Following my response to his article, ‘Book Selector’ responded in the comments section of the blog - it’s already dropped off the front page, so I reproduce the conversation here, for your interest:
BookSelector:
Hi,
First up I would like to say my name is Matthew Crockatt not Matthew Crock.
Second I would like to say that I am a writer. I have written two novels (both unpublished – never submitted) many short stories (some of which are published) and have been a paid journalist in my time. In what sense am I therefore a “not-yet-writer” as you assert?
Third I would like to ask how many of your short stories have sold via Storycuts so far and whether you think more would have shifted had they been available for FREE?
Was the money generated by sales worth having or would you value the exposure of having your work freely distributed more?
I don’t know what happened to my Huffington response – maybe I was ruder than I remember? At any rate I will be blogging more about these issues on Huff in the coming weeks. Please do keep tabs.
Me:
First, I apologise for the name mis-type, I’ll edit the original in a minute or two. [edit: done. Also added the italics I missed out.]
Second, I would suggest that ‘writer’ in this instance refers to someone who makes a living out of writing fiction and given that you write, ‘the idea I might make money from writing is a distant dream’, then I take you at face value: you are hoping to become a professional novelist and are not one yet. I wish you the best of luck: it’s the best job out there, and I wake up each day grateful for the privilege.
Third, I haven’t seen actual sales figures yet, but the rankings we have state that of the 250 or so shorts put out, the top five slots were shared between my three short books and Irvine Welsh (number 1) and Lee Child (number 3) - Amazon, for reasons of its own, releases relatives, but not absolute figures: we don’t get them for a month. Until they arrive, I’m entirely happy with that state of affairs.
Four - and most important: The question is whether giving short stories away is valid or not, and I genuinely don’t know, but there are a number of obvious points.
a) - what kind of traffic drives your particular website?
In my case, my site is almost exclusively inhabited by people who already read my books. I could put inordinate amounts of effort into extending that readership, but on the whole, I’d rather put time into writing. I wrote 3 books last year: a historical novel, a contemporary thriller and a short non-fiction about 2012. Each of these is a more valuable use of my time. IF your site is inhabited by people who don’t read your fiction but might, then giving away free books is possibly useful. IF - as with most professional novelists - your site is inhabited by fans who found the site by following the link in the back of a book, then they’re already buying your fiction. Giving it away may give you all a warm and fuzzy feeling, but it won’t increase sales.
b) Do readers of short stories become readers of long fiction?
I read a lot. I read short and I read full length novels and I am trying to think of a single time when reading a short story has pushed me to by a novel by the author. I haven’t come up with one. Now, I’m the kind of person who buys novels on the basis of reviews (I bought Wolf Hall, for instance, on the basis of a stellar review by Boyd Tonkin in the Independent) which, I gather, puts me in a slightly less than 1% bracket of readers, so obviously I’m not the norm. But is there any evidence that short story readers become novel-readers? If so - why? Just because you can write a short story doesn’t *at all* mean you can write a good novel. Or vice versa. They’re very different skills.
c) Gatekeepers. There are a zillion people giving away short stories on the net at the moment. It’s the would-be novelists’ venue of choice, given that it’s less expensive than vanity publishing and at least potentially, can reach a broader market. Some of them make it. A few. A very, very small percentage, in fact, and so far, I don’t like what they write, but then, as we’ve previously established, I’m not the average reader.
But still. I could spend the rest of my life reading short stories by people who think the publishers are wrong. Or I could trust that publishing isn’t a completely dead industry and that intelligent women and men spend their lives deciding what’s good and getting it out there.
They are, in effect, the Gatekeepers, the people who choose, edit, package - and then sell - the books that have kept us all entertained for generations. And I trust them. I don’t like everything published by ever publisher, but they do offer pretty obvious visual signals to style and content and I trust that if there’s a book that looks good, there’s at least a 50% chance that it *is* good and if I flip through a few pages, I’ll know pretty soon if it’s worth my time to read it. But I need that sense of a publisher having sifted out the gold from the absolute dross. Life is just too short to do that sifting myself.
And having done that sifting - I’m happy to pay them for the result, be it short, or long.
I’m happy to believe that giving short stories away can be productive - if you can prove that is is, I’ve got a fair stash of others I can put out tomorrow… but I have yet to be convinced.
Finally: I’m 20k words behind schedule (life, dying relatives, dead relatives, more life) and I truly don’t have time to go onto HuffPo: I wouldn’t have seen your first article if it hadn’t been tweeted in the #storycuts thread… so if there’s a reply, could you copy it here?
thank you
m
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Sorry - trying to comment via phone and pressed wrong button.
You make some valid points. Initially you made the distinction between published and un-published authors. I can see that for an established author you are not so concerned about finding new readers.
The idea of publishers as gate-keepers who keep the mob and their dross at bay feels a bit old skool but again - I see your point.
I doubt we will ever agree on this - we are coming at it from completely different angles. Good luck with the rest of your writing career.
Matthew
Thank you - I’d say that no published author is *ever* at a point when they are not concerned about finding new readers - we always want to expand our reach.
My question is - and remains - whether offering a free short story will ever achieve that aim.
If it will, I’ll do it, no question - but I’d do it on my own and wouldn’t expect the publisher to do it for me.
How many random short stories do you read on other internet sites and of how many have you gone on to buy one or more full length novels by the author?
for me, the answer to both is: zero. I am waiting for any data that suggests I’m off the curve…