An E-Pricing Revelation

For the longest time I dismissed the idea that, if you're e-publishing a short story, you should price it as much as a cup of Starbucks coffee. After all, it takes maybe ten, fifteen minutes to finish that cup of coffee. It might take just as long to read your story, if not longer, so why not price your short stories the same? Again, for the longest time I dismissed the idea, but I've been thinking a lot about it and you know what? It's a great idea! In fact, it gave me a whole new perspective on how to price my next novel.

The Inner Circle will be my longest novel yet, over 120,000 words, or over 400 pages. That's a long novel, and should take readers hours to read. In fact, if they read straight through, they might be able to finish the novel in ... what, six, seven, eight hours? I guess it all depends on reading speed. Still, if we can compare short story prices to coffee prices, I figure we can compare novel prices to ... how about airline prices?

Yes, I just checked Virgin America flights from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. That's about six hours, if not less, with no layover. And the price? Well, it depends on the time of day, but let's go with $300 one-way.

So, with that in mind, the price of The Inner Circle when it's release will be $299.

If you think about it, that's a bargain!

RIP Donald J. Sobol

Via the New York Times:

Donald J. Sobol, the creator of Encyclopedia Brown, the clever boy detective who made bookworms of many a reluctant young reader, died on Wednesday in South Miami. He was 87.

I forget what grade it was in elementary school, but one day I was introduced to Encyclopedia Brown and my life changed forever. I mean, what kid wouldn't want to be Encyclopedia Brown, who often helped his police chief dad solve crimes, and who ran his own detective agency out of his garage? The books, from what I remember, were always surprising and challenging. I wonder if I read one of them today, if I would be as stumped on the mysteries as I was when I was a kid. I'm thinking probably yeah.

P.S. Actually, now that I think about it, the book in elementary school was the You Be The Jury series by Marvin Miller. I remember, having watched a then recent episode of MacGyver where he was in jury duty, taking my own notebook and pen into the classroom to jot down notes. But still, You Be The Jury did the same kind of thing that Encyclopedia Brown did -- it got kids to read and challenged them to think outside the box. And for that, we should be thankful.

In Which Ravi Mangla And I Talk Shop

Ravi Mangla is one of my favorite flash fiction writers. His work is usually very offbeat and weird and fresh that I have no problem comparing him to the likes of Ben Loory and Etgar Keret. His collection of microfiction, Visiting Writers, came out this past year from Uncanny Valley Press. He wrote one of my all-time favorite flash pieces (which he reads in the podcast), and has also helped out with the Wigleaf Top 50. We talk about all these things and more -- like Michael Cunningham's take on The Pale King. Really, is this line the greatest thing ever written?

Past the flannel plains and the blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscatine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek.

Near the end of the podcast there's a cut and we start talking about TV shows. So give it a listen. And also keep an eye out for Ravi's Blurb coming soon from Artistically Declined Press.

In Which Ravi Mangla And I Talk Shop

Sri Lankan Hint Fiction

I've gotten a couple emails and messages asking about this call for submissions for a Sri Lankan Anthology of Hint Fiction, so I figured I might as well say something about it here. Yes, I am aware of the project, and no, neither W. W. Norton nor myself are involved. Why? Well, because there's no reason for us to be involved. After all, no one "owns" the idea of Hint Fiction. Norton published the Hint Fiction anthology, yes, but they simply bought the rights to publish that book. If I were inclined to put together another anthology of Hint Fiction, I would be free to take it to any other publisher. Hell, if anyone wanted to put together another anthology of Hint Fiction, they could approach any other publisher. A few years back, when the whole Hint Fiction thing came about, a couple people told me (quite seriously) that I needed to copyright or trademark or whatever the term. Each time I laughed this off. After all, Hint Fiction ... it's just a term, really, nothing more than that. I can't try to lay claim to a genre that's been around forever. That would be silly. Even more, it would be absurd.

I think Hint Fiction has had a nice run. I think it's fizzled out somewhat here in the U.S. Sure, many colleges discuss it in their creative writing classes, which is great, but what more can really be done with the genre? Hint Fiction's "birthday" was a few months back. In past years, I would do a long post about what had taken place in the previous year. In past years, I even hosted a Hint Fiction contest. This year, I decided to do neither. Mostly because during the last Hint Fiction contest I had begun to see a disturbing trend -- nearly all the stories began to seem formulaic. It makes sense, too, when you think about it. Stories in general can be formulaic. And when you have a story so short, it's pretty difficult to hide that formula. When the whole Hint Fiction thing started, nobody really knew what it was yet, me included. So writers were thinking outside the box. They came up with some really new and exciting stuff. But then, once the anthology came out (which really helped to define what Hint Fiction is and what it can be), writers for the most part began to study the form, and once something gets studied, it loses some (if not all) of its pizzazz.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't think Hint Fiction has fully run its course. I think it's still possible to do some new and exciting things with the genre. And I think it's great that it helps some writers get started working on longer works, just as it helps writers learn to cut back on their verboseness. But for the most part, what can be done has been done.

That isn't to say, of course, this Sri Lankan Anthology of Hint Fiction can't be something great. My fingers are crossed that it is. I just hope the writers submitting to it aren't trying to copy what was in the first Hint Fiction anthology, but instead use those initial stories as a stepping stone to something newer and more exciting.