After much dithering, I have finally taken the plunge and published my novel as an ebook on Smashwords. It's also on Scribd as a PDF. I had been planning to try to get some more reviews from peer review sites before I went ahead, but in the end I decided to just publish the damn thing and see what happens. A Feedbooks edition will be next. I'm also intending to turn my attention back to some reviews of free ebooks by other self-published authors, which I have rather neglected of late - so watch this space for more of those.
Returning to the subject of the novel, one of the things that caused me to agonise for so long was length. In particular, I had convinced myself that I really needed at least 60,000 words. But I've reached the conclusion that 60,000 words is just an arbitrary figure - it's what publishers generally think is necessary in order to get people to part with money in return for a novel.
In my case, I am not asking for any money - my novel is free - and it should be the length it needs to be, not the length someone else thinks it should be. The ebook format also avoids the problem that you get with hard copy in a bookshop where readers may be inclined to look disdainfully at your rather svelte volume, muttering to themselves "Bloody hell, I'm not paying £7.99 for an anorexic tome like that - it's barely got 200 pages (and that's only because the publisher has increased the font size)" Anyway, once I had liberated myself from the tyranny of the 60,000 word target, I found it much easier to get on and edit out all the bits I wasn't entirely happy with, leaving what I hope is a much leaner, tighter read (at just over 50,000 words). If some people think that makes it a novella rather than a novel, that's fine by me.
UPDATE 22.6.2012: The YouTube trailer is now up and running and the novel is now available on Feedbooks. Do trailers actually do any good? Not if my YouTube viewing stats are anything to go by, but never mind, I had some fun making it.
Welcome to my blog, "Publishing Waste" which will either (a) chronicle my heroic efforts to self-publish my own fiction; or (b) demonstrate beyond a scintilla of doubt the utter futility of (a). And along the way, I will also be doing some reviews of other people's books and occasionally blogging about other stuff.
Welcome to my blog, "Publishing Waste" which will either (a) chronicle my heroic efforts to self-publish my own fiction; or (b) demonstrate beyond a scintilla of doubt the utter futility of (a). And along the way, I will also be doing some reviews of other people's books and occasionally blogging about other stuff.
