>Writing longer is media slang for filling up more
pages with words. An
ediotr
>will often assign a mag piece and say, "I want 1,000
words by Friday," then
>tell the writer Friday morning, "Can you write longer?
We lost an ad page,"
>Or "Can you write shorter? We got a last-minute ad and
need to cut
>editorial." Same deal iin books except they never ask
you to "write
shorter."
>We now live in a winner-loser-driven world (sadly)
where a genre writer who
>has any success at all is required (like P>D>
James) to write long and
>preferably only once a year to create a "buzz" (ugh!!)
to jack up the price
>of the hardcover and also to indulge the ubiquitous
corporate mentality that
>equates BIG with WINNER and small with loser. So you
get these dictionary-
>sized tomes from Ludlum et al so the CEO (or CEO
wannabe) can heft it out of
>his/her briefcase and feel IMPORTANT. Gone are the
days of the short story,
>the taut, well plotted genre books that enabled the
writer to eke out a
>respectable albeit meagre living on small but frequent
and steady advances.
>More on this later, I need coffee.
Thanks for the clarification, but with the exception of when
it affects the
quality of the work (which I am very well aware of that it
does at times)
as a reader I do not see this as a problem. If I like an
author, I want
more more more ... not less less less. As a CEO wannabe I
have as of yet
to see anyone in the company (Litton PRC Inc.) tote around
any of these or
in my client's spaces (Space, Information Warfare, Command
and Control
Branch of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations,
Pentagon). I
regularly carry a paperback of the approximate dimensions (in
inches): 0.68
x 7.98 x 5.21 (the standard Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
version) to read on
my commute to the Puzzle Palace. I keep my huge tomes at home
where I can
rest them on the bed mattress as I read them. As far as price
goes ...
well, let's compare two recent releases (I choose these
authors based on
the fact that I like each equally):
"Rainbow Six" Tom Clancy. $27.95 retail US, Amazon.com
$19.57, Crown
$16.77 (what I paid for it).
"The Sweet Forever" George P. Pelecanos. $23.95 retail US,
Amazon.com
$16.77, Dalton Bookseller $21.56 (what I paid).
RS is 740 pages while TSF is 298 ... based on the cheapest
price, that's
$.02 per page for RS and $.06 per page for TSF.
Relatively speaking, considering that I enjoy both authors
equally ... I
lost on the shorter book and gained on the bigger book (which
in my opinion
I did anyway by having less of what I like when compared to
the other to
begin with) ... thus the bigger book is a win win and the
smaller is the
win lose ... the publisher used less materials to published
the smaller
book than those which went into the publication of the larger
work.
As far as the death of the short story goes ... I don't see
that happening
... a magazine (unless solely dedicated to the story) will
never house
anything larger than a short story and they still do:
Atlantic Monthly,
Harper's, The New Yorker, etc. There are still periodicals
dedicated to
short fiction too; Story, etc. Now from a book context, I
don't recall in
the past very many short stories receiving a cover and
publications as a
solitary work, but instead appear in the market place as
anthologies ... I
do have some recent works which are on the thin side in a
singular format:
"Woman in the Dark" Dashiell Hammett, "After Dark, My Sweet"
Jim Thompson,
"Pick-Up" Charles Willeford, "The 39 Steps" John Buchan, and
"The Man Who
Was Thursday" G. K. Chesterton. Mysteries are especially well
presented in
short format with yearly award categories keeping the form
very much alive.
But in the end ... I'd rather pick up a tome of short
stories vice one
little thin book ... just think of the bigger book as a form
of exercise
... ;)
-----
volente Deo,
Anthony
jackechs@erols.com or ICQ #3717510
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/4640/
"... if you should become an artist, ignore the
critics.
Some precious few critics have an artist in them, but
most
are a desperate, shriveled lot who have found a way to
touch art without making it. The half-nuts architect
Roark
in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead is confronted by the
critic
who tried to destroy him. 'Why don't you tell me what
you
think of me,' says the critic. To which Roark
responds,
'I don't think of you.'" Roger Rosenblatt
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