Happy New Year! It's been a while since I posted. I've been very busy with work and haven't even had a chance to start writing my next book. But I have continued to binge-watch Doctor Who!
This weekend, I'll be at Chattacon. This is a nerdy sci-fi and fantasy convention for nerdy nerds like me (ie, the cool people). I left it too late to get a proper table, but the Chattanooga Writers' Guild are kindly allowing me to share their table. I'll just take a few books tonight (Friday), but I'll probably monopolize the whole table with my 22 books on Saturday. If you're local to Chattanooga, TN, then maybe I'll see you there!
So, the Doctor Who stuff first...
I'm now about to start Peter Capaldi's third season. Binge-watching like this makes it easier to see the highs and lows of the show. Most recently, I enjoyed Into the Dalek, Time Heist, Listen, and Mummy on the Orient Express. Capaldi's first episode, Deep Breath, had a very cool Jules Verne-style android with half a face missing so we could see his whirring gears and cogs.
Kill the Moon was a very silly idea (the moon is in fact a giant egg about to hatch) but they very nearly had me convinced, and the scene of the moon hatching and breaking apart in the daytime sky was quite well done. But then they ruined it. "Oh, look, there's a new moon!" Yes, apparently, the creature laid another egg before floating off into deep space. It was the same size moon as the previous one, which begs so many questions. For instance, "How can a creature that just hatched from a moon-sized egg immediately lay another egg the same size?"... and, "What kind of creature lays an egg straight after it's born?" and so on. That kind of throwaway resolution is incredibly sloppy writing.
I really liked the opening episode of the second season, The Magician's Apprentice, where Davros gets to regenerate courtesy of the Doctor. Opening his eyes for the first time in the show's history was brilliant. I've always enjoyed watching Davros and the Doctor talking. It reminds me a little of Luke Skywalker and his scenes with the Emperor.
But most of the second season has been kind of boring and silly. The zygon double-episode story was dull apart from the Doctor's long speech scene, and the episode with the sandmen was just awful. Heaven Sent was great, and the follow-up Hell Bent was a weird mix, with an enjoyable glimpse of an old-style TARDIS, but mostly a big old mess. In this one the Doctor admitted he'd "gone too far," and ironically that's pretty much what the writers did with this whole hybrid and Gallifrey and Clara Oswald thing. (I like Clara; I just felt she stayed a few episodes too long.)
Shockingly, I only have one more season to watch (plus Christmas specials) before I come full circle to the Jodie Whittaker Doctor, who isn't yet free on Amazon Prime. I've see her episodes already, but I'd like to see them again for the sake of completedness. I do have the special anniversary biopic movie to watch, though; I really enjoyed An Adventure in Space and Time the first time I saw it.
Now, speaking of adventures in space and time... (see what I did there?)
Serializing my sci-fi Sleep Writer books
The title of this post claims I'll publish 15 books in seven months. How can this be possible when my "norm" is three books a year? Well, it's possible because, for some time now, I've been hankering to write "short reads." On Amazon, a short read is a book that's less than 100 pages, so about half or a third of the length of a normal book. This is exactly what I want for my Sleep Writer stories. With those books, I can make a story last a full novel, but I find it's better to tell a shorter story and then move on to another. Warp Giants, the fourth book, contains three linked novellas, and I think it works well.
With that in mind, I have six novellas lined up (80 pages each, like in Warp Giants). I plan to publish them one by one every few weeks. They'll be separate from the main books, a series called "Sleep Writer Journal" – available on Kindle Unlimited and published regularly. When I have three of them done, I'll put them together into a book, and that would be Book 5 of the main Sleep Writer series. And so on.
This got me thinking. Why not start off by splitting up my current books as well? I could split the first book in half and publish those two "novellas" as Parts 1 and 2 of the Sleep Writer Journal, and so on. It would look something like this:
From Book 1, Sleep Writer 1. Into the Wormhole 2. The Cosmic Ark
From Book 2, Robot Blood 3. Nanobot Warriors 4. Deadly Backlash
From Book 3, Caleb's World 5. Lurkers in the Tunnels 6. The Place of Make-Believe
From Book 4, Warp Giants 7. The Flying Saucer 8. Day of the Mind Swap 9. Extinction Event
Some of these are working titles, but you get the idea. Luckily, all the books split quite nicely at suitable places, and I can always adjust the text slightly so it reads better at the start or end. Since these are already written, I can put these out in quick succession starting February 1st. The second part will be out on February 15th. And so on.
While these are publishing every couple of weeks, I'll be busy writing new stuff. I already have Parts 10-15 planned out, and while each is a standalone story, they will end with a little nudge toward the next. I'll eventually catch up to myself, at which point I might put out a new one every three or four weeks.
I'm super excited about this. I've been wanting to write in a more "serialized" manner for a long time. Writing full-length books is great and all, and I'll continue to do so for Island of Fog, but Sleep Writer will be serialized first and then turned into books as I go along. So in that sense there's no difference in the output -- it's just that individual parts of Sleep Writer will be available earlier.
But what's each novella worth? Maybe not as much as you think...
This is like writing a "season" of Doctor Who. Each story is standalone but perhaps with an arcing thread that links two or three novellas together. Serialized fiction has been around a long time (Charles Dickens, for instance), and there seems to have been a shift toward it lately, though for different reasons. I've read accounts of how authors are frustrated with the readers' expectation of low-priced books, and I understand that fully; after all, it seems people are happy to spend $3.00 on a coffee (or even as a fee in an ATM machine) but often balk at paying that for a book, short or otherwise. Amazon sees a 100-page short read as something to be read in two hours. Isn't that worth $2.99?
I've seen cases where authors are charging $4.99 for an even shorter piece, and readers are enjoying the "one-a-month" availability. Some complain, of course. Personally, I would never try to charge more than $2.99 for a novella when one of my full novels cost $3.99 or $4.99.
At this price point, the author takes 70%. But if the book is priced below $2.99, then the author only takes 35%. So, for a $0.99 book, the author's royalty is basically 35 cents. For this reason, pricing a book at $0.99 is NOT a light choice. Consider:
List price is $2.98 = royalty is $1.05
List price is $2.99 = royalty is $2.09
What a huge difference that penny makes!
I'm not sure yet what my novellas will be priced at. Certainly no more than $2.99. Maybe $1.99 so that two parts will be the same price as one book? I'd only get $1.39 in total rather than $2.09, but I'd gain Kindle Unlimited readers, which will more than make up for it.
What are YOUR thoughts about book pricing? Do you have self-imposed limits for unknown authors? Do you care how much a book is if it's an author you know and enjoy and have full expectations of a good read? Still, what would be your limit? I understand the "sweet spot" for higher-priced books is $4.99. I've also heard that $0.99 books can seem "too cheap" and probably not worth the bother (in other words, you get what you pay for).
Any thoughts about my serialized fiction idea and price points would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Comment by ANONYMOUSon Tuesday, January 29, 2019...
I like the idea. Especially about splitting up the previous books and making them all available on Kindle unlimited since that's what I have.
Comment by KEITH ROBINSONon Tuesday, January 29, 2019...
