Fast Company has an article about an ESPN contributor who collaborated with Vook to release a Jeremy Lin book in 6 days. It also touches on the fact that there are now 7 Kindle books about Jeremy Lin (a basketball player for the New York Knicks who’s seeing Tim Tebow levels of hysteria) available in the Kindle Store.
Looking at one Jeremy Lin ‘book’
The Book: Linsanity: The Improbable Rise of Jeremy Lin.
- The Price: $1.99.
- The Genre: Capitalizing on Lin.
- Turnaround Time: 6 days.
- Length: 15,000 words.
- Pros: Quick Turnaround Time, Releasing it while Lin mania is still going on.
- Cons: See Rest of the Post.
The most appalling part to me personally:
72 hours to write a 15,000-plus-word manuscript, 36 hours for the fine folks at Vook to build the e-book, and then another 24 hours for them to arrange the distribution.
Apparently, getting out something/anything fast is the new aim of publishing. The people at Vook don’t seem to realize that boasting about publishing a book written in 72 hours isn’t exactly the best way to convey quality or ’worth your money and time’.
Let’s think about it for a minute.
- This ‘book’ was written in 72 hours. It’s very short at 15,000 words – but 72 hours is an insanely short amount of time to write something good. You have to assume that the quality wouldn’t be anywhere near something that took a few months or a few years to write.
- Could an author even ‘think out’/'plan’/'structure’ a book in 72 hours?
- No mention of editing or proof-reading. Perhaps they think it isn’t important enough to mention.
- The book cover is pretty bad. A 5 minute search on Google?
- 36 hours to build the ebook. Wonder what quality formatting was done.
- 24 hours to get to people. This is impressive.
- Six days from concept to store.
The Wildcard: 6 other people managed to publish Jeremy Lin books (and probably in similar periods of time, given that Linsanity is just a few weeks old).
Quality Control and Curation
So … we have 7 Jeremy Lin books floating around the Kindle Store. All written in 72 hours or so. Most probably not edited or proof-read. How wonderful.
The first casualty is quality. If you’ve managed to get your book written in 3 days, and published 1.5 days after that – What sort of quality of writing or thought can readers expect?
The second casualty is the possibility of curation (letting readers know which is the best choice). A few weeks after Jeremy Lin burst on to the scene, there are already 7 books about him available. Which one do readers choose?
Additionally, absolutely anyone, including one of those chess-playing dogs, is free to write a book and publish it. Which means the number of choices will keep increasing.
The good thing about ebooks is that absolutely anyone can publish ebooks. The bad thing about ebooks is that absolutely everyone is publishing ebooks.
Do readers really want books written in 72 hours?
Who knows.
It’s an interesting thought. Do readers want books written in 72 hours? Would they be OK? What if Stephen King wrote something in 72 hours?
The reality is that now anyone can write books and publish them. All the limitations are gone – so, if an author thinks a book written in 72 hours is worth publishing, he publishes it.
We readers have to choose between all these books. A book that an author might have mulled over for years and polished and refined. A book that took 72 hours to write. They all get equal virtual shelf space. Apart from reviews and labels like Publisher Names – there’s not really any way to distinguish.
Reading the Linsanity book right now … well, let’s just say it’s pretty clear it was written in 72 hours.
It’s just sad. You expect people to be artists in their work and put in effort and love and pain into their work. Now we’re in some sort of caricature world where people boast about writing a book in 72 hours.
That’s just a lack of respect for readers. For Reading. For Books.
Filed under: publishing
