Of Two Minds: Gush or Trickle?
Now that I've taken the plunge and released my first ebook–and have my second nearly ready, and a good idea of what numbers three through six will be–it's hard not to just open the floodgates.
I've accumulated a lot of material over the past few years, especially since my short story a day project in 2006. The other weekend I had some free time and worked out that I had written nearly 600K words of fiction since 2003. Those words make up three complete novels, a novella, and a lot of short (and short short) stories. Today I might have finished the first draft of what could be a novella-length collection of related short stories. So, yeah, I have a lot of stuff just, you know, lying around [*]. Some of it (I think) really good.
So, now that I know how to publish ebooks (and even print-on-demand paperbacks), should I go into full-scale production mode and release every novel or story I think is worthwhile, one after the other? Or should I take a more measured approach, and only release new works according to a schedule, like once or twice a month/week?
One reason to get more and more ebooks out there is that each one that is available helps promote all the others.
One reason to take it slow and steady is that I'm still learning and it's easier to fix mistakes made one at a time.
Another reason to get a move on is that this could be a "gold rush" period for ebooks. You get in now and make a big impact, or be just another fish in a sea of fiction in the all-too-near future.
Another reason to be more measured is that it might be better to have a steady release of new work over a period of time rather than just dump everything out there all at once.
I'm open to discussion on this. And while you write me your opinion in the comments, I'm going to go look over my next Smashwords submission and maybe do some editing…
-David
[*] Exactly why all those words have been lying around is a topic for another discussion.
Published on September 24, 2010 14:55
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