Let’s take a small example. A very rough average of books are written in the 100’000 words range. In pure text form that’s about half a megabyte in data. of course there are smaller and large novels, also depending on a genre, but this is not about word counts. Now if an author, again in average, writes 500 words in a day, that would mean writing it takes roughly 200 days. If you only work week days, that’s three quarters of a year.

Now I hear someone say, wait a second, 500 words ain’t much. Sure it isn’t. But you have to make the plot, throw out parts of the script and rewrite them, three times, have them read, re-read, edited, corrected and redone again. There are also such nasty things as writers block and meetings to consider, so 500 words average starts to look mighty good.

Rounding up, an average book takes a year, not counting previous research and what have you not. That might not be that big a deal, but what if the book is in a series.

Tad Williams might be the exception, but I know of few authors that have a definitive start and end in mind when they start a series. Ok, Mr. Williams does actually plan one gigantic book and gets told to break it up into multiple books so he wont starve half way through the process. Others work more open ended. Story arches start and end, but overall struggles continue. Just because the hero rescued the heroine (or vice versa if you like that better) means the story is over.

Over time this gets very excruciating if you follow a story line. Either the quality drops below zero (though that doesn’t mean you stop reading what happens next) or it takes forever for the next book to appear. Or sometimes is in danger of never happening at all, as it was feared with the works of the late Robert Jordan.

The good thing about that is that in that year the novel can be completely turned upside down. I have seen that happen with people I met and the results are mixed in my opinion, but the reader wont know in the end and accept the book as it is.

But what could be done differently? One of the masters of that conundrum is the common web comic. Pages are posted as they are made. Now this would not be suitable for a book as such, but instead of pages, a chapter (suitable held small) would do the trick. This would require more planing, confidence in the storyline and of course the discipline to do it that way. But if that can be done, why not release chapters of the book as they are being finished? Even if there are some small corrections made afterward, while being live, that wouldn’t make such a big deal.

You could sell them in chapters, but even better, give it away for free. Then sell bound copies of a collection of the early chapters once you have a large enough following. Add T-Shirts to the mix, everyone seems to love those, other merchandise and of course accept donations. Let people pay what they want to pay. This also will be a nice feedback, as people vote with their wallet what they like and what they don’t.

A website hosting costs nothing these days, and everyone could start in on it.

What is tricky though is keep it reasonably consistent. Not only in the story (good planing is your friend) but also in releasing new chapters. If people have to wait half a year for one chapter, they will realize, the story will be propelled forward at snails pace and they might see some conclusions (if any) by the time their hair goes gray. In a world of instant gratification this is a big obstacle, but maybe some can over come it.

If you still think 500 words are not much, take a good look at this post. It’s exactly 700 words long.

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