I’ve spent the entire week editing The Demons. It’s been a long process and it’s not over. Starting today is the read-out-loud part. That’s where we read the book together and edit anything that “sounds” awkward or confusing. At 134k words in length, this book will take all week and probably next weekend. I’ll need a Saturday or Sunday to do all the paperwork stuff, like finalizing the Amazon EBook upload, paperback, etc. As soon as I hit publish, I’ll have to complete the copyright office paperwork. It’s so close to being published that I can taste it! Book one out the door. I can hardly wait.
What’s Next?
You’re probably thinking I’m going to go on hiatus between books, but that’s not the plan. As soon as this one is published, I’ll be getting the next book for The Traveler series prepared for writing. I need to review book one, refine my notes for book two and get into the rough draft as quickly as possible. I’ll have to get a cover together as well. I meant to create a cover last month, but I haven’t had the time. The second Traveler book should only take me two months to write and publish (cross my fingers). Then it’ll be back to Escape from the Abyss, book two. That’ll take no less than three months if I can sustain a story that is nearly 130k in word length.
If I can sustain my writing back-to-back between these two series, I could produce three books for The Traveler series and two for Escape from the Abyss. That’s a good production rate. By next year, I should have four or five books for both series in the can. If The Traveler shakes out to be a 5 book series, then it’ll be practically done and I’ll probably just plow ahead and do the last book right away. If the story pans out, I’ll try to make it a ten-book series (could wind up as 7 or 8 books, who knows?). I don’t want to write one or two “filler” books just to make the numbers come out even. The story is the story and I want each book to be riveting. Otherwise, I run the risk of losing readers in the middle of the series.
The Escape from the Abyss series, however, has the potential to go long. I anticipate twenty books if the first one launches with high ratings. The story is big with a lot of characters. Even with books as long as 140k each, I could still fill them up with a focus on each major character per book as well as scenarios that I need to move the story along. The Tome has lots of hints that reveal how this story is going to unfold. Nothing too revealing, but enough to pique your interest. It’s going to be intense, as you’ll find out if you read the first book (The Demons) when it’s released. I plan to keep that intensity going throughout the series. Each book will reveal something that will just make my readers say: “Where’s the next book!”
Free Book Downloads
As you probably know, there’s a pop-up as well as a signup form on the right side of this blog where you can put your name on the newsletter list and download some free stuff (4 books, soon to include The Tome of Revelations). It’s all well and good, but… sigh. Amazon has finally cut off the Mobi formatted file. They’ve had one foot out of the Mobi format for some time. When they first switched their control panel, it disrupted my entire book publishing workflow. Now, the Kindle app on the iPad will refuse Mobi formatted files downloaded from the web. To make matters worse, the ePub format, which it requires, can be downloaded by the service I use, but the iPad downloader does not recognize the Kindle app as an app that can receive that file time. Grrr!
So, I suspect there are people that are having trouble downloading these free books and I intend to spend some of my quality writing time to stop and troubleshoot this issue. The books work if purchased from Amazon and it works if the file is emailed directly to the device (which can only happen if the person allows me to send the file directly to their Amazon Kindle email address. Not optimal). Therefore, once a book is on Amazon, it’s downloadable, but the newsletter freebies are not. I use StoryOrigin’s downloader to distribute my free books. They might have a workaround. Otherwise, I’ll have to deal with Amazon.
Another option at my disposal is to move some of these books out of the download list and just put them up on Smashwords. Probably the books that have been out for quite some time. That’ll depend on books that are called out inside of other books. I’ll have to edit the books to remove them or point people to Smashwords.
Ah, the work never ends.