Mercedes Murdock Yardley has already released her first short story collection after a long series of short stories and articles in different anthologies and magazines, and has just completed her novel, Stormlight. I spoke to her about the continuing attractions of finding an established publisher, serializing a story on Twitter, and other topics.
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TeleRead: Are you still ready to go the established route of seeking a publisher rather than self-publish? What might sway you that way?
Mercedes M. Yardley: There are a lot of pros and cons for going the traditional route of a publisher. There were a few things that spoke to me specifically. One is that a publisher would already have working relationships and connections that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to forge on my own. The publisher would already have ideas for artists, editors, and that sort of thing. That’s attractive to me.
Also, the publisher pays for those things. I don’t have to pay for an artist out of pocket. The publisher also helps market, although of course I plan to be doing much of that myself. Perhaps they have a marketing budget. Perhaps they don’t. But they’ll put some legwork into it as well, and that releases me from shouldering the entire burden.
They also have the knowledge about putting a book together. While that’s something I could learn how to do, I’d honestly rather not. I’m a writer. I’d prefer to spend my time writing. I appreciate providing input and suggestions on things such as cover art, etc., but that isn’t where my heart is. My heart is in the writing.
There’s also a stigma against self-publishing. True, the stigma is diminishing, but it’s there. It’s one more obstacle to overcome in a path that’s riddled with them.
TR: Do the formats and platforms that are available for publication affect how you write and what you choose to write about? What difference do you think the Internet and digital publishing may have made to your work?
MMY: I write what I’m interested in. I wouldn’t say that it really has much to do with format, at least not for me. There are benefits [to] being able to create a cheaper product with digital formats. People are more apt to spend $3.99 for an e-book than $13.99 or so for a paperback. That helps with sales.
There are also a few tricks you can do with digital readers, as well. The Kindle Fire, for example, shows pictures in color, so we were able to do the little pictures throughout my collection in pastels, which was charming.
I also wrote a story that was originally written as a Tweet serial for Twitter. Each section had to stand alone, but they all had to connect as a whole. It was actually quite challenging, and I enjoyed it very much. That’s something I wouldn’t have thought about five years ago. So perhaps formats affect me more than I realized.
TR: What approach and format (novella, full novel, collection, etc.) do you think works best for you? Do you think writing in a genre like horror/dark fiction affects this?
MMY: I love short stories. They’re my favorite format. I like the telling of an entire story in few words. I especially enjoy flash, because each word has to speak volumes. It’s tossing out anything extraneous and polishing the remaining words like jewels. There’s a lot of love in to the process.
That said, I’m really finding my satisfaction in novels at the moment. They’re a stretch for me, because I’m used to that concise format, but there’s room to grow and play. And I always wanted to be a novel writer as a child; that was my definition of success. One form isn’t better than the other, but they’re very different formats and are marketed and received in very different ways
Genre plays a part in what people expect, that’s true. Epic fantasy tends to run longer. Horror and other genres can be shorter pieces and still be acceptable. I don’t find that genre really affects my format, per se. I’m quite eclectic and like to do all of it. Short stories. Novels. Poetry. I’m currently working on a novella. I like to experience it all, taste it all. I want to do a little bit of everything.
