Friday, March 4, 2011

Time Preference and Literature

What effect does time perference have on literary production and the enjoyment of literature?

A novel constitutes a considerable amount of time investment for the reader. The reader has to decide that the book he is reading is going to be worth the time invested. Thus, the book's rate of return has to be higher than the time investment, when the reader could be doing other things (how many stories can one consume from watching movies or T.V. shows during the same time period?). So a novel is going to have to give the reader more than a T.V. show or film can give. The postmodern minimalist novel may thus be the wrong direction for the novel, since such works typically read much like films. Why read what seems to be a novelization of an unmade film? Frederick Barthelme's* novels are good reads, but they have this element to them. It is done on purpose, to be sure, but does that fact mediate the problem of time preference?

The novel, to overcome the problems of contemporary time preference (made worse by not just T.V. and film, but by various options on the Internet), must provide what no other media can provide. What, then, is unique to the novel? That is what the novelist must investigate to keep the novel alive.

It would seem that poetry would be something short enough to overcome these problems, but a good poem requires a great deal of time investment to understand the poem in its fullness.

Theater would seem to have the same time preference elements as film, but for various reasons it actually requires a longer time preference. Films advertise on T.V., so you do not have people having to invest as much time learning about the work. More, the cinema is more casual, while theater is still a bit more formal, requiring people to get ready to go out. Thus, there is more planning ahead for theater.

People with short time preferences, it seems, would be less likely to read literature or go to the theater than to watch T.V. or go to the movies. Has this particular angle been investigated?

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* Frederick Barthelme was my Master's thesis chair at the University of Southern Mississippi. I am forever thankful to him for maturing my writing style in a single -- devastating -- critique of a short story.

3 comments:

  1. I do not know the answer to your question, but I will say that as a writer, I've been mulling something -- particularly now that e-publishing allows me (as a writer) to sell directly to readers: the "payment" I hope extract from people is measured by both money and time -- and in some respects the time bit is the more costly.

    You may be aware that there's a lot of discussion out there about how to price ebooks; I think it's likely that the price of novels will settle somewhere between $1 and $5. But peoples' time -- that's another question entirely, and one that I haven't seen anyone discuss other than you. Odd, isn't it?

    How fast do people read? I think I generally do about 100 pages an hour when it comes to fiction. But I'll have to check, it's been awhile since I've paid attention. So an 80K novel would require an investment of maybe 3 hours of my time . . .

    Now on the other side of the equation -- the time it takes to write -- in case you didn't catch this, http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=3412, Dean Wesley Smith published a post a couple of days ago about book length, and how e-publishing will likely influence it (he's got some good history about how the constraints of traditional publishing influence book length in the past).

    He predicts a correlation between length & price as well -- so shorter books will require a lower investment, on the reader's part, of both time & money.

    They'll also require a smaller investment on the part of the writer, to write.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am having v bad luck w/ blogger today. Forgive me if this is a double comment, but I tried to post it earlier and it seems to have disappeared (or perhaps comments are moderated?)

    I do not know the answer to your question, but I will say that as a writer, I've been mulling something -- particularly now that e-publishing allows me (as a writer) to sell directly to readers: the "payment" I hope extract from people is measured by both money and time -- and in some respects the time bit is the more costly.

    You may be aware that there's a lot of discussion out there about how to price ebooks; I think it's likely that the price of novels will settle somewhere between $1 and $5. But peoples' time -- that's another question entirely, and one that I haven't seen anyone discuss other than you. Odd, isn't it?

    How fast do people read? I think I generally do about 100 pages an hour when it comes to fiction. But I'll have to check, it's been awhile since I've paid attention. So an 80K novel would require an investment of maybe 3 hours of my time . . .

    Now on the other side of the equation -- the time it takes to write -- in case you didn't catch this, http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=3412, Dean Wesley Smith published a post a couple of days ago about book length, and how e-publishing will likely influence it (he's got some good history about how the constraints of traditional publishing influence book length in the past).

    He predicts a correlation between length & price as well -- so shorter books will require a lower investment, on the reader's part, of both time & money.

    They'll also require a smaller investment on the part of the writer, to write.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's one of the benefits of looking at art through the lens of economics -- sometimes you will develop new ways of thinking about the arts. This might be something worth pursuing more.

    A lot of good stuff in your reply. Literature is changing in response to the internet in some interesting ways. People thought at first that there would be all these hypertext works of literature that would come about, but that seems to have not happened. Instead, it's more of the same, but different. I think that what you're talking about, where more direct feedback between audience and writer, is what is going to happen. If so, that's going to make the critic even more important, because the editor-as-gatekeeper role is going to be reduced more and more (most have already given up on the job of actual editing). I believe Amazon is going this way, too. But there will have to be several great writers who publish this way for the stigma of "self-publishing" to be lifted.

    This could be a potential boon for literary writers, as they will be getting more of the money from their works, and it will be more widely available. You don't need to many to buy your book for even a few dollars to make a lot of money.

    ReplyDelete