Big Pulpy Shoes to Fill

I wrote earlier how exciting I think the “e-book Revolution” is for readers. If you have an e-reader or don’t mind consuming your books on a computer, there is a whole new world of inexpensive fiction out there now. And for writers, e-books represent an amazing way to connect to readers, and maybe even earn a few dollars along the way.

But before you can start counting the money, you have to write the books. A lot of them. The more material you have available, the more likely readers are to find you. If you scroll through the comments sections of blogs like JA Konrath’s “Newbie’s Guide to Publishing,” you’ll see many readers who are much more inclined to buy from authors with multiple titles available than they are to buy a single lonely book. Readers like to read. A lot. And they love it when a new book comes out by their favorite author. Before, a reader might have to wait a year or more for a new title. Now, the author might release two or three or more a year. That means there’s opportunity for both readers and writers to benefit from the world of e-books.

Back in the heyday of pulp fiction, titles would be released on a monthly or even bi-weekly basis. Walter Brown Gibson, the original author of “The Shadow” mystery series, cranked out two 60,000 words novels a month (Hutchinson, 18). That’s a tremendous amount of output. I don’t know many people who can match it. An author named Lester Dent wrote at perhaps a more reasonable rate: he created one “Doc Savage” novel a month during his career, although he also branched out and wrote for other pulps as well (Hutchinson, 42). And this was all in a time before laptop and tablet computers, and e-mail submissions or electronic uploads.

Those are some serious shoes to fill. I don’t know if I could do it. I’m fast, but am I 12-24 novels a year fast? Probably not. But it’s possible. Gibson and Dent did it. And anyone who has ever completed “National Novel Writing Month” can do it. I’ve had three successful NaNoWriMo’s. So maybe it isn’t so farfetched.

Of course, production is only half of the battle, especially today. Novels and stories also need to be edited. That’s a topic we’ll look at next time, so stay tuned!

Work Cited:

Hutchinson, Don: The Great Pulp Heroes. Niagara Falls, NY: Mosaic Press. 1996. Print.