The 10 Second - 10 a.m. Barney Thomson Novel

Added on 29 October 2010

Starting on Monday 1st November 2010, Long Midnight Publishing, in association with All-New BMW Bacon and Lemon Shampoo, will start bringing you the daily 10 Second-10 a.m. Barney Thomson Novel at http://twitter.com/DouglasTLindsay. Featuring a new novel every day, the 10 Second-10 a.m. Barney Thomson Novel looks certain to change the basic way the publishing industry works.  Forever.

It is not immediately apparent where the 10 second part of it comes from, as it rarely takes 10 seconds to read anything on Twitter - unless one's attention span is shorter that 140 characters worth and you become distracted - yet Long Midnight Publishing's Head of Marketing And Very Short Novels, Elvis 'Tom' Shackleton, explains:

'You have to consider all the different elements of time involved in the writing and reading process,' said Shackleton earlier on Friday, from the company's new Norman Foster-designed headquarters in Geneva. 'Admittedly it won't take ten seconds to read. Yet the reader will likely want to read it several times, in order to absorb the full impact, so while the first read will be less than ten seconds, the cumulative effect of several readings will likely take them nearer the five minute mark. And it will obviously take longer than ten seconds to write. Maybe a minute, maybe two, but then you have to add on quarter of an hour to finesse it into the required amount of characters, and then another two hours for polishing. It's a long process.'

So where does the ten seconds come from?

'Oh, we just made that shit up,' said Shackleton. 'It sounds good.'

When pushed on whether or not a Twitter novel was the equivalent of cricket's 20/20 format, Shackleton was unnaturally honest (for someone with Marketing in their job title.)

'It's too short to even compare it with T20,' he said. 'In cricketing terms it's more one ball/one ball, and we all know that that makes two balls, which is a scrotum's worth. So that's what we're talking about here, a scrotum of a novel, but in a very positive sense.'

Monday 1st November, 1000 GMT, the magic begins at http://twitter.com/DouglasTLindsay