Storm Series

So, I’m searching around, looking at bookstores and searching for Storm Bound. And I found it.

B&N have Storm Bound available for $1.50 right now.

Kobo (formerly ShortCovers) has it for $1.59.

Amazon listed it for $1.99.

Now, I’m hoping that Amazon will change to what everyone else charges when Smashwords lists it through their distribution channels. Right now, it’s under my Amazon ID and I imagine I don’t get any favors there.

It’s been a big week in publishing, which was why I started searching the etailers for my book. I was curious as to where the book is seen and how. The Agency model the publishers are moving to with the release of the Apple iPad has stepped on some toes. Even as I write this, Hachette has not reached an agreement with Amazon, and its ebooks are currently without their buy buttons.

As an author, I want to know my books are getting out there. I want people to read. I’d like it if they read my books, but everyone has their own tastes. With the fight between publishers and e-tailers, it’s the authors that suffer for it. It’s their books that lose sales when they aren’t available to the public.

It’s become much easier to self-publish in the last decade, and it’s a choice that many authors are taking. I’m still pursuing traditional publishing, because I do recognize that right now, traditional publishing gets my name out there faster. It opens up more avenues to success. I’ve liked this experiment with Storm Bound. I like the control over my content I have. So, yeah, I’ll publish more books this way. There are some minor things I will change in the way I do it.

I’m also going to experiment with apps for the smartphones, and see if that will be a viable option.

Really, I’m just as new at this as many others. And I’ve enjoyed the ride so far. We’ll see how it goes in the future.

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This makes me a very happy author. Along with distribution channels to Barnes and Nobles, Sony, Kobo (Shortcovers) and Amazon, according to this article, apparently, it will also be shipping e-books to Apple’s upcoming iPad store. This is huge for self-published authors. I’ve never claimed to get rich off my self-published titles, especially considering I have only one right now, but this will go a long way to get my work out in front of people, which is what I’ve always aimed for.

Now, Smashwords has sent out a notice to all its authors/publishers about this change and have included in their site a way to assign an ISBN to their books, which is a requirement of Apple’s iPad store and also of Sony’s. I fail to see how any of this can be bad. Actually, this makes me want to take my book off Amazon’s DTP, their self-publishing model and use Smashwords exclusively. Smashwords will be shipping my book to Amazon soon.

Anyone who knows me knows I advocate for a new writer to get an agent and go through the traditional publishing, like everyone else does. They know what sells and what doesn’t. They make their living off it, and regardless of what some say, they aren’t out to get you. They don’t make money unless you do, so why wouldn’t they want you to succeed.

For me, Storm Bound was an experiment. I went the self-publishing route to see what it was like, to see how easy it was, or how hard. I wanted to know what the challenges of adding the publishing hat would be. I rushed into some things, and I made some mistakes. The experiment is ongoing so I can’t really say if it was successful or not. So far, it’s been an interesting ride.

I’ll continue to keep publishing the Storm series this way, probably using Smashwords because I’m very impressed with their business decisions and their ease of use. (And also because they don’t threaten to take down buy buttons like some other online bookstores, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I’ve got a short story that I wrote a while back to give me a feel for Darien and Jayne’s “special” relationship. I’m actually considering publishing that as a cheap e-book, or here on the site. I’m not really sure how I’m going to do it just yet. I’d like to see how sales are for Storm Bound when it goes live on the iPad’s bookstore.

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Welcome to the new home of the Storm Series. I’m still doing a lot of work on the content of this site so it’s going to be a constantly evolving work in progress sort of thing.

In the meantime, poke around and try to break stuff so I can make sure everything is working correctly.

Thanks for stopping by!

Suzan

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