While driving around the wide open spaces of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, Bill and I talked. A lot. And one of the things we talked about was my writing and all of the stuff on my hard drive. I have partial scenes and snips and brain dumps and short bits and vignettes, some from other worlds and works, but most from what I call The Dubricverse. There are parallel to the timeline-of-the-books things (like Aswin, who readers have never met), stuff about what happened during (and before) the War, what happens with characters and/or their children in the future, various potential paths different characters might take, alternate timelines/dimensions/storylines. Stuff like that.
Anyway, Bill and I discussed some of these story bits and partial novels and things that are just gathering digital dust on my computer and we thought that, maybe, someone would like to read them. A bit of research, and a few conversations with my writing buddies sent me to Smashwords.com. One finished short story later, I have an official ebook that will, hopefully, soon be available everywhere ebooks are sold.
It's called Fire and it's Lars's first case when he's nine summers old, right after he arrives in Faldorrah. Some of you may have read it - it was one of many .pdfs PaperbackWriter gave away during some freebie promotion she did back in 2006. Since Fire was finished and entirely self contained, I thought it'd be a good ebook story to start with. It's short, only about 28 pages of actual story, and it is not available in paper-book form.
I've decided to price it for 99 cents through Smashwords (and Amazon and Fictionwise and other venues when it arrives in their listing) mostly because Smashwords can create all the available formats for kindles and nooks and iphones and whatnot, while *I* can only make .pdf. I do not want to charge for things I've already made myself, so if ANYONE wants a .pdf instead of a pricier format, email me at tambowrites AT gmail DOT com and I will send you a free copy.
If I epublish other things, I think I shall have a pricing structure of 99¢ for anything under 10k words or so, $1.99 for under 25k words ish, and $2.99 for longer works. Does that sound reasonable to you all? Also, I don't at this point intend to epublish any book length fiction that might work better as a traditionally published book.
Anyway, it's mostly just something I'm considering.
4 comments:
I read Fire when PBW offered it. It was a great story. I'd gladly pay for ebooks. As a recent ebook whore I can say that I'll pay up to $5.00 for 'novella' sized books. That's what they are called when I buy them. So I'm sure any price you decide to assign will be fair. :D
Thanks, Tina!
I'm cheap, er, frugal, though. I think three bucks for twenty five or thirty thousand of my words is plenty to spend! lol
Pretty late to the party, but ...
I'm still testing the whole e-reader idea. So far, great, but I only have free (out of copyright) classics that I downloaded in epub format. I worry about getting locked in (unlike with 'real' books), so I likely won't buy from Amazon until they offer epubs. Even some of the free professional samples (Tor and Baen) aren't that well converted, so I'm a bit off the idea of paying for ebooks anyway, even when the content is good. I use Calibre to convert books from one format to another, and Sigil to edit epubs (a bit finicky, but you might want to check it out).
In any case, I'd say I'm likely to buy $.99 shorts from a known author, but above that, I don't know. I especially don't see a reason to pay more for an e-book than for a paperback (I treat mine well, and they last for decades - so far).
Hi again, Ben!
I have three shorts now, Fire (the Lars story) Sid, and Endorphins, all for free as .pdf's on my download page or for 99 cents almost everywhere ebooks are sold. But free is just fine with me! :)
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