Shorter Isn’t Dumber – Kindle Singles
Yesterday I read this article on The Register. I honestly can’t remember how I got there. I don’t even really know who ‘The Register’ is, except that they say on their site they are ‘one of the world’s biggest online tech publications’. They might be right. They may be huge, but honestly I hate assertions like that. They’re just so vague. After all, I could say I’m one of the world’s tallest women. At 6’0″, I’m certainly tall, but one of the tallest? Well sure. I might be one billionth on the list, but I’m on it!
But that’s not actually what’s got my knickers in a twist this morning. (Well, what actually has my knickers in a twist this morning is that I barely got any writing done yesterday because I let myself get bogged down in aerial photographs of the neighborhood where my murder takes place, trying to figure out how to best get to the area on foot – not my murder, I should clarify, but rather the fictional murder in my WIP. But I’m not going to talk about that either.)
No, what got me riled today was this article in the Register:
Amazon shrinks books with Kindle Singles
Perfect for short attention spans ‘killer ideas’As the world’s attention span continues to shrink, Amazon plans to introduce a breed of Kindle e-texts that are no longer than “a few chapters” of those hefty analog books that a few people still bother to read.
These “Kindle Singles” will have their own category in the Kindle ebook store, and they will be priced “much less” than old-fashioned lengthy books.
I suppose I should just read this and dismiss it, saying, ‘”Oh, this is a tech mag. They don’t get writing.’ and move on. But the very idea that shorter works are for dumb people or people with short attention spans really annoys me.
Some of the most important authors in history wrote short stories: Hemingway, Twain, Asimov, Fitzgerald…. I had nightmares for years after reading Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” in high school.
Saying that shorter stories are for people with shorter attention spans is like saying the only art worth owning has to be big enough to fit the wall over your sofa. Because, yanno, in art, size matters?
Short fiction is, in my opinion, harder–much harder–to write than a novel. It has to be cleaner, more precise and have a sharper focus. Yes, it’s shorter. Yes, you could write a first draft more quickly, just because it takes less time to type 20 pages than it does 200. But anyone who has ever agonised over a word choice or shape of a story knows better than to think word count has anything to do with artistic or emotional value.
I don’t, mind you, care one way or another that amazon itself is going to be charging less for these shorter offerings. There’s some strange psychology involved in how much people will pay for something, and we all know it doesn’t have a lot to do with what that thing is worth. People will pay $14.99 for a hardback, but only $7.99 for a paperback version of the very same book. Is the cover itself worth as much as the words on the page? Of course not. But pay that for it people do.
What I do like is that this move will make short stories more accessible. If you don’t write them, it’s unlikely you read them regularly. Will this move change that? Maybe, maybe not. But let’s not make the mistake of thinking shorter = dumber. I personally think the reason most people don’t read short stories is that most of the short stories I see out there are literary, arguably a word that scares the bejeebers out of most.
When was the last time you read a short story? Would you pay a buck or two to read a book that was, say, 50 pages long?
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It is so good to read someone standing up and writing in the defence of the short story. As a short story writer, editor and publisher, obviously I am biased… but you hit the nail on the head when you say short does not mean dumb. It is, I believe the reverse.
I would argue short stories often leave me thinking, with the afterburn of an amazing narrative, for far longer than most books. A well crafted short story takes a long time. At the moment I’m throwing words at the page for NaNo… and as you say, in the time it takes to write multiple pages, I might be lucky to put down one page of a short story. Our Chinese Whisperings anthologies take between six and nine months to produce from scratch. We could probably produce a novel for every short story that goes into the anthology… but our heart remains with the short story.
The art of capturing everything necessary for a good story, in such a small number of words is the writing craft at it’s best. When I left highschool, the advice I was given by a Random House editor was to cut my teeth on short stories, and learn the craft of writing that way. Now first time writers are told to ignore short stories and just get to writing novels, if that’s what they do. I think we’re producing a raft of novelist who are poorer for having missed an apprenticeship in short stories.
I’d like to think technology will bring shorter fiction back to the masses, and with it an appreciation of its form, craft and content… and in this respect, the Kindle Singles is a great idea. Coupled with faster paced lives and people who want to make the most of every minute – short stories seem to be the perfect literary option not for those with short attention spans but for those who are ‘time poor.’
If only people with daft ideas would keep them to themselves. Thanks for taking the time to addresses the erroneous ideas of this individual. And perhaps they’d best stick to talking about what they know best.
[ Follow me on Twitter: jodicleghorn ]
I completely agree with everything you’ve said, about how a short story is harder to write and how it does have value.
I’ve been a bit obsessed with jumping up and down and heralding the short story’s return through digital publishing and now it’s kind of here.
Amazon had a go with Amazon Shorts a few years ago but it was a bit of a flop. The Kindle opens up that market a bit. I’ll be curious to see where it goes.
[ Follow me on Twitter: benjaminsolah ]
Shorter work holds one’s feet to the fire, as it were. I marvel still over “Hills Like White Elephants” and how the pairs and parallels mean to tell the reader secrets, how the landscape speaks, location of the train station — and I don’t even enjoy Hemingway (Sorry, but the Pappy of MCPs is not getting Christmas cards from me) He is, though: Brilliant,does write far tighter than almost every novelist, and loads more meaning into 15 pages than one can glean in a single reading.
I might knock off a novel in several months, followed by three-four times that of polishing and editing; but the things of which I’m most proud are nicely-crafted little poems and a single surviving short story from grad school, “One Dry Spring.”
You’re right, India: he/she is a tech writer. Now if THEY could only write things as clearly as the SS writers you mentioned, I’d spend less time banging my forehead on the keyboard.
[ Follow me on Twitter: girlfrenkate ]
Some of the best literary work I’ve ever read were short stories…and I enjoy modern shorts as well. I wish I could remember the title of the last one I read, but the brain’s asleep this evening.
They are very hard to write, IMO, and I’m glad Amazon is stepping up and providing another platform for this much maligned form. I’ll be looking forward to a bigger short story library on my Kindle, without a doubt.
[ Follow me on Twitter: JamieDeBree ]
I absolutely agree with the others – short stories really are hard to write, and you have to have so much discipline not to wander off the point all the time…
I don’t think I’d buy them individually, though (well, I haven’t even got a Kibdle yet, so I’m clearly not Amazon’s target customer in any case) – I buy short story anthologies a lot, and the fatter the better, but I read so fast that if I don’t like the story I’m going to feel as if I’ve spent money and not bought anything…