Epublishing vs. Traditional Publishing
October 8, 2011 4 Comments
(Faith Van Horne is a speculative fiction writer living in the American Midwest. Her horror novella, All Hope Lost, comes out October 10th with Escape Collective Publishing. You can see what she’s up to at her blog. You can also follow her on Twitter, where she goes by @fvanhorne.)
When I wrote my horror novella, All Hope Lost, I targeted epublishers for publication. The form doesn’t tend to do well in print, while epubs are revitalizing the longish fiction (too long for a short story, too short for a novel) category. I found success with Escape Collective Publishing.
Before AHL, I’ve only published short stories, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect with a publisher who contracted for longer, single-title works. However, some of the folks in my writer’s groups have books with traditional print houses. From what they’ve shared with me, there are some practical differences between working with print versus electronic publishers.
One aspect that surprised me most was speed of publication. Whereas the writers in my group waited over a year(!) to see their accepted works put to print, Escape Collective brought my project together within a couple of months. Of course, the big houses are working on getting out hundreds of titles. Escape Collective is brand new and quite small. They’re debuting their line with my work and an anthology collection. A more narrow focus meant plenty of attention for me in terms of feedback from my editor, progress reports, etc., which was quite nice.
Since the book hasn’t been released yet (it comes out this Monday, October 10th, hint hint), I can’t speak to the sales end. But I hope to share more about my publishing experiences on my blog, faithvanhorne.blogspot.com. Feel free to stop by and say hi.
The e-pub approach seems ripe for a lot of alternative products. And, you’re right. The one niche that is currently underserved is the long short story format. It has gotten to the point where lots of people like me are suggesting to writers to avoid anything over 8,000 words entirely, leaving a gap between 8000 and 60,000 words in literature.
Gary, the one place where novellas are really thriving is in romance. If you look at places like Samhain Publishing and Ellora’s Cave, a lot of their offerings are between 25,000 and 40,000 words. Unfortunately I don’t write romance; but Samhain is more open with romantic elements. I’m hoping Escape Collective will pick up some of the slack for speculative fiction writers.
I hope so too, Faith! When we first started planning what kind of books we wanted to publish, short stories and novellas were at the top of our list. Sadly, the market doesn’t seem ready for stand-alone short stories, but novellas seem perfect. At least, that’s what we’re hoping for. It would be nice if All Hope Lost is just the first hit, in a flood of novellas that we put out.
-Patrick Jennings-Mapp
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