pulp magazines | CW Hawes

The Indie Movement

In December 2012 I bought my first book by an indie author. The book was The Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker. I was favorably impressed. So much so, I went on and bought the series.

From there, I discovered other indie authors who were very good writers. And somewhere in the reading of those authors, my choice of authors shifted from traditionally published to a majority being indie published.

The independent author/publisher movement confirmed all the stories I’d heard for decades — that the big corporate publishers rejected thousands of good manuscripts every year.

Why do they do that? Because big corporations are by nature conservative. Sure they had to take risks to get to be big. That’s when they’re innovative — when they’re small. But once a corporation is huge, they become much more concerned about the bottom line. And innovation takes a back seat to profits.

Random House/Penguin and their behemoth German owners, aren’t going to take the risks that small press publishers might (although even those can be quite conservative). There is always risk with business. More fail than succeed. So the successful eventually begin to conserve their gains. That’s just how it is.

The sole entrepreneur, however, has only himself to be concerned about.

If I self-publish a book and it doesn’t make money, that only affects me.

If Macmillan (now a German company) publishes a flop, they are out the advance to the author, the salaries of the acquisition editors, the copy editors, the advertising people, the office rent, the cover artist salaries, the warehouse space, etc, etc. And the shareholders don’t get their dividends — which puts the CEO’s job at risk. And that’s something that just isn’t tolerated.

If I publish a book that goes nowhere, I can leave it on Amazon, and Kobo, and Apple, and wherever else I choose, essentially forever. And let the royalties dribble in. Simon and Schuster (owned by ViacomCBS) can’t afford to do that.

Thus you see the big corporate boys declaring for many years now that vampires are dead. But on the indie scene, dozens upon dozens of those bloodsuckers can be found. And some are making their creators a lot of money.

The big boys don’t want to continue a fad because they don’t want to be left holding the bag when the fad fizzles out. Or can no longer make enough money to meet their bloated bottom lines when the fad tapers off.

What is significant is that James Patterson has now discovered money can be made at the indie price point and has convinced his publisher to take on his BookShots line. The blurb on Patterson’s website reads in part:

Life moves fast—books should too. Pulse-pounding reads under $5 and 150 pages or less. Impossible to put down.

This comes at a time when many indies are moving to longer books and higher prices — in an attempt to look like the big corporate publishers, and thereby make themselves look more legitimate. A bad move, in my opinion.

Patterson, though, realizes money can be made for him and his publisher at the indie price point. And with shorter books. This is truly a return to the ethos of the 1950s. And I think forecasts good things for indies who can, for the most part, turn out shorter works faster.

Back in the pulp magazine era, many of the magazines cost a dime. Today, depending on what standard you use, that dime would be equal to anywhere between $1.50 and $6. In the 1950s, paperback books could be bought for a quarter. Or $2.50 to $4 in today’s money. Essentially the price range of most indie books today.

I’ve said for quite awhile now, that the indie movement is essentially a return to the Pulp Fiction Era. To be successful, a writer has to turn out a good story in a popular genre that is exciting and generally fast-paced. The writer must also write lots and publish often. To be sure, as an indie, there are more factors involved than what faced the average pulp fictioneer, because today’s indie author is also a publisher. But the basic formula remains the same.

Today is a good day to be a writer. A self-published writer. An independent author/publisher. It’s also a good day to be a reader, because there are many excellent self-published books available to read.

Thars gold in them thar books! So get crackin’!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading! (and writing!)

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Why I Write

Almost all of us, at least at one time or another, have the desire to live forever.

It’s why we procreate, and make things. It’s why we strive to make a difference: we want to be remembered. It’s why we believe in an afterlife, and why we’re fascinated with spirits and ghosts, vampires and werewolves.

It’s also why many, if not most, writers write. We have the hope that our books will give us a measure of immortality.

Of course, achieving immortality by means of the written word isn’t a whole lot different than one’s chances of becoming rich by winning the lottery. Just count how many perennial bestselling authors there are versus the number of new authors published each year, and the number of authors who never reach bestseller status but continue to write books. We’re talking thimbles to boxcars here.

And that doesn’t count the number of bestselling authors who pass into oblivion once they die. Their names are legion.

The number of writers who achieve immortality is indeed tiny.

One has a better chance of achieving immortality by becoming a mass murderer than by becoming an author — NOT that I recommend one should do so. Just sayin’.

When it comes to the desire to live forever, I’m like everyone else: bring it on! Or at least let me live for six, eight centuries. There are so many things I want to explore and do, and one lifetime hasn’t been enough.

Writing is a relatively easy avenue whereby one can hope to achieve immortality. After all, books last a very long time. Paper books, that is. Not sure how long these ebooks will last. Software and formats, tend to become obsolete. Remember floppy discs, Beta and VHS tapes, cassettes?

Ebooks are in the same category as those acid-laden wood pulp magazines that are self-destructing because of the cheap paper they were printed on. As the pulp magazines crumble into dust, so too do media vehicles become useless junk. Something to think about.

Nevertheless, by means of stories, I can tell whoever will listen to me what I think about life, who I am as a person, what my dreams and hopes are (or were). And if my stories become popular enough, then they will make the transition to each new storage medium that comes along. After all, I can read Shakespeare and Euripides on my ereader.

My desire to live a very long life, if not forever, and to write lots of books crystalized in the wake of close encounters of the near death kind.

About a dozen years ago I came close to death due to misdiagnosed appendicitis and consequently a ruptured appendix. The doctor told me I was a lucky man. The rupture created quite a mess. Then a couple years later, I had a heart attack. The left anterior descending artery was blocked. Colloquially called “The Widowmaker” because of its high percentage of fatalities. Again, the doctor told me I was a lucky man.

Now I have been told I have kidney disease. For which there is no cure. The only treatment is to follow good health practices in an attempt to slow the progress.

Death is my friend. My mortality has been made very clear to me. It is why I write and why I have such a feeling of urgency about writing. If it weren’t for the Grim Reaper standing in the corner of my room, I’d probably get lazy and slack off.

Of course, we don’t live forever, at least in this life, and it is the only one I care about at the moment, and this life is short. Although I always keep in mind Seneca’s words, “Life is long enough if you know how to use it.” That last clause is of course the rub: we usually learn too late how to use it well. We squander the most precious and rare gift doing and pursuing what is ultimately not of much value.

Writing brings me great joy. It also helps me to become a better person. Through my characters I hone what is important in my own life and discard what is not.

Around 40 to 45 percent of us are kinesthetic/tactile learners. These folk learn by acting and playing and touching. Through my characters, I live many lives and face many dilemmas and learn many things about myself, because they are after all the people I have made in my image.

I know writing brings me great joy and that I do it mostly for the sake of writing, because I make darn little money at it. The pot of gold continues to elude me. Yet, maybe my heirs will hit on the right marketing strategy and my books will sell and I will achieve that immortality we all desire. After all, my books will be in copyright for 70 years after I pass on. That’s more or less another lifetime. That too is something to think about.

Life is long enough if we know how to use it. I may at last be getting the knack of it. We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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In Praise of Short Fiction

It seems readers are divided into two camps: those who like short reads and those who like long reads. In forum after forum and Facebook group after Facebook group, I notice people writing that they don’t like short reads. Very few complain about long reads.

For myself, I’m firmly in the short read group. I grew up reading short stories and short novels — books that many today are labeling novellas (even though the Science Fiction Writers of America defined novels as 40,000 words and up). So maybe it’s just force of habit. But I can’t help myself asking the question, how did these short novels come about anyway.

Back in the Victorian era, the “triple-decker” was the standard novel format. That is, essentially every novel was a trilogy. A novel of one volume was considered a “short” read.

Why were Victorian novels so long? Mostly because publishers thought the reading public wanted long novels. And perhaps they did. After all, they would read novels aloud as a form of family entertainment. And just as movies used to be an hour and a half, now they are approaching 3 hours in length. People want more bang for their buck.

Yet, after World War I the Triple-Decker went out of fashion. Novels became shorter. More lean and taut, more focused. Which was perhaps due to the discarding of the third person omniscient point of view. Stories and novels became more intimate with the adoption of first person and limited third person points of view.

The proliferation of pulp and slick magazines in the ‘20s and ‘30s were the result of a reading public wanting stories and novels to read. Serialized novels were typically around 30,000 to 40,000 words long. A story of 20,000 words was called a short novel.

These novels established the formats and formulas for genre fiction, and also to a degree for literary fiction.

When the pulp magazines died in the ‘50s and were replaced by the mass market paperbacks costing a quarter, the length of the novel didn’t change. And rarely went over 50,000 words. Search out some of the old paperbacks. They are slender little books. Truly a book that would fit in a pocket. One that could easily be carried with you.

Dean Wesley Smith has an interesting article explaining why the New York publishers fattened up the novel after its lean period during the pulp era. And I’ll give you a hint: it had nothing to do with literary merit and everything to do with money — money for the big corporate publisher, that is.

So why did novels slim down after the era of Victorian excess? I think it was because editors and authors discovered a story could be told in 40,000 words or less. The more intimate points of view allowed the author to dispense with a lot of unnecessary back story and editorial comment. They allowed the author to focus on the characters and their story.

When a novel is bloated beyond 50,000 words, it’s frequently due to elements that don’t enrich the story. Descriptions get longer and more detailed. Purple prose is fine, often beautiful, but rarely beneficial to the story. Scenes are introduced that do nothing to further the story, they merely fatten the word count. And when getting paid by the word, I suppose there is some justification for the fat. But I, as a reader, skip over those parts.

Elmore Leonard’s advice to writers is very valid here: don’t write the parts that readers skip over.

I’m reminded of the story concerning Raymond Chandler, I believe. Chandler’s editor returned one of his novels because he wanted it a little longer.

Chandler went over the book and sent it back. The editor returned the manuscript with a note saying Chandler had misunderstood him. He didn’t want the novel shorter. He wanted it longer, and was returning the manuscript so that Chandler could add a few thousand words to it.

Once again Chandler went over the manuscript and sent it back. This time the editor decided to leave it, because Chandler had cut the text even more. And the editor felt if he kept on he’d have a short story on his hands instead of a novel.

When I consider our contemporary western lifestyles, I think a shorter read makes a lot of sense. A majority of online content is now read on the smart phone. Writers are advised to make sure that everything is shorter: sentences, paragraphs, chapters. And to make sure there is plenty of white space instead of a mass of text.

In addition people are very busy. A short novel can be read in one or two sittings, which seems to me to be just about right. Read half of the book on the morning’s commute and read the other half on the evening’s commute.

I also find that reading a shorter novel requires less mental dedication to keeping everything straight in the story. If I’m reading a long novel with many plot lines and characters, then I have to take time to upload all that data into my head every time I pick up the book, after having set it down.

And then there are all the boring parts in those long novels, which I end up skipping over anyway. Because sad to say, few are the writers who can write a long novel without there being boring parts in it. Often lots of boring parts.

To see what all the fuss was about, I read the first two Jack Reacher novels. I found them fat and flabby. Continual lapses in the suspense build up of the story, left me feeling like a yo-yo.

Build up suspense, then have it deflate due to overly long descriptions. Then build up the tension again until the next several pages of needless description.

I don’t need to know all the different types of grasses and rocks and how each might impact Reacher taking out his target. Nor do I need a page long description of the flight path of the bullet as it leaves the rifle to when it reaches the target.

All that unnecessary description is padding pure and simple. And it is boring.

By way of contrast, I just finished a Seabury Quinn Jules de Grandin short novel. There was plenty of action, plenty of suspense, and absolutely no flab to the story. It was lean. And a whole lot more fun to read than Jack Reacher. And I think all because the story was a whole heck of a lot shorter.

Child took 20 times as many pages to tell his story then did Quinn. And IMO, Child’s story was the worse for it because it was too damn fat.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And that applies to books as well as art. There will always be readers who find the short forms to be “ugly”, and those who find the long forms to be “ugly”.

However, we readers live in a wonderful age. We can find all manner of books and stories to satisfy our reading desires. For every reader there is a writer, and for every writer there is his or her reader.

I think we readers can take comfort in the fact that there are many, many writers today who can meet our needs. And often they aren’t the bestsellers. We writers can take comfort in the fact that we do have an audience. There are readers who want to read our books. We simply have to find them.

Short stories and the short novel are alive and well. For those of us who like to read shorter forms, they are out there. Happy hunting to us! And if you run across some good ones, let me know!

Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

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