Interesting format?

[scalem X]

I recently bought four short stories, bound in a tiny hardback. (De perfecte partner
It costed me 3,95 euros (about £2,6/ $5,5). I agree that you pay more for each story than you would in an anthology, but I found it really easy to take with me and in general I felt like it was a great buy. The advantage is: it's cheap it's small and easy to read through. Sometimes I feel like people buy an anthology and they don't finish all the stories.

What do you think? Still prefer short story anthologies, which feature a lot of stories and are in fact novel length?

Of course you can state: why not buy a magazine? And I agree (in Belgium we don't have magazines that feature fiction stories, but that doesn't make the argument untrue). But on the other hand, the thing with a lot of magazines is, that you are not able to hop into its style easily (you don't have the beginning of certain continuous stories, you have the adds, who can be a bit distracting and so on)

any thoughts?

[Birol]

I've been hearing different publications doing things like this. One even started "cigarette pack" literature, where the short story is bound in a booklet that size and shape of a cigarette package. There's also Lunch Hour Stories, a small booklet, designed to slip into the purse, and be read in one sitting, during the commute or lunch hour.

I think people may be onto something. Anything that offers a new, legitimate market and gives people more opportunities to read can't be a bad thing.

[ice.monkey]

It sounds like a great format to me. My argument against those who say why not buy a magazine is that the size of a mag still makes it awkward to carry around. What you picked up sounds great. I'm guilty of never finishing anthologies and consequently never buy them anymore. However, I would pick up a small book that only contained 4/5 shorts. Bring them on!

[scalem X]

Now if only publishers realise this...
I was astounded that John (Jarrold) told me that short story anthologies only self half the number of copies of normal novels by that author.

I thought that in today's hectic society, people would prefer short stories, to long ones, who are sure to be interrupted by daily shores. But of course if people don't finish an anthology, then they must feel like they paid for too much.

I feel like there is another idea in there:
Short stories on demand, like you would buy music on iTunes for 1 dollar a song. But they wouldn't have to be online then, you could go to a bookshop and say:
give me:
Tell-tale heart (0,25 euro)
Midnight meat train (0,5 euro)
Bay Wolf (0,5 euro)
lucid dreams(0,5 euro)
and they would say: okay, that will be (0,25+0,5+0,5+0,5+2,75 for glueing=4,5 euro) you can come back in a few hours when it's ready. And they'd print and glue it for you.

Agh well I'm not a marketting genious, but if anyone feels the idea has potential, go give it a try.

[Pete Rebb]

Scalem,

That would be a fantastic idea, print-on-demand for book shops! I can imagine that when the technology is cheap enough, who knows, maybe they'll do that kind of thing! (Anything to slow their demise)

I'd love to be able to do that with short stories, maybe you could choose different authors and genre's to pack into one little neat book. "Tailor-Made Books" The print on demand service.

But... I expect that when they get e-paper technology sorted out, all of that will be out of the window.

[Havlen]

I'd think the technology being fast enough would be as much or more important than it being cheap enough. It's bad enough being the third or forth person in line, but being the forth person and having to wait for 12 books to print?

Might push more people out of the store than anything unless they could print a book in 10-15 seconds.

[scalem X]

I think it is possible and if you phone the bookshop in advance with your order (like the takeaway chinese, I don't think you'll have to wait that long)

[Ursa major]

And if the books were free if they didn't deliver them to your door within a set time...? Well, I can dream.

[Lucien21]

Rather than "Print on demand" I can see it is more likely that shops might have stations in them to download them in an ebook format to read on a PDA/Phone/Dedicated reader (Like the Sony Reader).

More cost effective.