Yesterday afternoon I sat down and began the project of dividing the epic (not to say “endless”…) Fire-Rider novel into chunks that can be serialized on Amazon. At the end of the day, I had 19 “bookoids,” as I’ve taken to calling them. That doesn’t count the front and back matter.
Our porn king’s bookoids, which he tries to post daily, are 5000 words apiece. Fire-Rider serials average a little over 8,000 words, with the shortest in the 5,000-word range.
To my delight, I found the book deconstructs beautifully into perfect little stories, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And strangely, the format seems to make the saga more interesting, more engaging. Instead of feeling like oh, God, here’s another chapter plod…plod…plod…plod, your sense is w00t! I’ve finished this and now I get to start a new one!
Rather than wondering when is this ever going to end?, you find yourself wanting to move forward to the next stage.
In the morning I talked with my graphic designer — the artist, not the e-book dude. He really likes the idea.
He feels we can use the existing cover image, which is extremely cool IMHO, as a kind of “brand” identity for the entire series and, without a lot more expense, adjust cover lines and a few graphic details to produce a unique cover for each bookoid.
This afternoon I’m going to divvy up the MS into the 19 segments. With the introduction and the afterword, the total will create 21 items to post on Amazon, but I think I also will put the intro (at least) and maybe the afterword online through Plain & Simple Press, giving me something freely accessible to post on Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn. Assuming that doesn’t violate Amazon’s ToS. If it does, then Amazon doesn’t get those two items; WordPress does.
Tomorrow — or Saturday, since tomorrow and Friday will be busy — I’ll download and install Scrivener and begin learning how to use it to create e-books. That or something like it is what the Porn King is using: we’re told he farms out some of the content production (“writing” may not be le mot juste) to freelances and uploads the things to Kindle himself.
Dang! I’m excited!
It will be interesting to see how this goes. Good luck!
This is so cool. You could get rich and finally dump those teenage writers.
Best of luck with Fire Rider.