Stories A La Carte?
The New York Observer published an article recently that suggests that it may make more sense to publish essays and short stories piece-by-piece instead of compiled together in an anthology. If the reader is only interested in a few of the pieces, why pay $30 for the whole book?
The article went on to explain that there are many people who aren’t as interested in reading a large book, but may be interested in reading something shorter that’s written by the same author. Since we’ve all become a nation used to blogs and text messaging, shouldn’t short stories be more popular than ever?
Perhaps the publishing industry should take a different approach with short stories.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Popularity: 41% [?]
As a short story writer who has just published a collection (quick promotional plug!) I find this very sad. This is pandering to a culture that only wants to see what it already knows it wants, packaged the way it wants it, with no room for novelty, innovation. A collection is worth buying to discover the gems you didn’t know you wanted to read….Like buying an album instead of just the single. The parallels couldn’t be clearer. And, as someone very wise said on an article I wrote yesterday for Vulpes Libris, reading short stories actually requires more attention than reading a novel, because ideally the short story contains no padding, nothing extraneous, nothing you can skip. So this oft-repeated myth about short stories being good for those with short attention spans, used to blogging and texting, doesn’t fly!
Comment by Tania Hershman — September 4, 2008 @ 1:01 am
For a little over a year now, at my professional short story Web site www.LongShortStories.com, I have been offering my short stories to eager Internet readers via pdf e-mail attachment.
Readers may:
Subscribe for one year (30 stories total, one sent automatically every 12 days) for $12.
Subscribe for two years (60 stories total, one sent automatically every 12 days) for $20.
Enjoy sampling any or all of the first 25 of them via my Pay-Per-View store at $0.99 each (with discounts for multiple purchases there).
I invite all ardent short story readers to visit my LongShortStories Web site, read my Free Samples, and to become subscribers.
In this unique way, I am meeting the varied needs of the global reading family.
Wayne C. Long
Comment by Wayne C. Long — September 4, 2008 @ 1:04 pm