James Smythe has been doing surveys for his PhD, and I did one for him over the past week. The questions were fascinating, and forced me to take my stand on issues on blooking I hadn’t really thought about. It’s mostly written in the context of Online Fiction (all of it, not just Blog Fiction), and it took me roughly three days or so. Here it is, in all it’s opinionated glory:

James: What do you think that the internet has to offer fiction that traditional print doesn’t?
Eli: Interaction. Traditional print media is a one-way affair - authors write a story that readers lap up, and then if they want to discuss it they’ve to look for mediums: a book club, a friend in a cafe … The Internet, on the other hand, is structured like a conversation. Reader-reader and reader-author interaction is inherently part of the medium, especially if it’s in blog format. If it isn’t a blog, then … well. An email to the author is just a click away.

The other thing about the Internet which I believe opens up vistas to fiction is that it is hyperlinked. Links allow the reader easy access to a wealth of information: notes, pop-culture references, things that may or may not have connections to the narrative. This is obviously something you can’t do with traditional print (which is essentially front to back) … though on the downside it can be frightfully distractive. But that’s the Internet for you.

James: What do you think that the internet - or, online fiction, more specifically, in all of its forms - has to offer print fiction?
Eli: Can’t really think of anything. I can say what it offers to authors - instant feedback, a chance at exposure and a long shot to a book deal … but to print fiction?! Forgive me, but I can’t see beyond closer author-reader relationship that the Internet offers. Which is really good, by the way. Much better than a boring, unupdated website, designed by zombies in 1997.

James: Have you ever read anything in print that you wished you had been able to read online? And vice versa?
Eli: No for the first, yes for the second. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve wished for a piece of online fiction to hop off the monitor and into my hands. The chair in front of the computer isn’t a very comfortable place to read fiction - if I’m on the laptop I might hop off and use Wifi to read, on the sofa, but honestly it’s too much of a hassle. And my laptop gets very, very hot. I’ve to face it: books are so much better.

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The following guest post has been written by Gloria Hildebrandt from Orchard House Communications. Stonyfields, her novel in blog form, can be found here.

We would all benefit from a greater sense of community among fiction bloggers, or to put it more elegantly, online fiction writers. It’s difficult for newcomers to find other writers who are currently active on line, and even wilder finding well-crafted blooks (ugh) or e-fiction. (An aside: I’m not fond of the new terminology and wish we had lovelier words.)

My Work Over Yours

It’s a labyrinth out there, and you have to be diligent about searching out e-fiction. I’m grateful to the fiction bloggers who have blogrolls listing other sites of note. I realize that I should add one to my blog. I have lots to learn about this new medium. An active community of e-fiction writers could offer dialogue, information sharing, learning and the promotion of our own work.

I think that last point is key.

Here’s one problem: I am more interested in my work than I am in yours. So I’m not too keen on reading your fiction. It might be bad or boring and a chore. It could be better than my writing, which could be hugely depressing. I want ME to become rich and famous or at least published by a traditional publisher so my father can finally see a book of mine in a bookstore and feel that what I’ve been spending my life at is finally showing results he can be proud of.

Not that I care what my father thinks.

I can also sense people agreeing with me that the time I spend on your work is time I’m not spending on my work.

Another problem is that writing is an introverted activity. Fiction writers probably tend to be more introverted than non-fiction writers. Supporting a community is an extroverted activity.

We have to get over this. We have to make the time and effort or we’re writing, posting blogs and publishing our work in isolation.

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I couldn’t help but post this up, even if it’s a little late: Austen resubmitted.

David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath decided to find out what sort of reception the writer might get if she approached publishers and agents in the age of Harry Potter and the airport blockbuster.

After making only minor changes, he sent off opening chapters and plot synopses to 18 of the UK’s biggest publishers and agents. He was amazed when they all sent the manuscripts back with polite but firm “no-thank-you’s” and almost all failed to spot that he was ripping off one of the world’s most famous literary figures.

This sounds uncannily like Why You Will Never Get Published (Through Traditional Outlets) Today - a very depressing post wrapped around a very depressing Guardian Unlimited article.

If publishers refuse to publish Austen … God knows who else they’re refusing to publish.

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It’s funny what you can find in your local papers if you look hard enough. I flipped through the Technology section of The Star yesterday and was surprised to find a Reuters piece on how social networks are helping publishers sell books.

Oh no … more Web 2.0 hype.

Faced with the challenge of marketing a book with a vulgarity in the title, publisher Rick Wolff turned to Internet blogs and social networking sites to spread the word about his latest business book.

Bookstores were scared of The No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, so Rick Wolff sent emails by the bulkload to bloggers and readers.

There apparently is some serious regard for the power of the Internet: Wolff was invited to talk at a panel discussion on ‘the Internet in publishing’ at the BookExpo America trade fair. I’m regarding this as an early toe-dip into the uncharted waters of marketing books on the Internet … what I’m afraid of is that the market would be so saturated with bloggers screaming “read this book, read this book!”

But there are some interesting concepts mentioned by the article: for instance - Harper Collins Children’s Books used Myspace to promote a competition for teenagers to write successive chapters of a novella, which was then voted on by site visitors as the book progressed.

Oh, and apparently Harper Collins is a 26 year old male in Myspace.

I’m not entirely comfortable with publishers making headway into the online review sphere (remember that article about book reviewers being out of print?) - but then again there raises the question of just how influential are bloggers in selling books? I’m reminded uncomfortably of an annonymous comment in Critical Mass:

I find it interesting that a review of a book in the Sunday NY Times is often much more positive than a review of the same book in the Times week day arts section. Many reviews today sound like marketing instruments and you get the feeling, at least with respect to books from well-known authors, with well-connected publicists, that the reviewers are “bought off” or at least have bought into the hype. As a result, I am more likely to pay attention to a review of a book by an obscure author than of a Cormac McCarthy, a Jonathan Safran Forer etc.

One possible problem? Publishers using PayPerPost to get you to review their books. I shudder at the thought of that.

PS: the article mentions Shelfari, and states that 76% of users there would but their next book from site recommendations. Really now? We’ll see.

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Sharon Bakar has posted up a fascinating piece she wrote for Chrome magazine in January 2006, which struck me not because of its truth (the publishing industry is well aware of the stigma surrounding female authors) but the quotes from some of her readers.

For the uninitiated, her article is about how men prefer to read male authors, opting out of reading prose written by the fairer sex. Listen to this:

… (a) blogger, Amir, felt that “prose written by a lot of female authors tends to be, how do you say it? Delicate? Detailed? Ditzy?”.

“I don’t think women can write like Marquez, Nabokov or Gunther Grass,” wrote one blogger known as Greenbottle, “to me these guys write as though with p*nis instead of pen, full of masculine animal energy.” He felt that many women writers, on the other hand, tended to produce “saccharine, wimpy or effeminate writing”.

If that was the case I would’ve never read The Age Of Innocence - one of my absolute favourites. Nothing like heart rending, heart stopping dialogue as a warmup.

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