Are you worried about Noveling in this Digital Age?

Digital doesn't change anything for novelists: ebooks.

I agree with shadowwalker. Digital is just the medium. Writers might use different tools to do the writing, but the product is the same.

I suspect, however, that you might be referring to jobs someone might have in the publishing world. That has always been changing, even before digital, and will continue to change. What a recent college graduate will do in his first year out of college will be different than what he's doing when he retires, but that's always been true.

I remain to be convinced that attention spans are really dwindling. But I've heard so many times in my life that the novel is dead, that I don't listen to that nonsense any more. Even if it did die, it'd be replaced by something very similar. People will always want stories.

If you're in it for the money, then the odds are way against you. Few writers can make a living these days off their writing - less than 10% based on the last figures I saw.

If you're in it because the voices won't shut the hell up, then I'd say you're in good company. Start writing, and worry about the details once you've a finished product.

If you're talking the industry in general, I'm thinking there's not a lot of money there either with everyone pinching pennies, but that's not really an area I can do more than guess on.

Kerry

do you think that being a Novelists is still a viable path for let's say a fresh faced College graduate?

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I never really thought this. I would imagine it might be easier with digital publishing and self-publishing to make money quicker with fiction these days if you are completely dedicated, skilled and a competent marketer. But I still think a plan to be a novelist as a career choice without doing anything else is a bit too starry eyed.

Have a day job.

acockey said:

I was listening to NPR this morning. They had a short piece on how Amazon, even for all the monopoly like stuff they try to pull, revitalized the Washington Post.

It got me thinking... In an age of digital and you tube videos... do you think that being a Novelists is still a viable path for let's say a fresh faced College graduate?

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it was a viable option before?

The pool is shrinking, perhaps, but it was long before the internet. Television and even radio were going to kill books, except they didn't.

There will always be a market. And no reason not to chase your dreams.

But I wouldn't call "being a novelist" as in living well off it any more a viable career path than "being an NBA star." It happens, but only the foolish make no plan B.

As for novelists, the reality is that this has been the case for some time, as well. For every Grisham there are hundreds and thousands of John Nobodys who didn't make it, the field has always been competitive. Successful Novelist is a viable dream, and with work, dreams become more attainable than without. But it was never exactly a promising career choice.

acockey said:

On a similar note... what do you think about writer's who set up booths at Comic Book Conventions and Street Markets... does that seem like a viable strategy to you?

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Viable to what? Sell a few extra copies? Sure, even as a nobody. Make serious money? Probably not unless you have a platform already. The booth thing can help one build a platform, perhaps, but in small increments. None of them sufficient to make up for a book folks don't want. It is just on more place you can hang a shingle, and how well it works will depend largely on if anyone recognizes the name on that shingle.

Go back to the Golden Age of fiction and see how few novelists actually earned anything approaching a living. There has never been a better time to be a writer.

acockey said:

On a similar note... what do you think about writer's who set up booths at Comic Book Conventions and Street Markets... does that seem like a viable strategy to you?

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I do this at Comic Cons. Regarding them, you generally won't break even on net sales after you subtract the table cost ($325 and up) and cost of books and peripheral expenses. That said, it's still a great way to promote and have fun,.

Kerry

Buffysquirrel said:

I remain to be convinced that attention spans are really dwindling. But I've heard so many times in my life that the novel is dead, that I don't listen to that nonsense any more. Even if it did die, it'd be replaced by something very similar. People will always want stories.

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It does seem to be something that people keep repeating without thinking about it much, so it must be true.

The length of popular stories has for a long time been dictated by binding constraints. Books have gotten longer, for the most part, because book binding for long books has gotten easier and cheaper to do.

The cool thing about ebooks is that you do not have to worry about that at all. An enormous book is the same weight as a short story -- it only takes slightly more data to store, because, let's be honest, text takes pitifully little to store and most of the data for an ebook is going to be the cover art. I literally have a 3,000 page book on my ereader right now and it does not strain my back. Because of this, well, you'd think that if people's attention spans were truly shrinking, they'd be searching out short stories and novellas and such, right? But everything I've read says that they're not.

If it's tougher it's only because there is more competition from more books being published, not because readers don't have the attention span for them. TV's been around for decades and it hasn't stopped people reading books in favour of more quickly told stories of TV shows. Long books are still popular. Plenty of recent success stories have been long books. And when people can read an ebook on multiple devices they might well read at least part of it in small chunks of time. If I'm really into a book I'll end up snatching a few minutes reading it on my phone on the metro or in a waiting room, as well as having longer sessions sitting down with my Kindle.

amergina said:

I think it's one of the best times to be a writer. There are so many options available. And writers can diversify their sales channels much more than they could in the past.

You do have to be savvy and cautious, too. Because you can get screwed more ways as well.

But overall? I know folks who make a good living writing novels full time.

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Jamesaritchie said:

Go back to the Golden Age of fiction and see how few novelists actually earned anything approaching a living. There has never been a better time to be a writer.

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What they said. Of course markets fluctuate, but this is an amazing time to be an author. I write ebooks for small presses, and I'm making a better living as an author than I ever did at a day job.

Also want to add... ebooks are making it easier for the older crowd to read. My mom LOVES her iPad because she can prop it on a pillow (her hands shake, so holding a book open and steady is difficult), and she can increase the font size. I'm hearing from more and more senior citizens who say the same thing -- you don't have to wait for large print books anymore, they're easier to carry around, easier to hold, etc.

So that's an entire demographic who suddenly has significantly more books available to them than they had ten years ago. Which, of course, is good for authors.

thethinker42 said:

So that's an entire demographic who suddenly has significantly more books available to them than they had ten years ago. Which, of course, is good for authors.

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This makes me very happy. My books are perfect for the Boomer generation. Plus, they usually have the time to read, many of them being retired.

Are you worried about Noveling in this Digital Age?
acockey

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I'm more worried about someone here using 'noveling' as a verb.

williemeikle said:

I'm more worried about someone here using 'noveling' as a verb.

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Oh. I thought I was just being out-of-touch/uncool/old. So I said nothing.

Buffysquirrel said:

I remain to be convinced that attention spans are really dwindling. But I've heard so many times in my life that the novel is dead, that I don't listen to that nonsense any more. Even if it did die, it'd be replaced by something very similar. People will always want stories.

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Attention spans are as long now as they ever were. People confuse attention span with having more things to do with your time. Not so long ago, I didn't have the internet, or e-mail, or a smart phone, or video games to deal with.

My attention span is as long as ever, but I have more things to do, so each thing may get less time.

But anyone who thinks attention spans are shorter needs to hand a teen a video game he likes. He'll play it for hours and hours, concentrating completely every second.

Give people something they enjoy, and they will zone in on it, and keep at it for hours, whether it's a video game, or a novel.

People don't understand that multi-tasking requires a tremendous attention span, not a shorter one. If you have seven things on a must be done list, going from one to another does not mean a short attention span, it means a long attention span because all seven are really just one task, and you have to concentrate beginning to end to get them all done.

If people don't read our books, it has nothing at all to do with short attention spans, it has to do with not giving them a book they enjoy enough to block out everything else. A good book puts a reader in the same zone a good video game does.

Jamesaritchie said:

Attention spans are as long now as they ever were. People confuse attention span with having more things to do with your time. Not so long ago, I didn't have the internet, or e-mail, or a smart phone, or video games to deal with.

My attention span is as long as ever, but I have more things to do, so each thing may get less time.

But anyone who thinks attention spans are shorter needs to hand a teen a video game he likes. He'll play it for hours and hours, concentrating completely every second.

Give people something they enjoy, and they will zone in on it, and keep at it for hours, whether it's a video game, or a novel.

People don't understand that multi-tasking requires a tremendous attention span, not a shorter one. If you have seven things on a must be done list, going from one to another does not mean a short attention span, it means a long attention span because all seven are really just one task, and you have to concentrate beginning to end to get them all done.

If people don't read our books, it has nothing at all to do with short attention spans, it has to do with not giving them a book they enjoy enough to block out everything else. A good book puts a reader in the same zone a good video game does.

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Shockingly, I am once again in 100% agreement with JAR.

williemeikle said:

I'm more worried about someone here using 'noveling' as a verb.

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I used to get really wound up about people verbing nouns, until I noticed Shakespeare did it. I figure anything Shakespeare successfully used, I won't worry about other people using (even though few can pull it off as well). This decision has saved me a lot of self-inflicted hair-pulling, because most acrobatics one can pull with English, Shakespeare already did. The mystical improving dangling modifier is probably in his complete works somewhere.

williemeikle said:

I'm more worried about someone here using 'noveling' as a verb.

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...er, gerund... and I suspect, somewhat creative, if not sufficiently awkward...

The novel's been around for quite a while, and I'm not ready to write its obituary yet. I think there will always be people who want to immerse themselves in stories that rely on the written language instead of visual showing, and there are benefits associated with doing so.

However, the novel is evolving to reflect the widespread availability of highly visual, digital media. I think the increased interest in first person and closer limited third narratives are because these are something novels can do better than movies, TV, and video games.

I also worry about how hard it's gotten for new authors to be discovered (and how hard it's becoming to find new authors as a reader). The decline of brick and mortar stores dedicated solely to books is an issue. Such stores encourage a person to browse through piles of new releases and old backlist is making it harder for new writers to be discovered. Most online buying of books is a result of targeted searching, not browsing. Publishers are more likely to let backlists go out print now (since they are less likely to be found by readers), and new authors often fail to establish a readership in a time frame that's profitable for their publishers.

DreamWeaver said:

I used to get really wound up about people verbing nouns, until I noticed Shakespeare did it. I figure anything Shakespeare successfully used, I won't worry about other people using (even though few can pull it off as well).

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I've often wondered why folks get upset about this for the same reason. Anyway, many of the gerunds that are standard use verbs today started with someone (and not necessarily Shakespeare) "verbing" a noun decades or centuries in the past.

Sometimes verbs get nouned too. The language is ever evolving, but words are actually falling out of use faster than new ones are being added these days. The loss of words bothers me more than people taking a noun and creating an impromptu gerund that may or may not catch on.