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blatherskiteDean Wesley Smith recently published an article about the artificiality of publisher restrictions on novel length. Won't have time to read it for a while, but it was interesting to see the criticism of the article that arose in the F&SF forum.
One critique was the quality of Smith's research, and thus, whether his figures could be trusted since he obtained many of them from Wikipedia. Determining the criteria for judging information quality is a tricky business, but on the whole Wikipedia holds up well. For example, a review of Wikipedia published in Nature showed that it was nearly as accurate as the esteemed Encyclopaedia Britannica for certain types of article, particularly the less-contentious ones such as sciences) -- but that it desperately needed professional editing. (Yes, I recognize the irony of using Wikipedia to support a claim of high-quality information in Wikipedia.) Thus, Wikipedia should not be dismissed out of hand. Of course, if you're doing serious* research, you should always go back to the primary sources, many of which will be listed in the references list at the end of the article. A good clue that a Wikipedia article is untrustworthy? The lack of primary sources or an abundance of inadequate primary sources at the end. It's also worth a look at the editing and revision history.
* Here, "serious" means both "academic" and research whose outcome has important consequences for you and your readers.
Statistics aside, I think Smith raises an important point that should not be overlooked amidst any other criticism you want to raise against him: Good authors understand that every story has a natural length, and that artificially shortening or padding it will damage the story's quality. Of course, good authors also know the value of hiring an editor to help them find that length. Unfortunately, publishers don't always find that natural length convenient. This can be awfully frustrating to authors, who (correctly and frequently) find publisher limits to be arbitrary and unreasonable. Since the story is the most important thing*, I'm 100% on the author's side. I get that publishers face constraints; I don't believe they devote much thought to clever solutions to working around the constraints.
* In fairness, it would be more correct to consider this a symbiosis: the publisher can't exist without authors capable of writing stories that sell, but until recently, the authors also couldn't get those stories into the hands of their readers without a publisher's help.
Publishers face many constraints that we non-publishers can't imagine. But I think it's also true that like the dinosaurs, they've evolved into a comfortable niche (traditional publishing) that they're unwilling to change because it's so comfortable, and change is scary and often painful. This is why, for example, the publishing industry continues to have its headquarters in places like New York and London that have among the most expensive real-estate in the world. This, plus the inflated salaries required to allow their staff to live somewhere near the offices, adds enormously to the cost of books. Modern technology eliminates much of the need for this concentration (Skype, anyone? How about e-mail? Online conferencing?). I don't currently have time to go looking for statistics, but I'd wager that moving the publishing industry's head offices to (say) a few abandoned meadows in upstate New York with good highway, rail, and airport access would cut these costs by half, allowing this money to flow to the authors, who are the ones who really need the money. (Publishers give their staffs salaries, and often quite good ones. Authors eat Ramen noodles most of the year until the royalty cheques roll in.)
I'm not by any means the first to note that the dinosaur's comfy niche is rapidly shrinking as smaller, faster, more cunning mammals (ePublishing, small presses*, etc.) have begun to invade their ecosystem. The dinosaurs, recognizing that they're no longer the only game in town (in part because the new game isn't occuring exclusively in their town anymore) are trying to evolve into more modern equivalents (birds!), and some of them will undoubtedly succeed. The others will find themselves wishing for a merciful comet impact to bring extinction.
* To be fair, it's worth noting that small presses have been around for about as long as there have been printing presses, and have given authors many options the dinosaurs couldn't bring themselves to consider. It's also worth noting that big publishers are hardly the only companies to succumb to corporate atherosclerosis -- or to ignore extinction-event-sized asteroids by sticking their collective head up their collective waste disposal orifice to examine the quality of their fecal matter while the world passes them by.
Publishers used to be clever: If a story was half as long as they wanted for a novel, they'd ask the author for two such stories and turn them into (say) an Ace Double. Or, for a variation on a theme, they'd stitch a different author's too-sort story to the first author's story, thereby achieving the desired length and doubling their marketing impact: one book, with one ad campaign, selling the work of two authors. If a story was only slightly too short for a novel, they'd ask the author for a short story to increase the length. (Nowadays, they more often staple on the first chapter of a coming novel, which I find frustrating. I almost never read that information, particularly if I'm going to have to wait 6 months for that novel to be available, and I suspect I'm not alone in this.)
I'm not a revolutionary by nature (we Canadians tend to be more evolutionary), but I'm very enthusiastic about the e-publishing revolution and the rise of a large number of small publishers. This will fill the world with unreadable crap (witness the size of the Smashwords catalogue), but it will also transfer an enormous amount of power back where it belongs: into the hands of the authors, without whom the publishing industry could not exist.
One critique was the quality of Smith's research, and thus, whether his figures could be trusted since he obtained many of them from Wikipedia. Determining the criteria for judging information quality is a tricky business, but on the whole Wikipedia holds up well. For example, a review of Wikipedia published in Nature showed that it was nearly as accurate as the esteemed Encyclopaedia Britannica for certain types of article, particularly the less-contentious ones such as sciences) -- but that it desperately needed professional editing. (Yes, I recognize the irony of using Wikipedia to support a claim of high-quality information in Wikipedia.) Thus, Wikipedia should not be dismissed out of hand. Of course, if you're doing serious* research, you should always go back to the primary sources, many of which will be listed in the references list at the end of the article. A good clue that a Wikipedia article is untrustworthy? The lack of primary sources or an abundance of inadequate primary sources at the end. It's also worth a look at the editing and revision history.
* Here, "serious" means both "academic" and research whose outcome has important consequences for you and your readers.
Statistics aside, I think Smith raises an important point that should not be overlooked amidst any other criticism you want to raise against him: Good authors understand that every story has a natural length, and that artificially shortening or padding it will damage the story's quality. Of course, good authors also know the value of hiring an editor to help them find that length. Unfortunately, publishers don't always find that natural length convenient. This can be awfully frustrating to authors, who (correctly and frequently) find publisher limits to be arbitrary and unreasonable. Since the story is the most important thing*, I'm 100% on the author's side. I get that publishers face constraints; I don't believe they devote much thought to clever solutions to working around the constraints.
* In fairness, it would be more correct to consider this a symbiosis: the publisher can't exist without authors capable of writing stories that sell, but until recently, the authors also couldn't get those stories into the hands of their readers without a publisher's help.
Publishers face many constraints that we non-publishers can't imagine. But I think it's also true that like the dinosaurs, they've evolved into a comfortable niche (traditional publishing) that they're unwilling to change because it's so comfortable, and change is scary and often painful. This is why, for example, the publishing industry continues to have its headquarters in places like New York and London that have among the most expensive real-estate in the world. This, plus the inflated salaries required to allow their staff to live somewhere near the offices, adds enormously to the cost of books. Modern technology eliminates much of the need for this concentration (Skype, anyone? How about e-mail? Online conferencing?). I don't currently have time to go looking for statistics, but I'd wager that moving the publishing industry's head offices to (say) a few abandoned meadows in upstate New York with good highway, rail, and airport access would cut these costs by half, allowing this money to flow to the authors, who are the ones who really need the money. (Publishers give their staffs salaries, and often quite good ones. Authors eat Ramen noodles most of the year until the royalty cheques roll in.)
I'm not by any means the first to note that the dinosaur's comfy niche is rapidly shrinking as smaller, faster, more cunning mammals (ePublishing, small presses*, etc.) have begun to invade their ecosystem. The dinosaurs, recognizing that they're no longer the only game in town (in part because the new game isn't occuring exclusively in their town anymore) are trying to evolve into more modern equivalents (birds!), and some of them will undoubtedly succeed. The others will find themselves wishing for a merciful comet impact to bring extinction.
* To be fair, it's worth noting that small presses have been around for about as long as there have been printing presses, and have given authors many options the dinosaurs couldn't bring themselves to consider. It's also worth noting that big publishers are hardly the only companies to succumb to corporate atherosclerosis -- or to ignore extinction-event-sized asteroids by sticking their collective head up their collective waste disposal orifice to examine the quality of their fecal matter while the world passes them by.
Publishers used to be clever: If a story was half as long as they wanted for a novel, they'd ask the author for two such stories and turn them into (say) an Ace Double. Or, for a variation on a theme, they'd stitch a different author's too-sort story to the first author's story, thereby achieving the desired length and doubling their marketing impact: one book, with one ad campaign, selling the work of two authors. If a story was only slightly too short for a novel, they'd ask the author for a short story to increase the length. (Nowadays, they more often staple on the first chapter of a coming novel, which I find frustrating. I almost never read that information, particularly if I'm going to have to wait 6 months for that novel to be available, and I suspect I'm not alone in this.)
I'm not a revolutionary by nature (we Canadians tend to be more evolutionary), but I'm very enthusiastic about the e-publishing revolution and the rise of a large number of small publishers. This will fill the world with unreadable crap (witness the size of the Smashwords catalogue), but it will also transfer an enormous amount of power back where it belongs: into the hands of the authors, without whom the publishing industry could not exist.
Re: Synergy
Date: 2015-02-23 07:31 pm (UTC)The problem remains, though, that New York housing and office prices are too high. Years ago, I had a New York friend who was fortunate enough to inherit a nice appartment, but he told me many of his co-workers commuted 2+ hours each way to get to work. Seems to me it shouldn't be hard to find somewhere within 1 hours of New York with prices sufficiently lower to justify the move.
That would still be close enough to attract the abovementioned people, while reducing prices for everyone significantly. And it would still be possible to retain a beach-head in the city for such meetings or events that cannot be done elsewhere, and an apartment for staff who need to spend more than a day in the city. Many businesses do this.