Interview with Wayne C. Long from LongShortStories

Today we have a special treat – an exclusive interview with author Wayne C. Long, who owns and operates LongShortStories, a website where he sells his short fiction as a subscription-based service. I first met Wayne back in 2008 after he sent me a message advertising his site – which I first wrote about in this post.

I’m going to keep this introduction short because I think the interview speaks for itself, and I hope you find Wayne’s answers as inspiring as I do. And when you get to the end of the interview, you might find a surprise!

Without further ado…

1. How long have you been writing for and what got you started writing fiction?

First of all, thank you, Brad for inviting me to be interviewed by the mighty Brad’s Reader blog. Always happy to help a fellow Illinoisan (well, I was born and raised in Illinois, met my wife Diane at Northern Illinois University, but now live in rural Wisconsin, via a stint in the Los Angeles area).

I took to creative writing in high school and have been writing ever since. In those early days, I was always impressed by writers whose work appeared on television, such as the great Rod Serling of “The Twilight Zone” series fame. Rod and I are blessed (cursed?) with having a vivid imagination. I watched (and internalized) his storytelling work religiously. Also while in high school creative writing classes, I became entranced with the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was one of the fathers of modern American short story writing. Other early influences? Hemmingway. Shakespeare. Chaucer. Great tale-tellers all!

But it wasn’t until I was married and living in Chicago in the early 70s that I truly found the Mother Lode.

I was working for a very large international firm downtown and one day was assigned to visit a trade show at McCormick Place as part of my sales job. I bailed out early from that show and took a cab over to a tiny art-film theater on Michigan Avenue to see a groundbreaking independent film called “Faces,” written and directed by the immortal John Cassavetes. That critically-acclaimed black-and-white film really lit my fiction-writing fire! Probably the best hour and a half I ever spent in my life!

Cassavetes’ emotionally-tortured characters, his gritty story arc, and his deep understanding of the human condition really turned me on and I began, with my wife in tow, to seek out and find the best in independent cinema. To this day, I am constantly on the hunt for the best in indie cinema from both America and across the globe.

You might call me a frustrated filmmaker, but my “films” are digital “images” and not found on celluloid (not yet, anyway, hah)! Your discerning readers surely know the marvelous independent films based on equally marvelous short stories like Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and “In the Bedroom,” based on Andre Dubus’ eight-page story, “Killings.” And the unforgettable 2006 Pushcart Prize-winning short story “Refresh, Refresh,” now filming in Oregon, written by my friend, author Benjamin Percy.

Critics the world over have characterized the short story as one of the most difficult writing forms to craft. Difficult yes, but oh so powerful in their “less is more,” take-no- prisoners brevity. That’s why I write short fiction.

2.  When did you get the idea for posting your fiction online for others to read?

I retired early (2003) from a three-decade-long successful career in environmental sales and wanted to build a Web-based platform to showcase my writing in my so-called retirement. I spent over a year researching the online short fiction marketplace. The handwriting was definitely on the wall, as they say.

There were early signs that the traditional publishing market was starting to fracture, under pressure from the power of the Internet to deliver digital entertainment directly to the end-user―through music downloads, via DVDs, iPods, and the promise of inventions like the now-famous Amazon Kindle. These things really were setting up the “perfect storm” for the launch of LongShortStories in June of 2007. It was time. My time!

3. What inspired you to use a subscription-based model for selling your work? What is the story behind LongShortStories?

I owe a big debt of gratitude to my writer friend Bruce Holland Rogers out in Oregon for this model. I discovered Bruce’s work online and read of his great success with his subscription-based Web site www.shortshortshort.com. I became a subscriber to Bruce’s flash fiction collection, which delivered 2-3 stories per month via e-mail attachment to my in-box for a nominal annual flat fee. What a concept!

Just imagine this from the writer’s perspective. No un-answered query letters from print book and magazine publishers, no agents grabbing a percentage, no environmental damage from cutting precious trees, no big-box retailer taking his chunk. No middleman at all! The starving artist might actually be able to support himself by taking his work directly to his or her readership.

Subsequently, I wrote an article for the Spring, 2008 Wisconsin Regional Writers’ Association Journal, in which I interviewed Bruce about his success online. The title of that article was “Brave New World―Marketing the Short Story in the Digital Age.”

Bruce Holland Rogers is probably the most prolific online short story writer of our time. He has over 700 paying subscribers the world over. Maybe not enough to retire full-time, but by careful marketing of his work, he could magnify his initial Internet sales by re-selling the Web and print rights later on.

More and more top-paying print magazine publishers, like The Sun and Good Housekeeping, are accepting the work of Internet writers and don’t consider our e-mailed short story collections as a relinquishment of our first rights, since our work is not “published” in the sense that anyone who isn’t a subscriber can see them. The whole idea of the legalities of the traditional publishing world is being turned on its head by the e-book publishing revolution!

4. How successful has LongShortStories been (no need to reveal any specific sales details, just a general overview of your success)?

Remember that international company I worked for back when I first saw “Faces?” Well, that company was one of a network of Japanese Trading Companies, the so-called sogo shosha, that have powered Japan to economic leadership. Every one of them is vital to the Japanese and global economy, and every one of them does its strategic business planning on a long-term basis, something the West is just starting to wake up to. In America, it’s traditionally been all about short-term profits, not long-term thinking. And today, American business is paying dearly for its short-sightedness.

As a student of marketing, I adopted this long-term-payoff strategy for LongShortStories. It was a natural thing for me.

So, you asked, how successful is the two-year-old LongShortStories? As the proud father of this Internet business toddler, she’s growing by millimeters, penciled on the door frame of my writer’s garret. She’s just where she needs to be, in the bigger scheme of things to come. In this business (and my writing is a business), timing is everything. LongShortStories got in on the ground floor of the onrushing e-publishing phenomenon, and my subscribers are the brave early adopters of this technological change.

I am reinvesting all my subscription income back into the business, constantly tweaking things, installing Search Engine Optimization and the latest PayPal technology, to grow my baby. That strategy is paying off handsomely.

5. Tell us a little about the contests you’ve been holding. How has the response been?

Well, my friend, I believe in fostering the short story form like I believe in breathing! I also believe it is my writer’s duty to help cultivate the garden for future successful (there’s that word again!) short story writers who may not have published anything yet, due to the state of the print publishing world, or due to their not being fortunate enough to have a Web-based publishing platform like I do.

I kicked off my first short story writing contest in 2008 with a Pay-It-Forward theme. I found some really fabulous talent and highlighted the work of each of the winners on the “Wayne’s Blog” pages of my Web site.

We have been blessed with two anonymous donors who gave sizeable cash donations toward the LongShortStories Short Story Contest. But even more exciting is the recent gift of not one, but TWO complete Web sites valued at $800 each by my marvelously talented Web site designer and Web host, Eugene Barnes of Columbus, Ohio.

Still, LongShortStories is seeking even broader financial support for its contest prize winners, not only from the writing community (through a nominal contest entrant reading fee), but by actually soliciting small and large business sponsorship in exchange for banner advertising on my Web site. Surely some of your readers, know of or work for, companies who are constantly looking for the perfect place to target their promotional dollars. I feel strongly that, with the increase in popularity of the elegant short story, that it is a marriage made in win/win heaven.

A small minority of writing marketplace Web sites still have a problem with some “bad apple”contest sponsors charging a reading fee to accompany an entrant submission, but I’m convinced that’s really the best way to build a prize pot for the direct benefit of those who enter my contests.

Times are tough these days for many folks, short story writers included. Many have found their day jobs disappearing. Many find that their urge to write is being held back by their low morale. Many have been burnt by unscrupulous contest sponsors whose only mission in life is to be the “bottom feeders” of the writing food chain.

But LongShortStories is driven by a different moral compass, which is summed up succinctly in my Web site motto: “BE what you wish to see!” BE that helpful mentor of the short story world! BE that better man or woman of the new era of Internet publishing!

Yes, I like to BE what I personally like to see and be treated as, in this changing new world order. The Bernie Madoffs of the publishing world cannot hide forever. Their greed alone will expose them for the frauds that they always were. LongShortStories, I feel, is that “breath of fresh air” readers are looking for, and I thank my maker every day for directing these readers and contest entrants to my subscription service.

6. Do you think this subscription-based model for distributing fiction in a digital format is more viable for authors than more traditional means of publishing?

My ongoing research in this area tells me that traditional authors and publishing houses must launch a Web presence or face extinction. It could be a dual track, with both a pulp-based presence and a digital, Internet-based one. But woe to the writer or publisher who does not adapt to the new readership, to the readership which was raised on video games, Napster and the like! As my author friend and mentor Bruce Holland Rogers wisely advised me, don’t put all your publishing eggs in one proverbial basket. Keep trying different distribution channels. Try them in combination. But keep trying!

I also offer readers a Pay-Per-View option on my web site www.LongShortStories.com, priced competitively with music downloads, as well as the battle-proven tool of subscription purchasing that readers are more familiar with from the traditional publishing world. Digitally-delivered entertainment, no matter what it is, is the way of the future (and that future is now!) for time-pressured seekers of short forms of entertainment like the short story. Advances in membership software technology and e-commerce have been utilized to build LongShortStories into the powerhouse that it has become. Authors who stay stuck with traditional models will likely feel the lash down the line for not trying every available means out there to become a truly “successful” writer.

7. What are your future plans for LongShortStories?

Thank you for asking, Brad! It is in this area that my imagination really takes over.

I’ll give you my wish list for LongShortStories:

• Adding audio technology to my short story delivery arsenal, through the use of voice-recognition software.
• Adding the ability for readers to purchase the entire story collection at once, rather than just purchasing them one at a time, or by purchasing one and two-year subscriptions delivering a new story automatically by e-mail every 12 days.
• Adding language translation software to the story delivery system. It’s a small world after all!
• To keep offering bigger and better prizes for contestants in my short story competitions.
• To work side by side with other writing colleagues like you, Brad, giving freely of our talents to lift up the whole field of writers.
• Keep delivering cutting-edge short fiction to an avid global readership family that has suffered through the drought of outlets for this magnificent art form, until finally finding their way to LongShortStories, Where the Short Story LIVES!
• To see that shining day when one of my short stories is optioned for delivery to the big screen by one of the creative geniuses of the independent film world, a genius not unlike John Cassavetes!

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Thank you, Wayne, for your great answers and taking the time for this interview. And as promised, there is a surprise here. While discussing the interview with Wayne, he sent me this message:

I will offer a special, limited-time Brad’s Reader Readers’ LongShortStories Subscription Deal. That’s 45 great short stories for the price of 30, all for just US$12. A new story will be delivered every 12 days via e-mail attachment to their home or work e-mail in-box. Offer expires at midnight Central Daylight Time July 31, 2009.

Please take advantage of this generous offer and support a pioneer in the business of subscription-based publishing for short fiction. Note that I am not being compensated in any way for promoting this offer.

Finally, Wayne is eager to answer any follow-up questions you may have, so leave a comment below with your questions.

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• One Post, Many Topics
• Listen to my interview on Conversations LIVE! Radio with Cyrus Webb
• Is subscription-based book publishing a viable alternative?
• Serializing you novel: Experimenting with different ebook distribution methods

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