Ebooks and Stuff

Since we’ve got a couple of new people, I’ll say this: There are some spoilers for everything up to now included in this.

Ok, so it’s been a while since I talked about plans for the future, so I thought I’d give a bit of an update.

I sort of got carried away writing OUB, so I stalled on MF edits (I was also looking for excuses to procrastinate, but more on that in a minute).

In a nutshell: I intend to serialise the ebook releases.

Cracking the nut: I don’t write fast enough to release several novels a year (at least I won’t until I can write full time, which this will help with), and I loathe the idea of my backlist only gaining by like one book a year (and a couple of short stories, maybe), so I intend to serialise.

No, not one chapter per ebook, that’s just stupid and will piss so many people off it’s not funny (and apparently Amazon doesn’t like the idea). What I’ll be doing is cutting each book into like 10k word chunks (may be more, will not be less, I intend to maintain value for money). This will give me more time to edit each book, as I’m only dedicating myself to one a month.

And it will be one episode a month, which will definitely help gain and maintain a new set of readers – there’ll be “buy Mirrorfall day” each month, and it’ll be something they can look forward to, and it’ll be the only thing resembling a scheduled update that we’ll ever have. :P

Content will stay here, and I’ll keep releasing here, so you won’t suffer for having been long-term fans (or short-term, but-longer-than-newbie fans).

So basically, one a month new ebooks, starting with MF, in 10k-ish chunks, edited and all pretty and etc, with new, draft content going up here at the same erratic schedule you’re all used to. This works, because I don’t want to stop writing new stuff, and sometimes things need to just sit for a while before I can go back to them and actually tweak them.

On that subject, MF won’t have the substantive edit that I was always talking about, upon rereading it, I actually don’t hate it as much as I thought, but it will be streamlined a bit – mainly giving Curt a bit more screen time and removing the Enid pseudo-subplot as it never went anywhere – I had intended to do something with it, but it didn’t eventuate, so I’d rather cut it than leave it hanging. I will probably recycle that stuff into a standalone novella to explore Madchester a bit.

Doing that also cuts Madchester out of MH, which will allow for a bit more Court of the Lost stuff, so it feels more together, and Hook won’t quite come out of nowhere at the end like he does now.

MH needed a bit of an overhaul, but it will largely be the same book, just include more Lost stuff, delve a bit more into Ryan a bit.

MS…edits here and there, but there’s nothing major that needs changing.

GE…I’m not going to say nuke from orbit, but I will say that you’ll need to read it, since it will be very different to what’s there at the moment. Hell, my plan at the moment is to frontload it with a three (number subject to change) episode block of Maggie backstory, rather than sprinkling the flashbacks throughout, plus now some of that history (which I was going to save for her next book) will now be relevant to GE. And that makes no sense, come back and read this in a couple of years, and you’ll totally know what I mean.

OUB…I haven’t even finished the first draft, give me a break. :P

So far, no one has managed to really serialise in this fashion with ebooks – the general feeling that I’ve managed to see when other people have brought it up is something along the lines of: people don’t want to buy “part of a book” when they can buy a whole book. There’s a couple of ways in which I think I can make this work for us.

The MV really is meant to be consumed in a serial format, it’s how it’s written, it’s how it’s been read up until now, sure, you can archive binge, but you know once you’re done with the archive binge, you’ll be stuck waiting for the author to get off her butt and write the next chapter.

[Seriously: has anyone here just read the complete books and then come back when the next book has finished? Or may you started with that idea, but got sucked in and read everything that was up?]

So pretty much the fact that’s rather addicting will work in our favour. :D

I tested myself with this, with a few books I’ve bought on the Kindle. Read a section, ask myself if I’d pay 99c to get the next chunk – most of the time, even if it’s a book I wouldn’t rate as five stars, or four stars – I’ve read some crappy YA PR that yeah, I’d pay to keep reading. >_>

(And how many people would have willingly paid for 99c of each chunk of the latest ASOIAF book, instead of waiting however many years for George RR Martin to finish it? I’m not comparing myself, I’m just saying some of you used to threaten me with various weapons when I didn’t get updates out >_>).

I also don’t conceive the series as separate books, not so much. I mean, obviously there are distinct books within the series, but it’s all character based which is why it’s so malleable - hence why we’re essentially getting book #7 now, because I can fsck with the timeline like that, other authors I think would have a harder time because their books are designed as whole things, even if they are part of a series (if that makes sense, I’m only an author, I’m not supposed to be eloquent >_>).

It would also allow me to take diversions, say it’s a Stef/Ryan/Curt plot, and not an Angelpie plot, but I wanted to do something with Mags and Taylor, I can do an Angelpie episode, then jump back into the main plot. Or a Parkers episode. Or anything I want. With this format, it feels a lot easier to divert, but that could just be me. (I can also do these as standalones, and just mark when in the timeline they come, if for some reason there needs to be a break from the main plot, and/or filler between books).

Compilations will obviously be available after the episodic versions have finished releasing – so for the people who will inevitably complaint that they don’t want to buy bits of a book, or feel ripped off because they’re paying like 10x99c, they’ll be able to buy the completed volumes for $2.99 (standalones will remain 99c, only some will be collected, but we’ll sell those bridges when we get to it).

My plan at the moment:
Release Ep 1 of Mirrorfall on Stef’s birthday, the 13th of October. Release it for free.

Reelase the rest of the MF episodes (also for free) in a weekly format to frontload the fanbase, and so they’re eased into the idea of having to wait for their next cookie-laden instalment.

That will put us in December, so release a Cookiemas special.

Release Ep 1 of MH on January 13, for 99c. Release monthly from then, for 99c.

Somewhere in the Christmas period, put together the MF compilation edition and Createspace (dead tree version) edition.

Approximately:
2012 will be MH.
2013 will be MS.
2014 will be GE.
2015 will be OUB.

I know that sounds like a scary long time in the future, so we’ll see what we can do about increasing the schedule – if I can make enough money off this to do it full-time, then it will automatically increase, but I may also release extra episodes for meeting certain goals (we get out 10k’th like on FB, we reach comment 100k on RC, I sell certain numbers of books [it’ll be like sales Kiribans, instead of views]).

I think it would be silly though, to move it to more than a bi-weekly schedule, unless I work up, like a year’s worth of backlog so I can be sure to maintain it. (*calculates, that’s 26 episodes, 260k words at least* *is scared*).

I’ve also got cover woes, but since this is already as long as a chapter, I’ll talk about that later.

Questions to you:
*Do you like the episode idea?
*Do you hate the episode idea?
*Do you think it’ll work? Why?
*Do you think it’ll fail? Why?
*Is 10k sufficient value-for-money?
*Will you be buying the episode (intention to buy, even when finances may not permit counts as a yes)?
*Any other thoughts/queries/comments/cookies/etc.