never. Remember that word. When someone holds their hand out, you can shake it but walk away with your money still in your wallet.
Authonomy’s blog includes an interesting peek inside the publishing biz from Louise, HC’s Publishing Operations Director, as well as several authors. Something to watch, I suppose. Look before you leap, my friend.

To mash or not to mash

Last week, GalleyCat posted a thought-provoking article (for me, at least) about literary mash-ups. You've likely heard of music mash-ups, combos of songs that, blended together, are sometimes interesting, sometimes just a mess. (If you’d like, you can even make your own). I’ll be interested to see which this will be: Quirk Books, a small Philadelphia press, seems to have gained a viral following online, culminating in requests at Comic-Con that led to an advanced publication date of April 1. Check out the video for the full scoop.
Mashups are a jump beyond fan fiction. I haven’t read any fan fiction, I admit. I will say that, as an author, I would not be in favor of someone else writing stories for my characters. Imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. Buying that author’s work is. As to quality, I suppose it will be as with any story – only as good as the writer.
The movie to be produced by Rocket Pictures, Elton John’s production company, seems a bit too close for comfort to Quirk Books’ notion. Hope it’s not a blatant rip-off. Then Sir Elton would be in Jane Austen’s class – ripe for ripping apart.

Transmogrification of stories

In a kind of literary Darwinism, stories are evolving as publishing continues to evolve, further driven by emerging technological advances.
GalleyCat advised that ebook retailer Fictionwise partnered with Lexcycle to bring ebooks to iPhone, a “game-changing” move, according to Lexcycle.
It followed up with a post-Christmas post that iPhones will be a huge player in the digital book market, especially as more developers such as Scrollmotion enter the game.
iPhone apps are definitely suited for books such as Vestal Review’s planned anthology, "Short on Sugar, High on Honey. Bittersweet Love Stories." As described in their call for submissions, “All stories are between seven words (lucky number) and thirteen (bad luck).” Also according to Vestal, the idea for the anthology came on the heels of the “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs" anthology, which Amazon rank 532 as of 4/1/08.
Great stuff to fill down time during commutes, or standing in line at the store.
GalleyCat also noted authors on Twitter broke ground in 2006 with six-word stories, followed up by Wired Magazine’s six-word scifi contest. Eileen Gunn’s made me smile, as did Alan Moore’s and Charles Stross. And Margaret Atwood’s made me laugh, but she is a master of words – and having read most of her other work, filling in the blanks is devious fun. Okay, they were all great, but can blurbs truly be called stories? Flash fiction condensed to its essence, and the reader’s imagination must fill in the blanks. But can that kind of writing stay with you like a good story?
The shorter the story, the bigger the challenge. Flash fiction is extremely difficult to do well, for me, at least. Trimming a story to its minimal core can reveal its truth if the cuts are executed with the precision of a surgeon’s knife. If hacked away with less care, a bloody mess may result. But that’s true for stories of any length. No matter what the technological innovation, stories will never be extinct.