The slug:
"Collected here, the first six Roy the Demon short stories. These are raucous, profane tales, rated NC-17, for language, sex, and hellish situations. You know you are curious. Come on down ..."
I was hesitant, but I realized that, unlike the paper pub biz, I can offer a shorter length, for less money, and not worry about signatures and traditional publisher profit margins. (When I was a lad, paperback novels often ran 50K or 60K words long, and that length increased because of publisher costs, paper and printing, so the average genre novel is closer to 8oK words these days. For purposes of the Nebula Award, anything over 40K words is still considered a novel, thought I can't remember the last time I saw one that short new on the market.)
There are no official guidelines for epub pricing, but I find that I'm in line with Dean Wesley Smith's latest thoughts, i.e., you charge a basic rate for a standard-length novel, less if the work is shorter, and more if it is longer, and keep the cost under what readers would pay for a paper version. Charge too much, people don't bite. Too little, they don't value it.
So, short stories for $.99. Anything that is in the 65-100K word range, I'm asking $5.99. The big boat book, $6.99. For a half dozen short stories bundled together, I'm thinking $3.99 seems reasonable. Saves you two bucks over buying them all singly, and if you've already bought any of 'em, to keep it fair, Dan Moran is going to offer a discount coupon on the new collection in his FS& store.
Yes, yes, I am still working on the two Matador books, and trying to get them under contract. Ace has not been breaking down the door to make an offer, and that might be a problem. I have a couple of possible solutions, and we'll see how that goes. I will keep you posted.
Hello Steve,
ReplyDeleteI have been reading and thoroughly enjoying your blogs for some time now and have just got myself an account at smashbooks...
You have a fair selection of books and I figure I will end up working my way through them but was wondering if there were a natural order to them?
I am just about to buy Master of Pamor (martial arts SciFi, the prefect combo!) and will get the Roy shorts (the teasers are very funny) but is there a chronolgy to the rest, does it matter?
Many thanks
SP
West Yorkshire UK
ps have you done any comic book work, if not would you (please) consider it...
SP --
ReplyDeleteI try to write most of my stuff so you can read it without sequencing, in any order. But anything that is part of a series, it's best to start with the first title, because there are backstory references in the later titles that have to be there. So in the case of Spindoc and The Forever Drug, read Spindoc first.
The Matador novels, only one of which is up as a ebook, I wrote out of chronological sequence in groups, the first three, then some prequels, then sequels. If you count The Omega Cage, there are nine, with two more in the pipeline. In chronological order -- not publication dates -- the books are: _The Musashi Flex, The Omega Cage, The 97th Step, The Man Who Never Missed, Matadora, The Machiavelli Interface, The Albino Knife, Black Steel and _Brother Death_(working title of which was _Mue_).
The Siblings of the Shroud and Churl are in the works.
One way or another, I intend to get all of those up as ebooks, though I couldn't tell you when I'll manage it, but as of now, only Cage is an ebook.