Spring is in the air, even in places where you didn't think anything could grow beyond wood chips, branches and leftover tree remnants.
How to write a swerve for a blog post: 1} start writing on a subject that you're extremely passionate about; 2} complete three complex paragraphs, including a disclaimer, before going off to run some errands; 3} realize that you've touched upon that topic a couple of months ago AND that in order to put a new twist on the topic you would have to go up to and straddle that line between keeping and blowing up your social circle; so 4} you need to come up with something that straddles the road between acceptance and offensiveness.
Which brings us to this particular post, which we hope will side-straddle that bridle path quite nicely.
I recently put an upcoming novella on the back burner while I get my finances straightened out (thanks USPS for doing such a bang up job with delivering my mail :/s). The odd thing about this novella compared to the one that I had released last year, was that creating the title, the long blurb, the short blurb and a basic outline for a cover, took me an accumulative total of ninety minutes to complete.
So with an excessive amount of time on my hands, I started working on another short story collection. To date I have eight full stories written. The main challenge for me was not coming up with an original story to write (anyone can do that), but taking a story that had a born on date somewhere in the painful growing years my writing life and reworking it using the vastly improved skill set of 2025 to make it palatable to the masses. Not an easy exercise.
As we began work on story #9 that had a born on date going back to the mid 2000's (yes, I started writing during GWB II), my mind started wandering around to what I had already published and what I could do with them*. After studying the small piles of books that I had, I zeroed in on my two very short short story collections and my failed attempt at writing a series.
*I should note that in mid-March I received an e-mail from Amazon about marketing my books and I was, and still am, giving it some serious thought. Hence the renewed focus of my published books.
The failed attempt at writing a series was easily solvable: unpublishing. I may get back to it someday, but I think at this point I've lost the basic plot of the entire series, and I just don't have the motivation to find it and continue (I do have a completed second volume that needs a ton of re-editing and a partially completed third).
The two short story collections, however, have presented me with another problem, but one with a potential solution. The main problem with the collections is that some of the added bonus stories/information contained within I'm no longer happy with, so the solution I came up with is to combine the two current e-books into one book carrying seven stories and tidy it up til it shines. Now I do want to keep the old print versions available, but I'm not sure if the Amazon overlords will allow it. I did post the question to the KDP Community forum, so I'm just waiting for it to be approved by the mods so that the community can offer me some sound advice. I should note that I have no problem in creating a new print version, but if I can avoid spending money unnecessarily, more power to me.
However, I am hedging my bets just the same, since with certain businesses (like a respectable self-publishing platform) I have a tendency to be overly-polite to the point of being a toady. So even if I get the answer I'm looking for, I may still start over from the beginning just to ease my conscience. It's funny, or ironic, that the amount of passiveness we display towards a digital company is often tied to how deeply we're enmeshed with that particular digital company (e.g. Apple & Google).
So this is where we stand with our writing: 1} came back to writing short stories like a man returning to a partner who has him wrapped around their dainty little finger with a silver bow; 2} decided to spruce up a couple of books by re-editing and re-releasing; 3} unpublishing a book that really should've never been published in the first place; and 4} getting all of my drakes bowing down to the ones who wear the pants so that I can drop a little under $500 to publish my novella.
I leave you with this very worthwhile link to the eternally optimistic Bob of Sponge whose Pants are Squared, to start off your Monday.
It would be like a brand-new book, so I don't see why you couldn't just do a new eBook with the two combined of the best stories without disrupting the two print books.
ReplyDeleteYes. This was the answer that the mod gave to my double posted question. Basically, the e-book is a separate entity from the print, so I do a new e-book I can keep the old print, so long as I make the distinction in the e-book that, I think. I need to read the links that were left with the answer to get a more thorough understanding. But it does me a good path to take to freshen things up.
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