Simon Drake – Writer

I attended the Frankfurt Book Fair (2008), sitting in on eBook related forums and discussions.
I have two main observations: 1. The US wants Europe to pile into the eBook industry, and 2. the eBook Industry must lift its gain first.
Now for the details.
1. I attended an Amazon Kindle (AK) presentation. AK is keen for European publishers to move their titles to Kindle format. Fair enough, so far. I’m a writer and very small publisher and am based in Europe and have moved some of my titles to Kindle, and one of my publishers sells my Sci-Fi novels on Kindle. I like to be listed on Amazon Kindle but the market is restricted to who has the device – that means the US.
Even before the book fair there was the rumour that the Kindle would finally make its way to Europe – a rumour quickly squashed at the Book Fair by an AK Digital spokesperson, explicitly telling the media (gagging for news) that they should not expect any ‘ground breaking’ news. There was no collective sigh – Europeans are above mass hysteria for battery-run gadgets. The spokesperson ran through the presentation, basically telling the Europeans how wonderful it will be to have their titles on Kindle. But, where’s this Kindle? What good is it across the Atlantic? Is it being manufactured in China as week speak or is still on the negotiating table?
After the presentation, I asked the spokesperson if Kindle’s absence from the European market has to do with the billings system and foreign account settings (as a UK based publisher, selling ebooks via Mobipocket on Amazon Kindle, I can’t see my sales or get into any real statistics about my titles – shame, because most other vendors (Mobipocket and Lightning Source) can. And, when I do earn enough to be paid, I get paid by check in US dollars into a UK account – pain in the A$$ territory in the modern age. Is PayPal an obscene word now?). I asked if the absence of Amazon Kindles in Europe (that is, the physical sale of the reader) was due to a US company dealing with the Europe; complications with different countries, the dollar and euro conversion. The answer was that Amazon is a US dollar based company. Fair enough. I can imagine the hurdles when dealing with the Eurozone but haven’t other companies made their mark? Is the Euro (kicking-A over the US Dollar on the foreign exchange) such a nightmare to deal with?
I later read in the Bookseller (an uber-jolly British self-congratulatory publishing magazine for the UK publishing industry) that the real issue is Amazon’s securing of a pan-European Wifi network; multiple regions, multiple providers, multiple headaches. From personal experience and frustration of using a mobile phone across Europe, I sympathise – The EU exists because of multi-lingual glossy treaties while European Nations will sting you for exorbitant roaming charges. So, Dude/Monsieur/Chum, where’s my European Kindle? According to the Bookseller, ‘not before Christmas’. Well, what will I buy myself for Christmas then, a Sony Reader? Until AK is on the European market, Amazon has very little chance of European publishers migrating, in rapture and in droves, to Amazon Kindle wonderful world of digital publishing.
Now for #2. The next event I went to was about the ePub format. Many Europeans where there, mostly in suits, while I was there with my ‘developer’ hat on. The presenters were from Random House Digital, Sony Reader EU, Overdrive and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).
The IDPF is touting the ePub format. Hooray, one standard! Their Rep was quite open about the ePub’s state: it is new on the scene, arriving after other formats have made their presence, but it should be read by newer devices (iPhone, Sony Reader etc).
The Overdrive was trying to explain and teething dramas of converting books (from InDesign and Quark) into eBooks. He’s obviously been there, but I don’t think the audience has – they didn’t look like the grunts who will have to tinker desktop publishing files into XML and face the (sad) music from unhappy editors who moan about typos and font sizes and random page breaks… Don’t get me started – Show Me the Standard!
The Random House Digtital rep talked about similar issues; converting titles, the extra quality assurance required, and their 50/50 back catalogue/new titles mix.
(I can relate to the conversion issues: Converting a manuscript into an eBook is not done at the click of a mouse, you need to roll up your sleeves and tinker with HTML well into the night.)
Next the Sony Rep was glorifying their reader, it uses a propriety DRM but will work out how to deal with the ePub format.
My Observations: What a mess. How did something so simple get so convoluted and fraught with bugs? One eBook format won’t/can’t work with another. Perhaps I’m missing out the painful evolution of a long-overdue technology, but after so many years it still seems a mess – and though one standard (ePub) is welcome, I do wonder, what if it’s not the best, but something to suffer for the rest?
My Solution
1. Grin and bear it, take up one solution or format – Non-propriety ePub sounds good but from experience, when you convert a manuscript into an eBook – take care. It is not an easy process, because for ePub and PDF eBooks you need a mix of skills: desktop publishing and  typesetting, a bit of graphic design (for the scalable images) and XML/HTML and any other code the devices require.
2. Or, we can all go back to books. I don’t mind reading small sections of text on my PDA, but before I spend a wad of cash or swipe my credit card for an eBook device, it has to pass the Simon eBook Device Three B’s Test: Can it survive the Beach, the Bath, and if I spill Beer on it?

Also see: Interview with Simon Drake on the Writing Cast>

It is time to apply the hypothesis of technological singularity to storytelling; that age old art of spinning a yarn, now perfected into template film script Hollywood blockbusters, pure genre books (i.e. Mills and Boon romance) and good old, quality, creative novels.  The Story Singularity is this: two stories, created by two different authors, and unknown to each other, are writing the one story. Does this mean both authors are using a standard base storyline, they’ve run out of ideas or/and are plagiarising a well known story? Or is that in the behemoth of entertainment, a wave and long tail of infinite supply (infinite? The Long Tail is a bit of a fable, to be discussed in another article), that there are so many stories available to the public, there are circumstances where The Story Singularity occurs. There’s a Hollywood saying, “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ.” If something makes some bucks, then someone will come out demanding their share. Sure it happens, writers do get ripped off, but sometimes there’s no plagiarism, it is what I call The Story Singularity.
The Story Singularity happened to me like this: Three weeks ago I read about the upcoming movie, 10,000 BC. I thought, wow, great setting for a story. Expect great direction by Roland Emmerich.
Like most writers I’ve studied the classic structure of film scripts, and once you know the rules, can break the rules, and incorporate structural elements into novels. After all, unless you’re on acid and your audience is on acid, there has to be intelligent design to a story, or it falls to bits. People demand quality. Good writers deliver it. Then comes the creative fluff. Where Hollywood, who can’t always be blamed, miss the point is that their audience is so large they have to flatten out the peculiarities of a story and make it a bit simple for all the simpletons out there. Big Market Share = Keep it Simple.

 
When I read the synopsis for 10,000 BC I had a cold shiver – Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy rescues girl. How original? How tried and tested? How could you not go wrong with a story like that? Yes, yes and yes. However, I was annoyed: I’d written a novel called the First Geniuses, set in the same time, about a genius boy who meets girl, invents the concept of zero, loses girl to the local witch doctor, and must rescue girl from sacrificial alter. I’d written my story in 2004, and the movie 10,000BC was to be released in the UK (where I live) on π day – 3.14 – 14th March 2008. The First Geniuses, as a novel, was hard to place with publishers and agents. It wasn’t science fiction, it wasn’t romance, it wasn’t historical (historical as a genre tends to concentrate on period pieces, the heyday of a nation or it prime time of misery, e.g. British Empire, Irish Potato Famine, rise of Nazism, obliteration of Dresden, Holocaust). Maybe my story was is a bit Clan of the Cave Bears, 1 Million BC and The Flintstones – just jokes. I’d pushed it into the bottom draw, cunningly biding my time…
Faced with The Story Singularity I had to do something, and rather than ranting in blogs about the un-originality of 10,000 BC, I decided to get my story to the market, because after the movie 10,000 BC is released, and I shop my novel The First Geniuses to publishers and agents, they could always say, “Oh this genre and story has been done” or “This genre and story is great! Let’s roll out a rip-off” at which point I’d feel like an idiot.
Now here’s where the Technological Singularity helps. Faced with The Story Singularity I had to act. I contacted the ebook publisher who had released my previous SF title Love Data and put it to him to release my novel as an eBook, slightly renaming it and cosily sliding it alongside the upcoming movie, as much as possible and as soon as possible. The traditional publishing industry is an archaic dinosaur, stumbling along like the music industry did; gaping in horror as their merry-go-round of captive audience and mega market share was shot to bits by bytes – uploading and downloading, naughty file sharing, and general digital buccaneering. Argh hargh me lads, Pirates we be, plug in thee broadband connection and pour me a rum.
So, with weeks to go, and an agreement from the publisher, I was now enforcing The Story Singularity, after all, it doesn’t exist unless the public has access or knowledge of both stories.
Now that the movies 10,000BC is out, and my eBook 10,000BC – The First Geniuses is available (as of 13th March 2008) The Story Singularity is alive.
Remember, in the Technological Singularity, something has to take over – Man or Machine.
In The Story Singularity, two (or multiple) stories sharing many elements (setting, characters, structure, turning points, untidy hair-styles etc) one story may be of a higher quality – that’s for you to decide.
But alas, one story has millions of dollars for a marketing budget to throw at advertisement on buses and in newspapers and online social networking sites, and the other has one writer, two laptops, coffee, and single malt scotch for when the sun goes down.
The Story Singularity is decided by the market, not agents, publishers and reviewers. The audience is the judge, so I have decided to be judged.