Divine Intermission now available on Amazon!

For the two or three people who may have been anticipating its arrival, the wait is over: book one of Divine Intermission is officially live and available as an ebook exclusively on Amazon's Kindle Store. That means if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow the book at no cost. If you're not a Prime member, you can still get the book for a mere 99 cents.

In other news, I ran across this article (via Io9)about Amanda Hocking and how she is "still the exception" in the publishing biz. Anyone who reads about indie publishing should know that she is an indie author who, after selling over a million copies of her work, signed a $2 million book deal with St. Martin's Press. The author of the article goes on to describe "hybrid authors," or those who are at once published by legacy houses while continuing to self publish their own work.

What we have to remember is that Amanda Hocking's experience couldn't have happened five or six years ago. Sure, JA Konrath was blazing a trail along with a few others.

But when we look at Amanda Hocking or John Hartness or Kerry Schafer, we can't get jaded and say, "Oh, they're exceptions to the rules. Indie authors getting signed to publishing houses? That's not how it should be."



We have to stop thinking in terms of, "This is not how it's supposed to happen." Instead, we need to frame our experiences and the experiences of others in the indie publishing industry in terms of What Is Possible.

Is it possible to write and publish my own book? Yes.

Is it possible to reach a global audience with my fiction? Yes.

Is it possible that a publisher might want to relaunch my work one day? Yes.

Is it possible that I might be more successful without that publisher's help?...

What do you think?

How Much Should Ebooks Cost?

Fact 1: 

Tyra Banks has a new book coming out in September.

The list price for the hardcover edition is $17.99, but is discounted to $11.00.

The digital version is a penny less than the print version: $10.99.

Fact 2:

Stephen King's new novella, "Mile 81", is available September 1st as an ebook priced at $2.99.

His next full length novel, due in November, is $18.42 with an ebook version priced at $16.99. 

I've been struggling with ebook price-setting for a few months, now.

When I published "Prismatica" online, it was 99 cents. But then I decided to publish a single short story.

Having that short story sitting next to the collection, which was about ninety pages long, I couldn't help but think that "Prismatica" needed to be a little more expensive than the story.

Some people think 99 cents is too much to spend on a short story and I say, "No, it isn't." A short story still takes time and effort to write, edit, and format. At the very least, we're talking about a day or two, unless you're a really sharp writer with tons of time on your hands.


A "short story" is not a "cheap story".

And an ebook is not necessarily a "cheap" book.

I don't necessarily like the price points shown in the examples above. My knee-jerk reaction to an ebook price of $10.99 is, "GREED!" And to see my own literary idol selling his new novel as an ebook at $16.99 makes me want to cry. Yet, considering the amount of human contact that goes into the print versions of these books, I can understand how a publisher might have to use higher priced ebooks to recuperate expenses and get manufactures compensated.

Indie authors and readers complain about these prices and profess that the cheaper, the more successful. Sure, in some cases, this is true.

But we have to be careful with our pricing. Some people think that cheap ebooks are gold, that the only way to indie publish is to do it at a discounted rate. And to a degree, I understand that line of thought. Indie writers don't have much going for them, so using a low price point is another way to get a foot in the reader's door.

At the same time, I have to ask: are we selling ourselves short? And at the same time, possibly reinforcing a stereotype that indie writers aren't worth much? We spend as much, if not more, time working on our pieces and getting them to readers. If anything, our work should be priced higher.

It's not realistic, though, and I won't be changing the price of "Prismatica" to $15 anytime soon.

Do I think legacy publishers could lower the prices of their ebook offerings? Sure.

But do I think indie authors should keep theirs so low? I'm not quite sure.It's an evolving market and I'm eager to see where we are a year from now.

Let me know what you think. This is one of those issues that keeps boiling all over the internet and I'd love to hear where you stand.