E is for Excessive

I'm writing a new book. To make my life more complicated, I am going to do something a little different.

The story takes place over one week. There are nine main characters, a dozen supporting characters and various random extras. Rather than describe everyone's week in detail and end up with a 1500 page book, I am going to take advantage of the e-book format. Most people I know, including myself, prefer physical books to electronic files. Voracious readers, book collectors, book snobs and publishers all prefer something you can hold in your hand. I can understand the convenience of e-books, especially while traveling. Your phone can hold thousands of books. Your suitcase, not so much. But I have no intention of buying a reading device any time soon, and reading a book on my phone would drive me insane.

Publishers really hate e-books. The record industry always jumps on the latest technology. Maybe because they realized most people would augment their record collections with cassettes and 8 tracks, and then replace it all with CDs, and later replace those CDs with records. If you bought Abbey Road in four or five different formats, that was good news for EMI. But publishing is different. Any e-book is going to cost much less than a physical copy. There is less overhead for the publisher, and far less profit. A book has to be printed, shipped and stored. That costs more than copying a digital file, but it also means retailers can charge higher prices. If a printed book costs $20, the publisher might make $4, more or less. There are a million factors, but let's say their net profit is 20%. If an e-book costs 99 cents, the publisher makes just under 20 cents. If you ran a dying business, would you rather make $4 per sale or 20 cents?

All of my books are available in e-format. I have never read any of them that way, but I have never heard any complaints about formatting or font or whatever anyone might complain about. For the new book, I might have to find a way to read it digitally.

The plan is to have a normal, physical novel that tells the story of these people and their week. That will be the official book, more or less. Some of the couples, among the main characters, will also get an e-book about the week from their point of view. It will definitely not be the same scene written over and over again. Since the characters interact sporadically, each e-book will be mostly unique scenes that do not involve other main characters. If each e-book were the same thing, but from a different point of view, there would be no reason for the e-books.

This will not be a series. The e-books can be read in any order since they all happen concurrently, although reading one e-book will inevitably have spoilers for some of the others. Ideally, I would want people to read the main novel first and then all the e-books in whatever order they want. But that is not up to me. So each e-book will be a self-contained story that does not rely on anyone reading anything else.

The point of this little experiment is not to make more money. I don't have millions of fans who will buy absolutely anything I put out. No one expects each of the e-books to sell equally well. In fact, I have been told that the second release will be lucky to sell half as many copies as the first, and the numbers will plummet with each subsequent release. Everyone involved makes more money from physical books anyway.

My primary concern is to tell the story. As soon as I started writing the first draft, I knew that it would be too long for a single book. The last thing I want is a series, but I want to write everything that needs to be written. With the e-book plan, I can write everything and keep the book at a reasonable pace. It will also be a fun challenge to write from different points of view. Like witnesses to a car crash, the characters will not necessarily remember everything the same way. One e-book might contradict another, in some aspects. Some readers will probably assume that I screwed up, but I have faith that most people who read books understand the concept of an unreliable narrator. One of the e-books will be told by a vehemently reliable narrator, but I'm not going to tell anyone which one that is. Again, I have faith in readers.

I have discussed this with a few key people and no one thinks it is a stupid idea. Whether I can pull it off or not is another thing, but the idea polls well. All I have to do now is actually write the thing.