If there’s one thing my writerly soul detests, it’s a buzzword. A fork in the thigh of originality and wordsmithery, every insufferable time.

Remember “bundling,” one of early 21st century’s most annoying argots? Whole industries, from telecommunications to healthcare to pet grooming bundled bigger and spiffier packages in hopes of persuading, often forcing, us to buy services we may or may not have wanted or needed. Meanwhile, other companies rushed just as urgently in the opposite direction, “unbundling” services, the marketing equivalent of upending their customers by the ankles in order to shake the last possible penny out of their pockets. They spun this money-extraction tactic as “choice” or “à la carte offerings.”

As a pre-pandemic author, I traveled. On research, to speaking engagements, to conferences and retreats, I had an economy class view of the airline industry’s unbundling squeeze play. It began with the elimination of food service, then quickly accelerated to charges for “extras” such as booking a flight over the phone, checking a suitcase, changing a flight, sitting on an aisle, even choosing a seat. I waited for what seemed inevitable: pay toilets and a surcharge if you wanted to debark using a jetway instead of leaping to the tarmac.

All this airline unbundling got me thinking about the services I offer as an author. My fuel costs (some folks still quaintly call it “food”) have also gone up sharply. I’m facing increased competition for sales (“other writers”), higher gate fees (“property tax”). I need to unbundle my services to cut costs and pocket more money from the sale of my books.

I’ll start by offering just the words on the pages. If readers want the punctuation that makes it easier to read the book, that will come at an à la carte charge. My granddad employed this idea 75 years ago. In his letters to my mother, he would string a line of commas, periods and question marks along the bottom of the page, with instructions that she put them in wherever she saw fit. Wow, this tactic would have saved me over 26,000 spaces and shortened my novel The River by Starlight by twenty pages. And eliminating those pesky breaks between words would have saved another 114,000 spaces and dozens more pages. Think of my time saved on writing and editing, the paper and trees saved, the gallons of ink foregone, the storage space savings on e-readers. A win-win-win for writers, publishers, and readers! So, the pages of my books will look like this:

 

Unbundlingisgoodforeveryonebusinesseswillmakemoremoneyandconsumerswillonlyhavetopay
forgoodsandservicestheyactuallywanttherebystimulatingglobaleconomies

…..,,,,,?????!!!!!:::::;;;;; “”””” ”””””’

 

I’ll further unbundle my service by making all those all those superfluous vowels an à la carte choice. They’re not needed. Most people can figure out a sentence without the vowels. Ask any teen who texts.

 

Vwls r nt ncssry to rdng njymnt N fct thy r  wst f tm, dnt y gr?

 

Did you notice I included the y’s plus one question mark as a special bonus? Don’t get too excited. Those are perks thrown in only for frequent buyers.

And I’ll unbundle my amenities still more by offering the consumer the ultimate economy: bookbinding and a cover only as an extra. That’s right. The basic cost of the book gets you consonants on the pages—loose pages. I simply don’t buy (wink, nudge) my publisher’s claim that catchy cover art sells books.

When sales of my books drop, I’ll blame Amazon for faulty accounting. I’ll lament the ignorance of the public for not embracing my eco-sensible cost-cutting measures.

I haven’t even gotten to my version of bucket pricing: the longer you wait to pony up for your custom combo of my services, the more it costs. But I gotta run. I need to buy a new car before dealers figure out they can unbundle stuff like windows, tires, and brakes. It was good enough for The Flintstones, right?

Betcha it’ll still cost a bundle.

 

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photo by Katrin Bolovtsova on pexels