An E-Publisher That Specializes in Original Short Works

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The digitization of publishing has spawned many new presses and publishing models,
and one of them is 40K Books. 40K takes advantage
of the e-book format by specializing in novelettes and focused original essays. Based
in Milan, Italy, they handle world rights, translating and selling their e-books in
different languages (English, Italian, Portuguese, French and Spanish).



What follows is a chat between Livia Blackburne and
40K editorial director Giuseppe Granieri, several months after their launch. [Full
Disclosure: Livia
has published an essay with 40K.]





You focus on short stories and essays. Do you have any more
specific criteria beyond that?

Our fiction and our essays have the same nature (they entail 40 minutes
to more than an hour of reading), but they come from two totally different logics.



Our novelettes are the result of a need that the print market cannot satisfy: 
e-books create a new market for relatively short fiction. I've always liked this form
of fiction because it's more difficult than novels. It's a great challenge for a writer.
Novels can have pauses, faults: a long story wins by points. A novelette, as Julio
Cortazar wrote, needs to win by knock-out.



Our essays, relatively short and strongly focused, are a solution for another functional
limit of paper. With digital books you don't need to fill hundreds of pages with the
same concept, and you can better filter the information you give to your readers.
It's a matter of value: you can transmit a strong concept while requiring a lower
investment from the readers in terms of reading time. Time is always valuable—in many
cases, more valuable than the price. Nobody can read everything; we have to choose.
So if you can explain a complex concept while requiring a manageable time investment,
it's a very good thing.

How do you find your writers?

We apply a mixed criteria to select our authors, balancing award winners
(including Hugo and Nebula winners Bruce Sterling, Kristine Rusch, Mike Resnick, etc)
or famous thinkers (Derrick de Kerckhove, Peter Ludlow, Tom Stafford) with a selection
of young authors we believe in.



But it's more complicated than that when working in different markets. For example,
we were the first to translate Jacob Appel into Italian. And in the future we hope
to introduce American readers to authors they currently cannot appreciate because
these authors write in other languages.

What challenges have you faced since the launch?

The big thing is that the publishing market still isn't as global as readers
want. For example, Amazon gives the publisher a royalty for e-books sold "geographically"
in the USA and UK. So, if you live in Italy, you can buy the e-book because we own
worldwide rights. But you will be charged more (for international wireless delivery)
and our profit is also cut by 50%.

It's a paradox: we sell Italian e-books on Amazon, but we
need to discourage Italian Kindle owners (and there are many of them) from buying
our e-books directly from their Kindle. The majority of Kindle owners in Italy buy
.epubs from our Italian storefront and convert the file with Calibre to
Kindle format.

In simple terms, the market works with old rules that do
not match the actual reality. Or, to quote Paul Biba, the current sales model is just
not adapted to the current purchasing model.




But I think it's only a matter if time. Old models, built on the functional limitations
of paper books, will soon be updated. It would be foolish for the market not to follow
the readers' needs, starting from geographical restrictions.

Your contracts are subject to renewal after 3 years, rather
than for the duration of copyright. Why that approach?

Our perspective is to build a partnership-in-profit with the authors.
In the actual landscape, both the author's platform and the publisher's work are important.
Our goal is to build a collaborative work, a system that can share opportunities.
Then, if the contract period works for the author and for the publisher, we can contract
again.

What else do you want to know about 40K Books?
Leave your questions in the comments! (You can also join 40K on Twitter or GoodReads.)




Yes, 40K Books is open to queries.



About the interviewer: By day, Livia Blackburne is
a neuroscience graduate student at MIT. She also writes fantasy for young adults.
She explores the intersection of neuroscience and writing in her essay, "From
Words to Brain," (published by 40 K books), as well as at her
blog.


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