Recalculating by Jennifer Weiner: from idea to ebook in less than a week

[image error]I know that as an author I'm not supposed to be excited about the possibilities of e-publishing, but I can't help it, I really am. So I was intrigued to hear about Jennifer Weiner's latest project: a short story (approximately 10,000 words) called Recalculating.

Jennifer had the idea for the story last Tuesday. And it was published – on iBooks, Amazon and B&N today. Yes, today. From idea to publication in less than a week. (Read Jennifer's blog post about it here.)

Now Jennifer is a professional with nine published books behind her and years of experience as a newspaper journalist. She wrote the story quickly, her agent, editor and copyeditor all read it and gave her feedback and it has a professionally designed cover – this is very much not the same as an unpublished author e-publishing their NaNoWriMo book on 1 December – but it's still a pretty exciting idea, don't you think?

Even though I don't like ghost/horror stories (because I am a massive wuss), I was intrigued enough to download Recalculating and I really enjoyed it. It was involving enough that until Joe responded to a question Dora the Explorer asked on TV, I'd forgotten he was there (I am an excellent mother…) and it absolutely didn't read like a rush job (and I only spotted one mistake – "Blue-ray" instead of "Blu-ray").

So what do you think? Is this an interesting prospect for authors or the beginning of the end? Or, you know, just a story…

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