Island of Fog Chronicles coming in the New Year
I've mentioned a series of Island of Fog-related mini-stories many times before, and now it's definitely on my radar and planned to start early 2015.
The ISLAND OF FOG CHRONICLES will be a series of novelettes featuring characters from the nine books. As always, I like to play with mockup covers to get me inspired, so here are a few ideas:
Eye of the Manticore will definitely be #1 in the series. Thomas Patten was, after all, the first of the children to shift into his alter-form. This novelette will start with that terrifying moment and follow the events of his young life afterward.
The other titles shown above are not confirmed, just a bit of eye candy for now. While I do intend writing about the sylphs, that novelette will likely come a bit later on. Long before that, Robbie's story will see him enlisting the help of ogres to free Fenton's giant lizard beast as written in Mountain of Whispers.
So what exactly is a novelette? Well, publishers and authors alike vary on this subject, and a lot depends on the intended age of the audience, the genre, and other factors. But it goes something like this:
Short story -- under 7,500 words
Novelette -- 7,500 to 17,500 words
Novella -- 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novel -- over 40,000 words
The ISLAND OF FOG CHRONICLES will most likely be novelettes because I don't anticipate quite enough story to make them novellas. But call them what you like; I doubt I'll be officially naming them as novelettes anyway! Word counts are a more accurate way to gauge length, at least if you pay attention to such things the way authors do. As a comparison, each of the nine books in the Island of Fog series is about 95,000 words. I expect the chronicles to be maybe 15,000 words each, about the length of three or four novel chapters. Short and sweet.
Then again, I might surprise myself and end up writing a novella. It depends on the story.
Look for Eye of the Manticore in January 2015, and the next one (whatever it's called) a month later. If they take off, I'd like to aim for one every month or two, but we'll see.
Pricing these novelettes is a bit of a puzzle. My initial thought was to price them in relation to the novels, in other words $0.99 because they're so much shorter than the $3.99 novels. On the other hand, the general consensus these days seems to be that $0.99 looks "cheap," indicating low quality.
Also, anything less than $2.99 only earns the author 30% in royalties; anything above earns 70%. Therefore the typical starting price these days (the magic number!) is $2.99. It's hard to justify pricing novelettes at $2.99 when the novels are much longer for just $3.99, but maybe I should make the argument that the novels are too cheap!
As readers, what are YOUR thoughts on ebook prices on Kindle, Nook, Apple, Kobo, etc? Do you care how long or short a book is within reason?
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Thanks for your thoughts, Emma! Definitely a lot to think about here. I'm coming to the conclusion that I'd rather price at $2.99 and write a longer story than to price lower in order to make it "worth it."But that's a crazy way to write. A story is done when it's done, and it shouldn't be unnecessarily padded. So I might just have to write it and decide the pricing later.
As for your pricing question: yes, I do care about the length. I don't have any hard and fixed limits but if we presume it's an author I'm unfamiliar with, I'm more willing to spend more on it if it's a full-length novel (in general). If it's an author I know and enjoy (as in this case), then the length matters less but obviously I still have my limits for what I'm willing to pay whether the story is long or short.
Honestly, as a soon-to-be selfpubbed author, I think it's a shame that there's such a big difference in royalties because I think the idea of publishing something short for a buck or two is quite nice (as opposed to, say, waiting until you have a bunch of short peices and making a collection), but I can definitely understand people wanting to avoid that royalty bracket.