Earlier this week, the Amazon Kindle Singles store released the first short story by bestselling novelist Tom Rachman (The Imperfectionists). The story is titled “The Bathtub Spy”, sells for $1.99 and, like most things involving books and Amazon these days, begs the question of whether authors will bypass traditional publishing avenues–in this case, literary journals/magazines like The New Yorker–in favor of the e-tailer’s more innovative channels.
The question is: what’s stopping Amazon from gathering a store of “more literary” short stories from respected writers and releasing them every week, putting them directly in competition with The New Yorker? They’ve already challenged every publisher, Apple, Barnes & Noble (not to mention killed Borders), Wal-Mart, and basically every other retailer in America. So why not start the siege on the old guard of literary journals and magazines? If Amazon decided, could they succeed?
Quality of content will always be first, so let’s take a look at the other main issue here: money.
If we think of “The Bathtub Spy” as an alternative to The New Yorker‘s weekly fiction offering (which is “El Morro” by David Means this week), we can compare some figures. As mentioned above, Rachman’s Kindle Single is $1.99 (and you can loan it once), and an issue of The New Yorker is either $5.99 (cover) or $1.49 (subscription). Rachman’s story is 15 pages; the current issue of The New Yorker is 84 pages.
For readers, is $1.99 too much for 30-45 minutes of entertainment? On average, we pay $8 for a movie ticket, which, if you say is two hours of entertainment, going to see a movie and buying a story from Amazon come out to the same price. With Amazon, assuming you like the story, you also have the benefit of keeping it on your Kindle or sharing it with someone.
For writers, are Kindle Singles the new New Yorker–are they the best way to get your story to a large number of people and make a good amount of money? “The Bathtub Spy” is listed as a title directly sold by Amazon Digital Services, and as a Kindle Single it’s eligible for Amazon’s 70/30 split, even though it’s below $2.99. If we assume the $1.99 story follows the 70/30 model, this means that $1.39 of every sale goes directly into Rachman’s pocket. The closest estimate for how much The New Yorker pays for a short story is $7,500 (though this former staff writer stated he received $3/word), which, at that rate, means Rachman would have to sell about 5,400 copies of his story through Amazon to equal what he’d make publishing through The New Yorker. Amazon has always been tight-lipped about sales, but “The Bathtub Spy” is currently #46 in the paid Kindle store, and #2 in the Kindle Singles store. It’s hard to believe that in the long run, his story will be downloaded less than 5,000 times. However, we don’t know exactly what rate Rachman would command at The New Yorker, so if he were to receive something in the ballpark of $3 per word, he’d be getting closer to $20,000 for a story in the magazine, which, obviously, would be much harder to surpass through Amazon (he’d have to sell about 14,500 copies to equal this higher rate).
So, there are arguments for both The New Yorker and Kindle Singles. If you’re a reader, you obviously get more bang for your buck if you pick up The New Yorker, and you get a lot of quality content surrounding the short story if it turns out you don’t enjoy it. However, if Amazon were to start putting up quality short stories every week (and you could argue they already have), the consumer has the benefit of picking and choosing stories to put down money for every week. If Amazon released a story that didn’t sound good to you, you could just save your money and wait for next week’s story.
But ultimately, we go back to quality of content. If more respected writers like Rachman decide to shift over to Kindle Singles, we could see another area of media–the literary magazine–disappear in Amazon’s shadow.
Tremendously illuminating appreciate it, I do believe your audience could possibly want further content like that continue the good work.
What is the big picture for “The New Yorker?” Does its eighty-six year history speak to success? If increased advertisements space and therefore added revenue is success, then yes. If, as a result, there are a dwindling number of pages dedicated to art, then it is unsuccessful.
If you look back to 1925 when founder Harold Ross launched his dream of a “sophisticated humor magazine” then you get to the root of “it.” Three works of fiction, poetry and the light zaniness of The Talk of the Town. Between the covers what lay in wait were such entirely whimsical cartoons. To bring such joy! But now, here is the current New Yorker, and what Harold Ross famously declared in a 1925 prospectus for “The New Yorker:” “It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.” The
obvious slur on old ladies and Dubuque aside, that’s just what the magazine has become. Not only for the “old lady” but all of Dubuque and beyond.
See the old lady has a thirst for reportage, in her hands, “The New Yorker.” A Dubuque garbage man is in terrible wont for current events, a schoolteacher with a perverse attraction to cartoons of the one-dimensional, stick figure kind and the local beat cop, so unblessed by Ross to have been born in the heartland (American Gothic not withstanding), why this young enforcer of law must have his fix of Goings On About Town because it is so utterly, dearly important to him in his life – so relevant. With the current editor’s dogmatic pursuit of hard driving political world events, (ten years with The Washington Post will do that) “The New Yorker” has become little more then a glorified news journal with an interestingly drawn front cover that changes from week to week. Little else between its two covers does.
I don’t know why everything in digital publishing has to be seen in apocalyptic terms. I think its great that the short story via Amazon Digital or other sources is helping revive a format that was decimated by the end of glossy magazines like Colliers, Look etc. in the 1950s. So many great authors like Vonnegut and Doctorow got their start there and that loss impacted a lot of people’s incomes for awhile but we survived. Why does Amazon’s potential success mean the New Yorker’s potential demise? I don’t get this ongoing either/or scenario that seems to mark virtually all journalism on these subjects. Its very tiresome. The world is not coming to an end, Amazon is not going to destroy the New Yorker. On the contrary instead, short story authors will once again have more good paying markets to sell their wares to. How great! Its actually a win-win story not a win-lose one.
This article assumes that the only reason to read the New Yorker is for the short fiction, which couldn’t be further from the truth. To be honest, I almost never read the short stories published there. The reporting, commentary and reviews are what I keep coming back for (and have for a long time). That type of content requires editorial intervention and oversight which Amazon will never be able to provide. For me, the short fiction is absolutely the least interesting thing about the magazine and always has been.
I agree! I enjoy the articles, reviews, cartoons, and art. I seldom read the fiction. I think it’s great that short stories will be offered separately. It could lead to a resurgence of this declining form. I’d love to see mystery, romance, science fiction, western, and other short story genres return to the popularity they once enjoyed. Could poetry be next?
As an independent publisher with a few singles on Kindle I can certainly guarantee that Amazon is not good at selling anything. Thanks to a sales reporting glitch, authors using the company publisher to sell ebooks apparently lost a number of sales. I now host my own buttons, thank you very much, and since my ebooks are also on Barnes & Noble and other retailers I don’t feel like I am pigeonholed by the monster. Yes, I welcome readers who buy direct from the authors. That Amazon happens to have enough money to promote itself like the uncle who won’t go away is not the issue. I also promote myself and my books; yet for me it is an uphill climb to even get any notice when it seems that everyone would rather shop on Amazon.
Editing is also not the issue, since most authors self-edit or get others to do it for them. It’s promoting quality content to readers who don’t want to know what is there to be read. Posting on forums where readers ask for suggestions for a particular genre and then get hostile when an author posts a recommendation is the reason why not enough content is getting read. Finding real readers who are really looking for books and content to read is like looking for a needle in a haystack of needles.
Who does edit for Amazon? Do they employ discerning literary editors?
The solution to the Curation problem lies here….
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The New Yorker can sell its collections and authors can go direct to consumers.
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Can I put together and buy as an ebook my own collection of short stories on Kindle? I might pay $9.99.
It’s interesting to see your asumption that Amazon killed Borders when the reality is it was simply a matter of bad business practices. Funny too that you are apparently unaware(as others have pointed out) that The New Yorker is already available on Kindle. The primary point here is that The New Yorker will always have a degree of cachet and credibility for any author. Amazon can’t be everything to everybody no matter how hard Mr. Bezos would like you to believe it.
Lol, I love this. At the bottom of this page is an add for Lee Child’s single on Amazon. LMAO! I am a writer and a small publisher and we have had a few titles get as high as #3 on Amazon. Based on #46 @ the 1.99 35% rate he will bring in 20k a month. So will he make more on Amazon? Hands down.
Let me paint a picture for you.
You tell a stranger that you are going to start a business, you say that you are going to undercut everyone and yet still make more per unit, AND sell more because it is a lower price. Would you care what name is on the building? As to editors… well, most of them are leaving or getting fired. So guess what they do? They hire out as a freelance editor or go work for Google or Amazon.
I like the end of this article… it is content. I read a lot, I listen to audio, I don’t care where I get my content just as long as I get it. Content is King.
As an author I am going the eBook route. Who better than the consumer to decide the fate of the publishing industry. Adapt to the changing world or be left behind by it. Work with authors and a new world will open up. Technology and the DIY optimism have leveled the playing field in numerous industries.
It’s weird that this article doesn’t even mention the New Yorker subscription on Kindle for $3 a month. I’m not sure why someone would pay $1.99 for one story when they could get four issues of the New Yorker (i.e. four short stories plus many more pieces of original reporting), unless they were a big fan of a specific author.
Why couldn’t “The New Yorker” come out with an e-version themselves? The technology isnt going anywhere. It’s up to publishers to figure out where they fit in this new world.
Silliness. You are completely missing the point if what a literary journal is. Amazon: if all you have us a hammer all problems tend to look like nails. Good luck replacing the New Yorker with your little orange buttons.
The New Yorker is already on the Kindle as a monthly subscription. There’s more to a literary magazine than just the stories, at least I hope so as I founded one.
A big part of the equation is the curating of content. If Amazon has editors with the expertise and judgment of the NYer editors (currently they don’t), they might have a chance in the literary magazine market. But saying “If Amazon released a story that didn’t sound good to you, you could just save your money and wait for next week’s story” doesn’t quite suffice. What the NYer does is exactly that: it makes that decision for readers ahead of time. That’s one of the value propositions of the NYer, Atlantic Monthly, and all those. If the average reader doesn’t see the value in that, Amazon might have an audience for this type of thing. But I suspect the average reader of literary magazines DOES understand the value added by their expert curators.
Paul, how do you know that Amazon doesn’t have equivalent editors? Do you know who they are, and what their work records are? Who are these “expert curators” of whom you speak?
Your argument is that of the traditional NY editors and publishers: “We know what’s best for the reader, allow us to choose what we think is the material that you should have.” This is the mentality that pushed Snooki on us and rejected “A Wrinkle In Time” 26 times.
The new model is that the unwashed masses of the readers (gasp!) get to pick what WE want to spend our money and time reading. Novel idea, huh?
Based on what I’ve seen of Kindle publishing, it’s not intended to be curated by editors. Editorial work should be done on the front end, before it gets to Amazon — Amazon is a distributor in this scenario, not a publisher. I don’t know if their new short story plan is different, of course.
I actually enjoy the ability to purchase short stories from different distributors (B&N also sells shorts straight from publishers, such as Tor.com, or from authors who list their works themselves), and Fictionwise has been doing it for a long time. Since I’m primarily an SFF reader, I’m not a target audience for the New Yorker anyway. I do think the independent sales of shorts by authors will impact the magazine industry, however, for exactly the reasons mentioned. The bonus of being published in an established mag is that the payment, if your submission is accepted, is a guarantee, rather than being speculative. I also believe that many awards for short fiction require the piece to be vetted through an approved magazine, and that self-published titles are not eligible. There are still definite benefits to going the traditional route for writers — and if you are the target market of a magazine (in my case, it’d be more along the lines of Realms of Fantasy, F&SF, or Asimov’s), then you can get installments of content you like at a lower-per-story rate. Magazines offer readers like me exposure to writers I might not have read otherwise, whereas when I buy a single short, I almost always buy them from writers I’m already familiar with.
Just my anecdotal two cents.