In the first (real) episode of the podcast after the introductions, we talk about the international rollout of Kindle Scout, and we also discuss aspects of writing fiction vs non-fiction — when you might prefer the one over the other, and what some of the drawbacks and advantages are of each.

SECOND-DRAFTS PODCAST – EPISODE 1 – FICTION VS NON-FICTION

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the Second Drafts podcast: Everything you need to write edits and publish your way. I’m Jeremy.

And I’m EJ.

And today on second drafts we’ll be talking about why people write fiction versus nonfiction, but first off before we get into that topic we got a little bit of news from the writing world… in this case it is a little bit older, it has been out for a while there but I thought it would be interesting to talk about it on our second podcast.  Relating to Kindle Scouts. So before, Kindle scout was actually just for the US only and it’s recently been expanded to international authors, which probably more so affects me and you EJ, than anyone else.

Definitely

So are you familiar with Kindle Scout? Do you want to explain it to our listeners or shall I?

Sure I can explain. Kindle Scout is a program that is run by Amazon, actually, and I think they are trying to crowd source info about the market about what the market wants. So for an author you can submit your book to Kindle Scout and it takes about 45 days I think where they will put your book available in a catalogue and then readers can browse and see what books they find interesting and would like to see published. And if enough people vote for you, if you can put it that way, you have the chance to end up with a publishing contract from Amazon which is of course not a sure thing but looks to be some some pretty decent terms. There’s a $1500 advance and about 50% royalties which you might notice is a little bit worse off than you would get self publishing which is usually 70% depending on price but I think it’s you know the advantages are maybe a bit better because you you do get some benefit from Amazon’s marketing engine I would expect and you do get that advance, so…

And I mean 50% is still going to be better than going with the traditional publishing route for sure.

Quite a bit.

So Kindle Scout is definitely something that I’ve been interested in and find it interesting as well we definitely mentioned that the social media settings basically would tie in with that but it’s not the end all be all because the Amazon editors would also have a say in that as well, which is definitely better. So people who are…

Definitely, so instead of the person with the biggest following the biggest fan base, you get it a bit mitigated. So in the end I think they’ll still decide on merit which would be nice.

And it opening up there to international… like us… me in Canada you in South Africa… definitely bodes well for some of their other things like the ACX audiobook creation exchange which ties in with audible.com. Currently it’s only for the US and a couple other places as well but not Canada and not South Africa. It’s so odd too…

Certainly not South Africa, but it’s good news.

Yeah it’s definitely good news and I just… I still find it really odd why… at least Canada I mean South Africa, that’s that’s way out there, but…

Wow, gee, thanks. Now I wondered the same thing. I was was pretty sure when I asked you that you would say “oh sure” you know you guys have ACX available and turns out you don’t it’s really just the US, which is odd because I mean this company… Audible, ACX, it’s all affiliated with Amazon we know that Amazon can do international trading and payment so… it’s all they do almost… so I’m just wondering why has ACX taken so long or Kindle Scout even?

Yeah, it’s definitely weird and if anyone has been paying attention to the YouTube channel there or the blog, I posted this video basically talking about the audiobook creation exchange point that should be up now and how I contacted them…

Oh you did?

…And what they said to me was that I need to have at least six books before they would consider me for an international partnership. So I still don’t…

They don’t ask for much do they?

Yeah so at the moment the only thing that you or I or any other international people would be able to do be to go to like an aggregate site. The only one I’m familiar with for audiobooks I think this is called Authors Republic and its they they have audiobook audiobooks with a bunch of one’s, audible, encoded, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, other ones I never heard of like Hoppla. What’s Hoopla?

I have no idea… We can take a look… Hoopla, its Hoopladigital.com. We can see what that is… I took a look at the website for Author’s republic it’s looks looks interesting that looks like it could be the thing we need. And I see they’ve also got an app called recordio that helps you to record your audiobook well yourself if you would like I suppose or to get a narrator that looks to be interesting I might actually write a review of that at some time down the line. Why not?

I wonder if that’s any better than that were currently using: audacity.

I wonder? Hoopla looks to be yes and audiobook website I am very minimalist site. I’m unable to see whether there affiliated with anyone we would know…

Probably not.

…But they do seem to have an App Store app, Google play app, and for Kindle fire, so they do seem to be connected… might be interesting as well.

Definitely can expand the reach there with books as well…

Mmm, indeed.

…But that’s all I wanted with that, so I guess we’ll just move on to our next topic. So the main topic today: Nonfiction or fiction? Basically were talking about which would be the best option for writing. So I know personally with both of us were strictly fiction at the moment…

Definitely.

…And are you interested in nonfiction at all, Ethan?

In writing specificly I’m guessing not reading and for writing? I think at the moment not so much but when you know I do edit manuscripts for people and there’s a lot of knowledge that kind of gets generated that way so I will mind producing a non-fiction book at some point maybe related to editing maybe related to language… grammar… things like that. Might be something I could look at.

You could even do one of those how-to books and maybe “how to edit your book on your own” something like that.

Definitely. I’d have to compete with the likes of James Scott Bell of course but I can always get a shot.

From my research, what everyone seems to say is that with nonfiction at least when you’re on our level, relatively unknown, nonfiction can get you more money and whereas fiction maybe only when you’re really a big name like Stephen King and stuff like that you would be getting a lot more money than you could with nonfiction.

I think it does scale maybe and it does flip around at some point during the middle, but I think part of it is people maybe maybe looking at it this way treats writing just like writing as if there’s nothing unique about the way you write or the things you want to write. So I think one should really break it down and look not everyone is going to want to write non-fiction and want to write fiction so this really particular cases with a one tend to become more useful to you as an author. Like, for instance non-fiction is with the income that you mentioned sure I think is easy to easier to sell short articles say to magazines to blogs. There is quite a market think for short non-fiction articles and the like where short fiction of course we know that tends to not workout so well I think in terms of sales if you don’t have say the fan base to back it up as you said.

Yeah, and even trying to get those nonfiction things into… I mean the fiction products into say a newspaper and stuff like that. One thing I read it basically said that you’re 10 times more likely to get into Harvard then you would be to be able to get a short fiction into some sort of an article, or…

Like a literary magazine. Yes I’ve heard those are incredibly difficult to get into, which is which is kind of the point, but I think also there’s a is a functional aspect of non-fiction where if you have useful knowledge like that is mentioned with the editing if you if you gather knowledge and if you have some unique knowledge that you might want to share with people I think non-fiction will obviously serve you much better. You can write a book on how to write a book or how to combat addiction, how to raise a child, how to grow prize-winning pumpkins. All these… all these… you know this kind of domain specific knowledge that you’ve got that those are good topics I think for non-fiction but not everyone has that you know some people have more this general feeling about the story they want to tell, some drama show, and of course it can be a whole different thing these domains that you can write in they’re not all going to serve equally all your goals depending on what you want to do with your with your writing.

Yeah, and at least from what I’m thinking of when I think of nonfiction I think more of how to’s and that sort of factual newsgathering. That’s not to say that journalism is easy but I think it certainly is a little bit easier than writing fiction.  You’re not as… You’re a little bit more constrained and sometimes that’s more of a good thing. You have certain limitations that you have to work with, and there’s always those psychology studies about too much choice, so I think that kind of helps out with nonfiction side of things. You don’t really have much leeway, so it might be easier to put it together. Maybe I’m wrong on that, what you feel?

I agree. Writing fiction, I think decision fatigue sets in quickly. I sometimes find myself paralysed by all the choice in front of me, in how to present a story, how to write it’s style, narrative tone, mood, all these things it’s just too much and sometimes I wish that I had noticed an actual factual news story to report on so that I can just… But I think it might not be completely fair to call this easier. I think writing in general is is quite a hard thing, it’s not an easy thing, fiction or non-fiction I think maybe there are different kinds of difficulty.

Definitely. I’m just more on the end of the how-to’s, but definitely with the nonfiction on… autobiography, autobiographical style that sort of thing I feel that you would have to definitely take those things from fiction, you have to kind of expand and just try and think about the feelings of the moment and stuff like that and express that on paper. I think you mentioned before, when we were talking, about creative nonfiction. Taking those fictional techniques and adding that as a narrative to factual information.

Yes, this is quite a growing sense among non-fiction writers that, you know, in order to get through to people even if you’re writing about dry boring facts for instance to get people you still sometimes have to tell a story. People respond to stories. Perhaps that’s what’s driving this thing we are seeing where even your non-fiction is starting to have story elements to them where you know we call it creative non-fiction because you’re using some of your techniques and your embellishments ultimately to serve a piece of work that is aimed at being factually accurate, but it does use elements that must be considered embellishments.

We’ll yeah, I mean you have ones like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson kind of almost started that genre where it mixed fact and fiction together to make a more interesting story. You have definitely those moments where people have these autobiography movies like of Steve Jobs and stuff like that but I don’t think you could ever have an autobiographical movie get as big as, say, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for his movie with Johnny Depp. So the general appeal of that type of a story: mixing fact and fiction, might even be the best of both worlds as it were.

Definitely.

But you have to be careful with that. I think you mentioned before about an author that kind of got in trouble with mixing fiction and fact?

Indeed. I think it was on Oprah quite a while ago: James Frey for his book A Million Little Pieces. He got accepted into… his book was in Oprah’s book club and it went to the top of the bestseller list and it was crazy this was way back in 2003 and at some point it came out that he embellished large parts of the story and was a book about his fight against addiction I think and in the end when it came out I think people went a bit crazy about it there was quite a bit of backlash. I think that’s that another aspect of non-fiction that one has to keep in mind. You, in writing non-fiction, you are saying that you’re willing to take responsibility for the truth and accuracy of the elements you put into your work and that’s an important thing that people sometimes miss. You take on quite a lot of risk by presenting the story has non-fiction because people can have certain expectations of it.

I got to even wonder if there needs to be a whole new genre for that type of a story, because I was just thinking that maybe even… I’m sure that in some of our memories that we can almost shape our own memories, and they might not even be accurate. I can I remember this time that’s my parents… we went on a trip to Florida to Disney World and there was a recent game console that had been released, and as I remember I begged my dad to get the console while we were even in Florida so I could play it and in my head, you know I was being a brat child, and so years down the road now that’s kinda how I thought of that time: that was being like a real real big brat by asking for this extensive game console while we were already at Disney World, but then I asked my dad about it just couple months ago and it’s he said no we were actually planning on buying it when we were there. So it’s like our memory plays tricks on us, so maybe they need to have their own kind of area to put that into say “okay this is nonfiction, sort of”

Non-fiction: sort of. They could actually call exactly that.

But it’s like, these are based on my memories and how I took the accounts of a situation and may not be totally factually accurate.

Well, funny you should mention it because that’s exactly what James Frey used as excuse. He issued a statement saying “this memoir is a combination of facts about my life and certain embellishments. It is a subjective truth altered by the mind of a recovering drug addict and alcoholic.” So he very cleverly actually used the subject matter of the book to try to explain it away and say well of course maybe I didn’t remember it perfectly accurately remember I was struggling with things at that time, which you know it may have worked as an excuse for some people, but from what I understand it didn’t work so well for everyone.

Do you think it maybe comes down to our perception of the genres themselves like when people look at nonfiction they are looking for a specific type of a story, whereas of course fiction they’re not looking for that. Do you think that is what it comes down to?

I think so. I think people have very particular expectations when it comes non-fiction and they they want to believe that this is a true story. That’s that part of the appeal for them I think. There’s a similar story about… There was an Australian book called Stolen Generations, it was a big hit, and it was about an aboriginal woman called Wanda Kumatry… I think I’m pronouncing that right, probably not…

I think I heard about this.

…And it turned out this book was written by a forty-something taxi driver from Sydney. It was just you know a random guy that decided to write this and the book did not find success when he tried to pass off as fiction so he ended up changing the whole picture of it and the making it into a non-fiction, quote un-quote, and suddenly the book found success. So I definitely think there is this part of it where people, you know they can read a story and in the back of the minds they can know “okay, this is just fiction, so it’s kind of fake. It’s a good story but you know it’s just that.” Where, if they know, or at least they believe that this is a real story that actually happened it kind of changes how they feel about it and how they respond to it.

Yeah I do think that that what he did was a little bit scammy if I do remember. I think he actually submitted it to a publishing house specifically for aboriginal people.

He did, he did.

I think it would be okay if he had gotten it… maybe published on a more broad scale, but that’s specifically for people who are underrepresented and wanting to get published. That certain publishing house was specifically for those people, so… I… that’s that is quite scammy in my books.

Definitely. I am not sure how some people are thinking about these things but you know…

I feel that perception of the difference is genres there is a little bit skewed as well, like when you look at fiction some people don’t even read fiction because they don’t feel that there’s any literary merit to it. How do you feel on that?

Oh, you think people don’t read fiction for those reasons?

Well there are certain people who say they don’t read fiction for that reason because they don’t feel that there’s any literary merit to it, it’s just made up.

Oh, definitely, they feel that well if it’s just made up then what’s the point really? But I mean I think that there’s still value in stories because sometimes the things you want to share with people are greater than just “how to” or “memoirs.” Real life does have its lessons and sometimes there are greater things are morals and themes that you can want to try to present and these things don’t work so well in non-fiction. You can go ahead and tell someone something but sometimes demonstrating it is much more effective. And I think that’s that’s where fiction finds a good niche. You know they always say to show rather than tell and I think the distinction can be made here: non-fiction excels at telling someone something you can tell them how to do something how to use something had to be or become something, but when it comes to fiction you have the opportunity to show people something, like a greater principle. For instance, an example that I sometimes think of is… you know a non-fiction article might tell the readers something like “power corrupts” and they could even… let’s say it’s a news article they could even use examples from contemporary government to show you know there is corruption and that’s how it works and in they can go about proving a thesis, which is which is good at is a work but this is something visceral about reading a book like animal farm for instance that goes ahead and it it demonstrates this principle in something that many people… I think initially the publisher looked at George Orwell’s book and they said well you know they don’t really what they can do with it because it seems like children’s book, you know they can’t really work with it. But turns out it’s anything but a children’s book is actually quite a powerful allegory, and I think you would never in non-fiction be able to have that kind of impact. Years later people who’ve read animal farm they still remember that lesson, and the final lines of the book… it’s something that sticks with you and the lessons sticks with you. So I’m not sure how you would teach people that kind of… you show them that kind of a lesson outside of fiction. Non-fiction what’s that going to be? A rule book?

History book.

A pierce of legislature or something?

Yeah, I feel that people can read all they want about history and that whole thing about history repeating itself and those situations, but the actual moral side of it… we can’t… it doesn’t feel like we can really relate or empathize with history because we already have in mind basically a real person. We can put ourselves in their shoes as easily as we could say a protagonist type character who might be very similar to us. And there was a study by these psychologists Raymond Marr said Keith Oatley, separate studies I believe, but basically saying the same thing: that fiction helps with empathy. And there is also a judge – just bringing it up here now – who said that he reads fiction because he feels that “reading makes a judge capable of projecting himself into the lives of others lives and have nothing in common with his own, even lives in complete different eras or cultures and this empathy, this ability to envision the practical consequences of one’s contemporaries of the law or a legal decision seems to me to a crucial quality in a judge.” So that empathy…

I completely agree with that. That’s pretty much what a judge is supposed to, I suppose.

Yeah, definitely. And, just looking at history books and stuff like that, probably would never have gotten the same value out of it.

Yes, for sure. I mean, read a history book and read about this one dictator that exterminates millions of people in his wars and it statistics, it’s not much more at that point, but tell someone a story about this one family that’s trying to flee across the border and having to deal with… you know… the soldiers of this dictator and getting shot at and getting tortured and getting… you know you suddenly have something much more than that. Yeah, I definitely think fiction has its place and it is very valuable. I would go so far as to say without fiction very likely our civilisation would not have been at the point where it is now.

And there’s still tons of fiction books that have been around for generations, and I would struggle to find a nonfiction book from the 1800s nowadays, but you…

Definitely.

…we still have Pride and Prejudice and people are still talking about that these days.

We still have Shakespeare. I suppose non-fiction as you say is very much tied to a certain environment a certain set of things are going on in the world at that point where I think fiction can also present the world as is but I think fiction’s focus is more on the inherent drama between people and that’s something that strange enough it never changes. We change our trappings, we change our clothes, we change our technology, but inter-human relationships, inter-personal relationships, that we don’t really change those those are pretty much the same as have always been.

And you could even… you can still have a story that says the same things but if you trap it in it’s own time by using real-world examples – like, say, using Hiller as a centrepiece for an evil character – it’s very of its time. 200 years ago… err… 200 years from now, rather, the children are definitely going to still learn about that time and how horrible it was, but it’s not going to have the same impact because so much time has past. Whereas the same story could draw parallels to other things that are happening – even tangentially.

That’s another strong suit of fiction as you can very much take real-world events and just dress it up and distill it to its essence and take that core of it and that’s that actually a very good technique for for coming up with ideas for stories.

Well there’s even… trying to think of it now… I think the author’s name is Turtledove, Harry Turtledove maybe? He did a lot of alternate history books and I’ve read a couple of his. Just trying to see which one it was, it’s been so long since I read them so just kind of hard. Basically he took World War II and its turned it into kinda like a fantasy -type setting and it was…

I see, that’s quite interesting.

Yeah, it was very interesting. Yeah, it was Darkness that’s the series. So Into the Darkness, Darkness Descending, and yeah it took a lot of the elements from World War II but kind of injected that fantasy into it, so it was very interesting. I should go back and read them.

I see publishers weekly called him “the master of alternate history.” So you know he’s doing it well.

And he wouldn’t of gotten that if he just wrote a history book, for sure.

Fictions take on a non-fiction foundation.

I’d say there’s definitely a lot of merits to doing either one. I don’t think we could ever come to consensus of which one is better, but I think we can both agree probably that you should do what you feel you would be best at.

It’s about contributing.

Yeah, so if you feel you have a story from your own life that people would love to read, about the human experience, that sort of thing, then go nonfiction and maybe even you can use that as a platform to go to fiction.

There’s no artificial thing keeping you to the one or the other, you could mix and match as much as you like, which is another advantage.

So, viewers, why don’t you let us know what you think in the comments below. And just tell us if you prefer fiction and nonfiction as far as reading or even if I you’d prefer your writing fiction versus nonfiction. And thank you for joining us here at Second Drafts podcasts. Please be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on everything you need to write, edit, and publish your way and let us know what you like to see from us in future podcasts and we’ll see you next time!