There has been an idea rolling around my head for sometime now that seems to suddenly be gaining traction and momentum. The idea is to take the four short stories of mine that have earned Honorable Mention at the Writers Of The Future Contest and publish them as a small ebook.
I would also add in a copy of my first short story sale, What Everybody Wanted, bringing the word count of the entire collection to about 50,000 words. Equal to the small SF novels of the 50’s and 40s. I have found the means to publish it as an ebook that would be available to all the major ebook readers such as the Nook, the Kindle, and the iPhone/iPad. I was thinking about a price of 99 cents for the collection.
A couple of issue need to be resolved before I move forward on this project.
First, do I want to re-edit the stories? I have changed, particularly in my sentence construction, since these shorts were written. On one hand if I edit them they will be stronger for it, yet then they will not represent the stories that almost placed in the contest so in someways it feels dishonest.
Second, if I re-edit them then the project I think should be shelved until I finish the re-write of Love and Loyalty. Do I have the time for such a project?
Third, What about cover art? I have looked at royalty-free images and I can license an image quite reasonably for my purposes. (well under $50, so the investment would be minimal.) However would that look good enough? That sort of talent seems to escape me.
Opinions? What do you people think?
Didn’t Heinlein address ebooks in “The Rolling Stones”? They talk about their mass when they are packing the spacecraft. The twins are the only family memebers who really like ebooks. The rest of the family prefers the look and feel of paper books.
That’s a pretty cool idea.
I want to do a collection of short speculative fiction that features ebook readers/technology released only on ebook readers. I think the gimmick could get some buzz, and more importantly I would love to see the concept of ebook readers seriously considered in speculative fiction.
Do it, no need to edit. I too would buy it. When you get ready to put it out there, if you’re considering internet advertising I think Project Wonderful had a good model… http://www.projectwonderful.com/
1) Don’t re-edit at this time. Include an “Author’s Note” section explaining that you did not want to do so, since that would not be true to the form in which they were originally submitted and that it wouldn’t be true to the place you were at in your writing at that time. Save the re-edit for a later time.
2) Get it out there now. (I’ll buy it.)
SweetieW here. I expect to be submitting you a cover, or more than one, for you to approve or reject.