The History That Gives us Read Petite

The digital era allows us to revisit what once worked but became inefficient and uneconomical in the physical world. It is not a case of repeating the old ways but understanding how digital technology and network connectivity can redefine the process and make what once work , work again.

We are working on a new venture Read Petite which reintroduces and redefines short form for today’s time poor readers.

Humans love short-form reading.  The recorded history of the short story goes back to the likes of Homer and collections such as Aesop’s Fables. Much later came Chaucer, Boccaccio and the early translation of collections such as The Arabian Nights. Then came Sir Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allen Poe whose definition of the form still stands: a narrative that can be read at one sitting.

The age of mass literacy ushered in even more opportunities for short-form reading.   The widespread popularity of periodicals created a vast appetite for short-form reading of all types, creating opportunities for the likes of Dickens, Hardy, Kipling, Wells and Conan Doyle in the UK and Melville, Washington and Henry James in the US. Russian writers such as Tolstoy and Turgenev rose to fame on the back of the short story, and their fellow compatriot Chekov is widely credited as defining its structure for others to follow.

Today's publishers would be envious of the commercial successes of many of these pioneers of the form.  For example, in 1837, Dickens was selling some 50,000 copies of his Pickwick periodicals at a shilling a time.  By the time that Great Expectations was published in installments in 1861, he was selling 100,000 units a week.   Interestingly, installment-publishing didn’t cannibalise sales of the complete single-volume book - in fact, serialisation fuelled interest in the full-length work.

In the early 20^th century, periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Scribner’s, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire and The Bookman in the US and  The Strand, The Sketch, Harper’s and Story-Teller in the UK continued to feed an apparently-insatiable market.  Many of today's "classic" authors were given their first platform and public recognition through short-form writing, including Somerset Maugham, Saki, P.G. Wodehouse, G.K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie. In the US, writers such as F Scott Fitzgerald, Parker, Hemmingway and Faulkner often earned high fees for their short stories.  In the 1920s, the Evening Post was paying Fitzgerald $4,000 for a single story, (the equivalent of $80K today).

The market broadened still further with the rise of mass-market weeklies and monthlies.  For example, in the UK, weekly magazines such as Woman, Woman’s Own and Women’s Weekly started to dominate the short-form market.  "Name" authors gave way to genre fiction, literary to mass-market. 

The Fall and Rise of Short-Form

In the latter half of the 20^th century short-form writing took a tumble.  Outlets for short fiction atrophied: for example, IPC Media who dominate the UK woman's magazine market have seen a 22.5% drop in year-on-year sales (2011 compared to 2010).

While readers were as keen as ever on the medium - and writers certainly wanted to write it - book publishers found it increasingly difficult to package it in a profitable way. Physical production costs for a short story are close to that of a full-length work ten times the size - yet consumers clearly would not pay the same price for a 2,500 word piece as they would for a 125,000 word tome.  Distribution costs are identical, too.  To put it simply, the short-form story became largely uneconomic for publishers to sell.

The golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity created by the ascent of digital publishing is revolutionising every aspect of the publishing business, but nowhere more than in the realm of short-form publishing.  Physical productions costs have vanished.  Distribution expenses, while not disappearing, are now simply one more minor amortisable cost - and physical distribution costs, such as warehousing have of course vanished completely.

All this makes the rise of short-form reading little short of inevitable and Read Petite both viable and exciting.

What the eDickens?

Last week we wrote about the logic of the appeal of the short story in this new digital world and yesterday we attended The Museum of London’s special 200th celebration of Charles Dickens.

What may you ask have has Dickens to do with today’s digital publishing world?
The answer is simple and is significant if we are to learn from the past and keep our literary heritage alive.

Dickens was a master of the instalment.
He not only wrote many works by the chapter, he also delivered them as ongoing works. He used the ‘penny press’ to presale the stories by instalment and in 1837 was selling some 50,000 copies of his Pickwick periodicals at a shilling a time. These contained one chapter sandwiched between pages of adverts. Many of these adverts had little to do with books or even the subject matter of the story. In fact the adverts demonstrate the diversity of the audience.

The journals appeared either weekly or monthly and given the number of chapters and volume of sales, plus the advertising revenues, should have earned him a good return. It is claimed that when Great Expectations was published in weekly instalment in 1861 it had weekly sales of some 100,000 units a week. Interestingly they didn’t diminish his book appeal but fuelled interest in the finally work.

We find ourselves again asking why we are not publishing digitally by instalment today? The Keita novels in Japan thrive through instalment and Stephen King and others have also ventured down this digital route, but why hasn’t a publisher grabbed this clear digital opportunity by the throat? Is it down to the way many write today? Has the publishing and editorial process got in the way of the instalment? Is it just too revolutionary?

Why are even short stories still seen as collections and packaged as such. Even worthy initiatives such as Quick Reads appear to be locked into what some may question as yesterday’s thinking and merely duplicating the physical offer digitally.
What is also interesting is that Dickens lived through the literacy revolution where the masses were able to read and penny fiction was a way of feeding their new habit in a digestible form.

Dickens embraced the new
The transport and communications revolution of Dickens’ time was, on reflection, as great as that we have today with technology and communications changes. He travelled extensively, especially by the new railways, used the new telegraph and postal services. Between 1858 and 1870 he gave some 472 readings of his works in the UK and US. He even had special bound reading copies in larger font and was a consummate speaker. He was a writer, social observer, pamphleteer, speaker, columnist, playwright and publisher.

Dickens enhanced his works
In Victorian times the novel was often enhanced by illustrations. The ‘Sketches by Boz’ was illustrated by George Cruikshank and as with many Dickens tales the reader was able to picture both in words and in imagery the story as it unfolded. Today we have often lost the imagery of yesterday. Does the new ebook now enable us to once again enhance and illustrate the book? There is now a new opportunity to bring back the imagery and even differentiate the different renditions.

Dickens wrote in the language of the people
Dickens was a master of not just description but narrative. He was a master of dialect and could write and express narrative to reflect a person’s origins, class and the times. He even travelled one day to Yarmouth and used the dialect he heard to paint the character he wanted. It is fascinating to hear how Dickens used the dropping of the ‘h’ , or how he could change ‘ing’ to be ‘in’ or even ‘ink’ to reflect the character. He would have been a nightmare to edit today!

But this understanding of the narrative and even the enthusiastic way Dickens would have read to his captive audiences may also be new enhanced book opportunities.

It is not hard to see the relevance of Dickens to today and why it is somewhat ironic that 2012 is the 200th celebration of his birth.

The Renaissance of The Short Story?

We now live in a sound bite word where the channel hopper often rules and where our time is often torn between many competing distractions. It is only fitting therefore that we are now starting to question and revisit the length of the story and recognise that it is just as rewarding to engage a reader on short and digestible read as a long one.

We have long argued that the digital era should herald a renaissance of the short story. As digital explodes the physical book spine, it starts to re write the economics and the need for 256 pages. No longer is it about tens of thousands of words but more about compact stories, or developing stories by the chapter.

My mother-in-law and many of her contemporaries broke into writing via short stories, which were much in demand across many magazines at the time. My Father-in-law like many started as a journalist and developed the skill of reworking, cutting back and sticking to the storyline.

Digital has started to now accommodate the short story and some such as Salt and Penguin has embraced the opportunity. The BBC has a National Short Story Award and the Quick Reads literary charity is now 5 years old and has distributed over 3.5 million ‘Quick Reads’ written by bestselling writers and celebrities aimed at engaging more people in reading.

This weekend the Telegraph dived in with a competition not based just on digital but recognising the potential to reintroduce this concise literary form that has inspired so many in the past. The British library have also launched a online service to enable everyone to enjoy the likes of Somerset Maughan, Kingsley Amis, Edna o’Brien and William Trevor reading their own works.

All these initiatives start to create a new form. Some will view them as singles that are then wrapped into a collection, others as stand alone stories that can be promoted bought and read as such and others as instalments to a greater living story. Poetry also starts to also have new opportunities to engage a wiser audience. Even those textbooks may be rented or sold by the chapter. Irrespective, the short is coming back and will give author a new opportunity to make that connection with the reader.

Read by Digital Chapters

We read today of a move we long expected to make a return – digital chapters.
Remember ‘Riding the bullet’ by Stephen King which he released in chapters digitally in mode of the most famous chapters man Charles Dickens. Today few realise that that Dickens wrote and released his works this way and many have forgotten the famous Stephen King ‘experiment’. So today its good to see Random House taking on a chapterised experiment. They have long been at the forefront of the digital experiment and this certainly is one to watch.

Random will sell the six chapters and epilogue of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" for $2.99 each. That makes the total price around $21 for a hardback listed at $24.95. However we can buy the ebook today for $16.47 , the audio CD for $19.77 and the downloadable audio Mp3 file for $15.73. The question this begs is why its is priced so for what is clearly a promotion to sell the book and also the concept. It is in danger of starting life with its hands tied behind its back!

We can only wait until someone is brave enough to write and publish a blockbuster in chapters. If the last Harry Potter had been published in chapters not only would the premium be paid on the digital copy but the publisher would not have given away the margin and the physical copy would have probably sold as many copies. The channel would have responded in a heartbeat and everyone would have experienced the ebook. Importantly we would not be sitting hear debating if and when the tipping point on digital will happen.

Come on someone ride the bullet.