Short Books or Longreads? A New Format Breaks Out

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I first noticed them early in 2011. Websites such as Byliner and The Atavist and news outlets like the Washington Post were putting out ebooks that were either timely or had a length that didn’t fit the usual print formats. 

It was catching on. Jon Krakauer wrote one for Byliner and readers reportedly downloaded 70,000 free copies in the first 72 hours. Soon Amazon picked it up for their Kindle Singles program, priced it at $2.99, and it became a bestseller. 

I had an idea for a Kindle Single but had less ambitious goals. I hoped to build on the story in my novel The Losing Role, a historical espionage thriller based on an actual German secret mission to infiltrate the US front lines during WWII’s Battle of the Bulge using English-speaking agents disguised as American soldiers — a desperate and doomed ploy that did not end well. I could tell the true story of this mission that I dramatize in the novel. The topic didn’t require a whole book but deserved more than a 5,000 word article. 

I pitched it to the Kindle Singles team in an email and forgot about it, as any writer who’s been around the block tries to do. To my astonishment, Amazon editor David Blum contacted me about the possibility of doing a Kindle Single. I felt honored and challenged, and lucky for once, since many Kindle Singles are curated from established sources or written by known names. 

Fast forward a few months. After a rewarding experience working with Mr. Blum and his team, my Kindle Single Sitting Ducks debuted the last week of December, 2011. In a couple weeks it had reached number #3 on the Kindle Singles bestseller list and cracked the top 100 for the entire Kindle ebooks store. As of this writing, it still hangs on in the Kindles Single lower top ten, is a respectable #408 in the overall Kindle store, and holds steady at #2 in the Kindle stores for German history and World War II as well as #4 for all books (print and ebook) involving German history. 

If you know me, you’d know I’m not bragging. I prefer not to talk about sales. Rather, this whole thing still blows my mind. It’s a quick lesson in how, under right circumstances such as front-and-center placement on Amazon, an unknown writer can reach the right readers quickly and most directly. The best part is, some of those readers are giving The Losing Role a shot. 

 
 

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This new format of ebook is up and running, but we still don’t know what to call it. When I try to explain Sitting Ducks, the conversation usually gets stalled on length, if I can get past the point that it’s an ebook only. It usually goes like this:

“It’s much shorter than a book, but often much longer than a long article.”

“So it’s like a novella.”

“Actually, shorter than most novellas.”

“So, it’s fiction.”

“It’s not, but it’s supposed to read like it. It’s creative nonfiction. Mine’s about 15,000 words.”

“How long is that?”

“Well, it’s much shorter than a book, but much longer than ...”

You get the picture. A writer is always in trouble when having to resort to a word count. 

This is no one’s fault. Things are simply moving too quickly for clear designation. Recent articles (among many) such as this one from the New Yorker and another from Canada’s Quill and Quire do a fine job explaining the format. Yet readers who buy stories like Sitting Ducks aren’t always clear what they’re getting even though the format is explained on the product page. One reader gave me a poor review partially because my book was short, something that happens often. Again, no one's fault. Who has time to know?

Every day (and news cycle) a solid article like this from Slate, piggybacking off the New York Times, attempts to predict the latest game-changing moments that are already passing. But the real action is often in the comments. Meanwhile, the Author’s Guild just came out (as in minutes ago) with a piece titled “Publishing’s Ecosystem on the Brink.” It will probably spark a good conversation in the comments section. But I don’t know, because I haven’t had a chance to read it. 

For the short ebook, it would help if we had a distinct name that lets us avoid the explanatory conversation. Amazon calls them Kindle Singles, and Apple calls them Quick Reads, but these are branded names. Others call them longreads (from the first-rate online article site), longform (a similarly great site) or short books, but these don’t seem to have stuck yet.   

Half the point of this post was to introduce a new word for this format and hope that it would somehow stick. But I couldn’t, despite a background in marketing and “naming.” My brainstorming didn’t last long. Gems like “booklet” and “pamphlet” were already taken. “Single” alone could work but it has a certain Amazon connotation for some. These are my top contenders:

Session book

Rest read

Small read

Readlet

These are terrible. Crap. Which the format doesn’t deserve. Which brings me back to the length. In the traditional world of publishing, I would have had to pursue (through an agent, certainly) a publisher willing to put out a whole book on the Germans’ wild secret mission. That would have meant padding the story with background and tangents the story simply didn’t need, especially if it was to be readable. We’ve all read nonfiction books that clearly do this, and it’s a chore for the reader and certainly the writer fulfilling his book contract. 

Traditional print formats demanded a prescribed length for topics. Not any more. The new format opens so many possibilities for readers and writers. I’m seeing creative nonfiction pushed to the limit using the craft of fiction and essay, much more like an excellent documentary than a textbook or a tome. And no matter what one thinks of Amazon, they’re doing great things for writers right now. It might not be their goal, and they may squash us tomorrow. But for now, I’ll take it. 

Like the ebook, the new format is here to stay and will exist alongside the print book. I can’t wait to get going on writing the next one, and not because I know a publisher will buy it and print it, but rather because I simply know there are people out there who’ll read it no matter what you call it. 

 

 

Q.R. Markham is Rupert Pupkin

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The strange and creepy disclosure about would-be spy novelist Q.R. Markham strikes chords. Markham, whose real name is Quentin Rowan, managed to patch together a complete and well-received espionage novel, Assassin of Secrets, by stealing passages, scenes and characters from masters of the genre, changing only character names in some cases. The Reluctant Habits blog is compiling the offenses, and they’re adding up quick. 

Some want to call it a sorry form of sampling, except this was subterfuge. When Steve Martin did it in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, it was near brilliant and a funny homage. Martin called his effort what it was. 

Markham, he simply stole. The publisher, Little, Brown imprint Mulholland Books, yanked the book right at publication. Others have covered this from various angles. Spy novelist Jeremy Duns had praised Markham’s book in a book jacket blurb and then, horribly, discovered on an online forum that readers were unmasking Markham’s underhanded ruse. Duns was the one who alerted Mulholland Books, and writes about being bamboozled with admirable candor. Meanwhile, The New Yorker suggests that the Markham ploy may prove a puzzle, while thriller author Meg Gardiner suggests that there’s no mystery here. Markham, who Gardiner says could have spent the effort actually writing a novel rather than stealing from many, may simply be a “jackass.” 

I have a related take: Q.R. Markham is Rupert Pupkin. In Martin Scorsese’s sharp and dark comedy The King of Comedy (1983), delusional wannabe comedian Pupkin (Robert De Niro) craves attention so bad that he ends up kidnapping America’s show biz legend, top TV host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) and holding Langford hostage until his demand is met. Pupkin’s urgent need? Appearing on Langford’s show to do a monologue, for all of captive America to see. If only for one night. 

If this New York Daily News story is a good indicator, Pupkin — I mean Markham — felt great pressure by the hallowed Brooklyn culture surrounding him. Working in a Park Slope bookstore while trying to write literary novels, Markham saw fellow writer types get anointed by the publishing gods just as other literary luminaries such as Paul Auster frequented his shop (as if to rub it in!). Our man in Brooklyn Markham craved that success, so he set to work on his great American rip-off. 

I get the frustration. I’ve been writing for years. I wrote a comic literary novel, and tried a dark noir thriller fueled by anger at the world. Neither went anywhere. Other manuscripts stayed in the drawer and finally made it to the trash. But that’s the way it is. It’s the life. And the old axiom is true: When shitty things happen, just get back to writing. That’s what writers do, whether they’re a semi-struggling one like me or a heavyweight. My agent is a trooper and sticks with me, and I stick with him. As most writers will tell you, I’m lucky to even have one. It’s a lottery right on down the line. Meanwhile you don’t get time for much else, certainly not for plagiarizing. This is the closest thing to a true blog post I’ve done in a while. 

Markham gave in to a world where the right attention means everything, and it doesn’t let him off the hook. I probably align with Ms. Gardiner’s take, as would many writers and authors. What really irks is that Markham did much of his stealing from one of the best and most overlooked espionage writers, Charles McCarry. McCarry is a favorite. The writer’s author, a maestro like McCarry writes on regardless of interest. Attention isn’t an end goal. The real authors just want to be able to do what they do for a living. They do it for the love of doing it, whether readers find their craft good or bad. Sadly, our fools Quentin and Rupert never knew that, and their dumbass actions prevent them from ever knowing what true love feels like. They not only gave up. They did the only thing worse. They cheated. 

As I write this, I find via Jeremy Dun’s Twitter feed that someone else has arrived at the same conclusion. None other than a fake Sean Connery account, @BigTamConnery, says it best: “Markham ish not even worthy to be called the Rupert Pupkin of Shpy ficshion.”

Today many are scrambling to snap up those copies of Assassin of Secrets that made it out into the world, which of course sent sales soaring. 

My advice? Go get yourself a Charles McCarry novel instead.  

UPDATE, Nov. 14: The wanton plagiarizer himself, Q.R. Markham aka Quentin Rowan,  surfaced today to answer some probing questions from Jeremy Duns. Markham's confession — if true — is telling, and a little pathetic, but it should never let him off the hook. Find the questions and answers by scrolling down to the comments of Duns' latest post. Lots of good comments there, too. As for Duns, I can imagine he just wants to get back to writing what he writes. I know I would.

Reviewed for Noir Journal: More Beer

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In Jakob Arjouni's More Beer, outsider German-Turkish private detective Kemal Kayankaya navigates prejudice and Establishment corruption in 1987 West Germany with gruff DIY attitude. The English translation is now available in the US from Melville House. I reviewed it for Noir Journal and repost it here:

Jakob Arjouni’s tough and nonstop noir tale from 1987 could have been titled The Fifth Man.

Sure, private detective Kemal Kayankaya does like more beer, but he also can’t help sticking his nose where things stink. In More Beer, four so-called eco-terrorists in West Germany are accused of murdering the head of a Frankfurt chemical company whose products should, in a just world, get it accused of crimes of its own.

The four suspects had sabotaged the company’s chemical plant, but they deny murdering anyone. A fifth man was seen at the crime, yet no one in authority seems willing to find him. In a tight spot, the defendants’ lawyer hires Kayankaya to track down the missing fifth suspect.

If private detectives are outsiders in fiction, Kayankaya is doubly so. Born in Turkey but raised in West Germany, Kayankaya gets hit with ignorance, cruel insults and outright assault as he chips away at the case no one wants. In the 1960s, West Germany had invited Turks to come help the country rebuild and flourish, but now it doesn’t want to know about Turks in its midst. It even seems to resent them for it. If this was set in America, it would be (in a simplistic analogy) as if our hardboiled detective was black or Mexican and operating in a far less tolerant era.

Kayankaya can take the slurs and blows after a lifetime of both. He fires back with a sharp wit, yet it’s not only the dialogue that keeps us following our Turk PI. We aren’t told a lot about him so we learn a lot through how he acts and reacts. He’ll shout and insult back and go to the fist if need be; he’ll wear it on his sleeve but he’ll leave it on yours. To those with wealth, reputation and career to protect even when it’s a stranglehold, Kayankaya appears to be a lazy, uncaring problem child — and a dire threat. Yet he’s the only one who cares, in his way, and he’s willing to keep after the truth.

In this translation from Anselm Hollo, few words do a ton of work. This isn’t literary fiction disguised as crime noir. In one passage, Kayankaya fails to address a suspect named Schmidi as “Mister.”

Schmidi shoots back: “Mr. Schmidi. I don’t call you rat-Turk.”

Kayankaya: “So that’s what you want to get off your chest all this time?”

“You better leave while the going is good. 

“Yes, I might just give in to the urge to beat the name of that fifth guy out of you.”

Some of it may come through as clunky in translation, but it always moves the story along.

The eco-terrorism threat is a ruse used by the forces of complacency and corruption, Kayankaya learns. A sad and thorny love scandal holds the real crime. There are shades of Chinatown here, though without the imposing Noah Cross figure. The staid Establishment in the West German state of Hessia fills that role, arrogant and entitled and getting a little jumpy.

One passage hits at the futility of the little guy versus ruthless power — Kayankaya’s small-time dealer sidekick, Slibulsky, comments on the real possibility of getting killed for their efforts:

“And who would give a f*ck? Some little dealer from the railroad station, and a Turkish snooper. That doesn’t even rate a mention on the morning news. They’d just plow us under in a hurry. So you risk your life for something you believe is justice, and end up in the compost heap. What’s justice, anyway? It doesn’t exist, not today, not tomorrow. And you won’t bring it about, either. You’re doing the same scheiss-work as any cop ... you won’t change a thing about the fact that it’s always the same guys who do something, who get caught — not a thing, because the rules are set up that way.”

Supporting characters like Slibulsky and the grim Frankfurt settings are superbly drawn, and they deliver details that surprise. Who knew that arsenic was capable of improving one’s beauty in the right doses, even as it’s causing death?

I had few complaints. We know little about Kayankaya other than that he was born a Turk but raised by German parents. I wanted to know why and how he’s fallen so low. Usually I don’t need such background in a hardboiled tale, but Kayankaya’s unique background left me wanting to know. Also, the journalist Carla Reedermann seems underdeveloped, disappearing for much of the story. 

Kayankaya doesn’t need her help in the end. He makes enough waves on his own, whether it’s in a sea of foul muck or too many liters of beer. 

More Beer was a hit in Germany when it came out, and the English translation is now available in the US from Melville House. Arjouni’s other Kayankaya novels include Happy Birthday Turk, Magic Hoffmann and One Man, One Murder, for which he won the German Crime Fiction Award (Deutscher Krimi Preis) in 1992.

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The review at Noir Journal is part of the "No Frills Book Review Marathon." 

 

 

 

The True Story That Inspired The Losing Role

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I recently updated the Author's Note at the end of The Losing Role to add a few more details about the actual undercover mission that inspired the fictional Max Kaspar's story. The real thing was about as desperate, and at times as farcical, as in the novel: 

The false flag special mission depicted in The Losing Role is based on an actual operation Hitler devised for his surprise Ardennes Offensive of late 1944 that launched the Battle of the Bulge. Under the code name Greif, German soldiers who could speak English were trained and equipped to impersonate American units behind the enemy lines, where they would wreak havoc and secure depots and bridges in support of the main offensive. The German offensive caught American troops resting in Belgium’s forested Ardennes region completely off guard, and in the bloody chaos the rumor spread that the American impersonators were crack enemy terrorists out to kidnap or kill US General Eisenhower, commander of the Allied Forces. The lore of German agents impersonating American soldiers reemerged in films, fiction and even history books as a frightening and deadly ploy carried out with skill and cunning. The commander, SS Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny (who has a brief cameo in The Losing Role), already had a daredevil’s reputation that didn’t temper the legend.

Were these two suspect fellows undercover commandos who got in over their heads like my fictional Max Kaspar? The photo's origin remains unconfirmed. They may have been deserters, but were probably captured German soldiers in American gear. (Planet News/TopFoto)

The reality was altogether different. The Germans hastily put together units of English-speaking soldiers using whatever troops and materiel they could gather. The men came from all branches of the German military and possibly included civilians. The ones who spoke English best had lived in America or Britain, but these numbered very few. Many of the English speakers had been sailors and naive students before conscription and were far from ideal soldiers let alone crack terrorists. One, Otto Struller, had been a professional ballet dancer, and it can be supposed that some had occupations such as waiter or writer. Some appear to have been misled about the mission, and couldn’t back out. At least one was shot for a breach of secrecy. The planning and training were slapdash, the mission desperate, its chances slim.

As part of Operation Greif, Skorzeny and his officers placed the better English speakers into a special commando unit, Einheit Stielau. They were sent out in captured American jeeps to infiltrate the American lines, and managed to confuse (already bewildered) American troops by switching signs, passing along bogus information and committing sabotage. The Americans captured some of the Stielau men and promptly shot them by firing squad, including Struller. As the main German offensive sputtered, Skorzeny called off Operation Greif and the false flag infiltrators fell back to join regular units. If anything, the commando mission helped the Americans, since the wild rumors about cutthroat Germans in GI uniform gunning for Eisenhower only served to keep American counterintelligence alert and strengthen the troops’ rattled resolve.

In 1947, the Allies’ Dachau Trials were to make an example of the infamous Skorzeny and his officers for running a villainous ruse that ran counter to the so-called rules of war, but the defense brought in Allied officers who had to admit they’d been running similar special missions all along. Skorzeny and all defendants were acquitted.

My research included solid sources in English and German, but I left details about military strategy, top leaders’ decisions and so forth to historians. My version of this story remains true to overall events, though I changed or invented some aspects for fiction’s sake. Max Kaspar is a fictitious character, after all, part of a fictional commando team that infiltrated American lines in a US jeep disguised as American soldiers. Whether in fiction or reality, surely not all the false flag infiltrators like Max were accounted for. One imagines a good smart one or two disappeared into the night and got as far away from war and tyranny as they dared. I attempted, with respect for the history and with some dark humor, to tell the story of one of these inspired and probably doomed dreamers.

 

Reviewed for Noir Journal: The Quest for Anna Klein

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In Thomas H. Cook's new historical espionage novel, The Quest for Anna Klein, a would-be American spy spends a lifetime tracking down the woman he longs for — and must avenge. I reviewed it for Noir Journal and repost it here.

Thomas Danforth has a lot to get off his chest, and he tells it to Paul Crane. As The Quest for Anna Klein begins, it’s 2001 in New York City — in the aftermath of 9/11. Crane, a young researcher, wants to take harsh vengeance on America’s enemies. The elderly Danforth can relate. He’s spent much of his ninety-plus years seeking his own brand of vengeance.

Danforth’s tale begins in 1939. He had traveled the world with his wealthy father and the young man now runs the family’s import business. He’s just the type to be recruited to provide cover for a fledgling American intelligence operation that will lead to the attempted assassination of a menacing tyrant named Adolf Hitler.

Danforth figures to stand squarely with the good guys, but the real world of espionage seems beyond him until he meets a secretive and beautiful young spy-in-training, Anna Klein. The mystery of Anna lures Danforth to break from his pampered life and join her on the dangerous mission within Germany to kill Hitler. It’s a thrilling time for Danforth, alone with the girl he believes will give him a more dangerous but fulfilling love and life. Then the attempt fails horribly and Danforth must flee, leaving Anna behind. She disappears, possibly into the dungeon of a Gestapo prison.

Danforth must find her. Throughout the war and beyond he embarks on a rabid and marathon quest that costs him nearly all. Anna might have been a double or even triple agent, he learns, and his pursuit takes him to postwar Europe and points East, a grim survey of the tragedies of twentieth-century Europe. In the Soviet Union he’s arrested and sent to a gulag for twelve years.

As more cruel questions confront Danforth, his search descends into an obsession with extracting vengeance at all costs. People have betrayed him. Could Anna have been at the heart of it all?

The best espionage and mystery novels are not about spies and plots and murders but about conflicted souls and the sorry truths they discover about the human condition. Quest offers fine glimpses of that, though the story may stall some readers looking for a fast-paced spy tale. The narrative framed with Crane creates many switches in time, the first third can be slow going as Danforth sets up his story, and it carries waves of foreboding and foreshadowing. 

Sticking with Danforth will reward the reader. The last third moves faster and approaches the quality of espionage masters Le Carré, Furst and McCarry, yet with a profound style all its own. Author Thomas H. Cook knows when it’s time to unleash the raw story. He gives you no choice but to follow Danforth as he hurtles on through dark times that threaten to make him far from a savior and just another hopeless victim.

This is Cook’s first go at an espionage novel. It seems a unique angle for a spy story to have Danforth plow onward like a dogged and self-appointed detective, but it’s not unfamiliar territory for Cook, who has had a long and successful career writing crime and mystery novels. Cook received an Edgar award for his 1996 novel The Chatham School Affair. Six of his novels have been nominated for awards, including Red Leaves in 2006.

The way the story’s told might split some opinions, but few can deny the novel’s thoughtful and compelling lesson about vengeance.

Review for Noir Journal: The Warsaw Anagrams

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On occasion I'll be reviewing novels over at Mike Lipkin's Noir Journal blog. First up is The Warsaw Anagrams by Richard Zimler. In this hybrid of historical crime and literary fiction set in WWII Poland, an elderly Jew tries to find the murderer of his young nephew from within the horror that was the Warsaw Ghetto. It's a grim but compelling tale from a talented pro. 

Here's the review.