Sean Platt: Yesterday's Gone serial ebook project

Sean and I have crossed paths here and there over the years, and when I found out about his serial ebook project, I had to know more. So here is Sean, in the digital flesh.

Hi Scott! Thanks for having me, it's great to be here.

1) Why a serialized fiction project?

Serialized fiction is something my writing partner David Wright and I have been interested in for a long time. In fact, we started our first serialized project more than two years ago at our website, Collective Inkwell. It was a horror novel called Available Darkness.

We published a new entry each Friday and developed a decent sized audience in a reasonably short time, but life nudged its way to the front and we both got busy with the immediate needs of life which forced us to pause the project. We resurrected it earlier this year and published it on Kindle and print this summer.

But our new project, Yesterday’s Gone, was an entirely different beast from day one!

By mid-summer, our small imprint had published five titles. Unfortunately, those five titles were in four different markets. We knew we really needed to fix this. It's difficult to hit critical mass on Kindle without multiple titles. But just because someone loves your book about vampires, doesn't mean they’re going to love your book about how to build an online writing business.

Yesterday's Gone was designed from day one to capitalize on the all-too-easy to click Kindle consumer phenomenon. This serial was a way for us to get six high quality titles to market that would keep readers at the edge of their seat, leave them wanting for more, and hopefully telling their friends about all the fun they had reading.

2) Did you choose a post-apocalyptic story because of the nature of the project, or was that always in the plans?

That's a great question!

Full credit for the premise goes to Dave. We were already discussing doing a serial, but to his way of thinking, it would be easier to get our first season to market if it was set in a world where we wouldn't end up drowning in research. With a post-apocalyptic setting, we essentially built ourselves a giant sandbox where we made all the rules.

Of course, there were still a ton of things to research and we had to make sure our dates and times all lined up, and that locations in our story matched locations on the map. This was especially difficult while doing some of the larger scenes in New York and Times Square, but was still significantly less work than it would have been if we were writing something set in the real world.

3) How does the collaboration work? Back and forth for each chapter, or write and rewrite?

Dave and I have been writing together for three years now. We met during what was the first few weeks for each of us online. Our collaboration is natural, organic, and wonderfully fluid. A project of this scope would've been impossible without it.

As far as Yesterdays Gone specifically, we started by writing the “pilot.” We decided there would be six characters and that each of us would handle the POV for three of them. Once finished, I sent my work to Dave and he pieced them all together.

For episodes 2-6, we each stuck with the characters we started with, following the same process, where I would write my three POV’s then send them to Dave for arrangement. I polished his copy and sent it back. Dave excels at structure, and I'm slightly better voice so that rhythm works really well for us.

4) How many episodes will you do, and what happens after they are finished?

There are six episodes in the first season, and right now we have at least three seasons planned, though if the audience is asking, we’ll definitely deliver more. We’re not sure six episodes is the perfect number for a season. Seems like there’s a lot to experiment with there. The next serial we have planned will have a different number of episodes and a slightly different page count for each one, almost for sure.

Dave's been getting the episodes to Kindle one at a time, but we’ve been fast-tracking the entire project since there isn't the big built-in audience that there will be for Season II. Once we’re in the second season, we’ll launch each episodes anywhere from a week to a month apart, depending on audience feedback.

5) Do you see other possibilities for invention and experimentation with form in the digital era?

Absolutely! I am thoroughly in love with where self-publishing is right now, and I think experimentation is everything. We have many, many plans, in multiple genres. And we can't wait to explore them all.

We hope you enjoy this trailer, and will share it on Facebook, Twitter and email. You can start with the pilot of Yesterday's Gone for just $.99 or get the entire season for $4.99, which is a super great deal!

If you’re a reader who likes the extra goodies (like exclusive chapters and sneak peeks), or an author who wants a behind-the-scenes look at the writing and marketing process for this project, sign up to be a “goner,” here.

Thanks for having me at the Haunted Computer, Scott. 
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The New ESP

Since starting my little Kindle cottage industry, I have been humbled and overjoyed by the support I've received and the new connections we've made. Part of it is the intimacy of the ebook world, in which a reader can click, browse, and email me within minutes. I feel the ESP of story is somehow more immediate and I am linked with the reader in ways that I'm not when the book is on a store shelf across the country.

Readers also have more fun participating in the shared experience of the book, I think. While book clubs have long been popular, the connection by wires seems just as cool as the old-fashioned way of gathering in a living room with donuts and coffee, or crackers and Merlot. The Kindle and ebook audiences are self-selecting, of course, by being the early adopters of a relatively new technology. They are a combination of avid readers and forward-thinking embracers of change. Not that people who cling to paper are lesser readers--they just have a different experience.

What's really exciting as an author is there is no steep spike in sales and then a cliff dive into obscurity. The opposite happens. As the books hang around, more people find them and share them. It can literally mean an entirely new approach to a career--more like a typical small business where you grow over time and reach your customers and learn from them, eventually gathering an accumulation of rewards for your hard and persistent work. Of course, it still starts with a good book. Nothing kills growth faster than lousy customer service, no matter what the business. Thanks for shopping with me. Would you like paper or plastic?

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official launch of The Skull Ring

Some people have asked what I have been doing with myself, since I haven't had a new novel out in nearly three years. Yeah, it's been way too long. So here you go:

Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her...

With the help of a therapist, Julia is piecing together childhood memories of the night her father vanished. When Julia finds a silver ring that bears the name "Judas Stone," the past comes creeping back. Someone is leaving strange messages inside her house, even though the door is locked. The Christian handyman offers help, but he has his own shadowy past. And the cop who investigated her father's disappearance has followed her to the small mountain town of Elkwood.

Now she has a head full of memories, but she doesn't know which are real. Julia's therapist is playing games. The handyman is trying to save her, in more ways than one. And a sinister cult is closing in, claiming ownership of Julia's body and soul...

It's an ebook right now at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003980ELA/ref=cm_cd_asin_lnk) and Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9523) and will be in print in a few weeks.

If you'd like to help promote it and be eligible for cool prizes like valuable limited edition hardcovers, weird Scott paraphernalia, and comic books, sign up to be a Microchip by emailing hauntedcomputerbooks@yahoo.com with Microchip in the subject line. Thanks for all your support--this book has been part of me for a long time, with a number of revisions, and explores a lot of mysteries of faith, love, and messed-up motives. Plus Julia is cute.

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Bookstores: Drive-thru or Drive-by?

Okay, book sales are up (4.1 percent last year, according to publishers), Barnes & Noble sales are down 2 to 4 percent, ebook markets will grow nearly 50 percent next year, and ebooks will be about 20 percent of the book market by 2015.

Numbers tend to get thrown around to suit whomever is doing the flinging--if you want to scare people into supporting their local bookstores, you tell them bookstores are in trouble, but this may or may not motivate them. I don't expect a "pity party" will sustain any business for long, and if those customers were in the habit of supporting the business, it wouldn't have been in trouble in the first place.

If you want to say bookstores are in trouble because everybody's staying at home and ordering ebooks, the data doesn't really support that yet, as ebooks are between 1 and 3 percent of the book market right now.

If you want to say publishers are adjusting despite the trouble bookstores are in, maybe the truth is in there somewhere. Paper has to be shipped, whether from Amazon to the front door or from a distributor to the store shelves, and you still have to drive to the bookstore, and you still have time invested.

There is an emotional and sometimes-hostile discussion on author Charles Stross' blog about the fate of publishing, the real cost of books, and consumer impact on the industry, among other things. I had nothing to add but, on getting some reflection, Charles seems adamant that a publisher adds 50 percent of the book's value by doing 50 percent of the production work (with the author doing the other 50 percent). He seems fine with the other workers deriving income from his creativity and their skills. That's a worthy model, but he continually downplays ebooks and believes, even with cheaper "distribution," those production costs will still be there. He also admits he hates Amazon and is doing well with his paper sales, so those factors color his opinion, too.

As with many authors deeply invested in the current model (and you can read their blogs all over the place; simply google "Amazon vs. Macmillan"), they are presenting information from their unique perspective--that is, as people whose work goes through the modern production process and has many hands involved. As someone who has created ebooks and done almost everything the producers do (except for cover art--tip of the hat to Neil Jackson of Ghostwriter), then I understand the real time invested in the work. I couldn't do an ebook if I had to pay an employee an hourly wage, much less offering a full-time job with benefits.

But the time I invest now is a long-term investment, with royalties hopefully accruing over many years. The single-most-common missing ingredient in these authors' defense of the status quo is that they fail to calculate the long-term income of an ebook versus the paper copy that may only be on the store shelves for three months. An ebook has a much longer lifespan in which to recoup production costs. And believe me, it's a trickle, not a stream, and certainly not a flood. Still, a cup dipped in a trickle will hold just as much as that same cup dipped in a flood.

With the help of Steven James Price, I just uploaded a print file of The Red Church at Amazon, so it will be available in trade paperback. But because of printing and shipping costs, to make even a slim profit (about the same I'd make on an ebook sale, in some instances), the book had to be priced at $14.95. I almost feel guilty trying to sell a book for that much, because it's a lot of money to me. I've been enjoying this idea of "working-class fiction," but a $1.99 ebook seems a lot closer to the mark than a book that costs as much as a discounted hardcover bestseller.

Of course, used copies of The Red Church can be bought for a penny (with nearly $4 in shipping costs), so I don't expect to sell many of the new trade paperbacks. Even if a major publisher decided to re-release The Red Church, it would make few store appearances and will still only earn me about a 10 percent royalty. In the economies of scale, it would be foolish for a publisher to take it on, barring some sort of looming Nicholson blockbuster that isn't on the map yet. (Well, I think that one is coming, but it might not be under the "Nicholson" name).

But for my economic scale, it is foolish not to publish it. So, in any debate in which I take my perspective, then major publishers and bookstores are in trouble because they don't have me on the shelves to save them...

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