I've been spending a lot of time gearing up for the release of my e-book, but now I think I'm having a change of plans.



See, I have been totally jazzed about this becoming an Indie author thing. I'm getting swept up in the indie revolution, but really I have been stressing myself out to the point that this was becoming less fun and more of a drag. The biggest problem was my book just wouldn't be finished. Every time I think it's finished, it just didn't feel finished. There were some characters who I wanted to get into more, some scenes I wanted to add in and for some reason I couldn't wait for the second book to do it. It just didn't feel, RIGHT.

And believe me, I've been trying for a VERY long time to get this done. But recently I realized that there is just something about this story that cannot be contained in a standard 300+ page novel. It's not working, So, recently, I was on J.A. Konraths blog and someone dropped a post about creating a series of short 20,000 page (approximately) novels and placing them on Amazon.

At first I rejected that idea for this book because I've worked SOOOOO hard getting it to be a proper novel. It would have felt like all my hard work would be going down the drain if I changed the format now. Also, it's kind of scary because it's a new method of producing books online. Someone suggested the idea but I don't think anyone has actually done it before…or at least…they haven't done it and become commercially successful at it. So, even though I have found some wonderful Self-Publishing/ebook guru's like Zoe Winters, Deana Zhollis and J.A. Konrath, producing a series for release on the web is sort of new ground. Would fans really buy the books every week that they were released? How long would I be able to produce the books for one series before I move on to the next? A lot of questions and I'd have little guidance or a road map. I'd be learning through trial and error.

Another problem, releasing an e-book series on kindle would definitely make me a not-really-real writer according to the industry supporters. Self-publishing your own e-book makes you less than the industry writers, but self-publishing mini novelettes would be perceived as being even less then self-published authors who produce full length books. Why? I guess the further you drift away from the conventional rules of publishing the less of a "writer" you become. It would also probably kill my chances of ever being picked up by a big traditional publisher, but I have no interested in going with the big houses anymore. So I say: onward march! Part of the joy of going indy is I have room to experiment. I plan on turning the little novelettes into novels anyway, but I want to experiment with this new idea and see how it works. I own the rights to my story and characters so I can do whatever I want with them J 


 
I got a message from Deana recently. She tried to post something to my blog but it wouldn't go through. I just tried myself and yeah, something is wrong with the posting option. ARGH! I apologize to anyone who was trying to post a message but couldn't. I just moved this blog from wordpress and now I'm debating moving back. I found this great website written by a twelve year old and he gives some great tips for maximizing your blog for hits. I tried just one of his suggestions and yeah I've been getting a ton of hits to this blog lately. I can't implement some of his suggestions though because I think they are specifically for WP blogs. Now I'm trying to decide if I'm going to buy a domain name with WP or get my own hosting/website package.

Anyway, back to work. I'm redoing the first seven or so chapters of my book to make it a mini novel. Be back soon with more nerdy, writer goodness!