Insane Thoughts I Have

I maybe ought to just make this a feature, eh?



But this insanity might have some (or at least one) coherent utility point... So see that... I might be insane, but I'm USEFUL!



*cough*







Wool



Have you heard of this series/book? (a video from him)



I believe it is post-apocalyptic, they are claiming 'the next Hunger Games'...



This guy wrote a novelette... didn't promote, but found sort of a cult following... so in NaNoWriMo wrote MORE of them... and Kristen Nelson approached him about foreign rights, movie rights... He'd turned down other agents, but she was saying stuff he didn't think he could do on his own, so he signed with her.



Now he has a movie deal with Ridley Scott... foreign rights up the gazoo, and Simon and Schuster has bought his PRINT rights while letting him keep his digital rights (dream, right?)



I listened to a Simon & Schuster rep, and SHE SAID (cue BIG IDEA) one of the tricks to his success was publishing serially.



Say what?



He has 5 novelettes out, all of them were up for $.99. Except the first... it's free



Now to do novelettes, or as I call them, novellas *rolls eyes* (though it looks like a novelette is shorter than a novella) you need to have full stories in each... but the idea of say... doing a play in 3 acts and having each wind up... that's reasonable, right? So instead of ONE book for $2.99, you sell 3 (totaling $2.97)--so for the READER it is a deal... and as a promoter, you can offer the first free... Now for the AUTHOR, you have to look at this as an investment... the percentage you get too keep of each $.99 book is smaller than for $2.99 books (less than half)... but THINK how many more will try if the first in a series is free and then they can buy... or think about 5 or 7 or 10 books at $.99, instead of stopping your story...





Now not all stories merit that many parts, but when I recently did my list of 'potential works' SEVERAL were apocalypse books. I LOVE the theme... (his are POST-apocalypse... but if it is interesting AFTER the world ends, why not during the end, eh?)



So I am toying with the idea now that 1) Shot in the Light could be published this way... it would work well. It is more than 500 pages, so... in 4 novellas maybe? I already SEE a solid break that I suppose is closer to the 1/3 mark... I can come up with another break... in fact I know where that is, too, when I think on it... okay, it would be in 3...



But the system also fits really well with the one I'm writing, which I am far more inclined to see going on quite a while.



I may not... but I may...



And if I do, it doesn't mean giving up on doing some stuff traditionally at all. I still want to. I just think for THIS kind of thing, the serial format might really rock.





In other news. WANTED: Australian YA Romance Writers!!!!



I neither write romance, nor am in Australia, but it seemed to me I had a number of friends who might be interested in this:



"Random House Australia is launching HOOKED, a hot new digital-first romance imprint for readers aged 15+.



AND WE WANT TO PUBLISH YOUR STORIES."



http://www.randomhouse.com.au/blog/hooked-calling-all-writers-1688.aspx