The First coming to e-publication

Since I'm working with Ghostwriter Publications to release my short fiction in the UK, I am collecting most of my stories for release as e-books. While "Scattered Ashes" and "Thank You for the Flowers" (under the updated title "Flowers") will go in lockstep with the print versions, I'm putting together THE FIRST as an original collection (though the stories have all been previously published.)

It contains sixteen stories and a couple of bonus essays and has three sections: Phantasmia, Hypnagogia, and Dystopia. This collects my dark fantasy, fantasy, and bleaker science fiction stories, including several from the Aeropagan cycle. The title is fitting because it's my first foray into original electronic publishing and I'm curious how it will do compared to the novel THE RED CHURCH and the existing story collections. Scattered Ashes is not quite formatted but I will probably roll it out in a week or two. I'm excited about the chance to reach new readers with these stories that sometimes didn't get much of an audience in their first incarnations, and the work in THE FIRST is a bit of a departure from my usual supernatural subjects, though there is a sprinkling of that in here as well. Thanks to Neil Jackson as Ghostwriter for the great cover.

I believe the expansion of the electronic book market will lead to a revival in short stories, as people find time to read shorter works due tot he convenience, and also be able to squeeze in a quick read in places they might not have had time to do before.

Testing the e-book waters

With so many Kindle readers being sold and success achieved by writers like J.A. Konrath and Lee Goldberg, I am testing the waters with a couple of e-book releases. The first one I have planned is "Burial To Follow," a novelette originally appearing in the Cemetery Dance anthology Brimstone Turnpike. It's a test case to sort out formatting, but it's also one of my Top Five works ever, and the original release was limited to 626 copies. So this is a chance to get the story into the hands of many more readers, which of course is the real point. It also doesn't hurt that the money flows directly to the writer's bank account.

I am divided on e-books and I remember in the 1990s when everyone said e-books were the immediate future (indeed, some said it was the present). I guess along with personal jet-cars and robot house servants, we'll just have to wait a while, but the undeniable truth is that bookstores are closing, paper books cost money to bind and ship, and distribution is still the largest single barrier between a good writer and an audience. Like Konrath and Goldberg, I still say writers should get the agent/major publisher paper deal and try the most difficult path possible before taking the easy way out and slapping up a bunch of e-books and hoping someone will recognize genius.

Another undeniable truth is that a lot more e-readers are being produced and sold, not just the Kindle. If you use one of these devices, I'd love to hear from you. If my "Burial To Follow" experiment proves worth the effort, look for possible re-releases of The Red Church and a story collection. Now time to go last-minute shopping (no Kindles in the stocking this year, though.)