Friday, May 24, 2013

Serial Killer...

There's been a lot of backlash against romance author's writing books as serials, specifically if they are short stories.  There's this belief that we're doing it for money, to bilk readers in some way.  That couldn't be further from the truth.

Here are my reasons for writing books as serials:
1) I work... a lot.  If I wrote a full length novel, instead of doing installments, I would only be posting new work on Amazon once every four to six months.  By dividing this up into serials, I can post more often and having more titles up there makes me more discoverable.
2) Discoverability is not about making money.  I don't write to earn a living.  It'd be nice if I could, but the bottom line is that I write because I love to, and knowing that people are reading my work and enjoying it is the greatest feeling in the world.
3) Pricing-- I don't price my serials the same way I price a full length novel.  My conscience (and yes I do have one) will not allow me to charge anyone $2.99 for such a short work.  I price all of my serial installments at $0.99 and take advantage of every free promo day that I can get Amazon to give me.  Unfortunately, a book has to be up at least 90 days on Amazon KDP Select before you can publish it anywhere else and have Amazon price match it to free.
4)Pricing Part B-- I price my serials at the lowest price that Amazon will allow me to have.  I can't make them any cheaper, or I would.

I say all this because a lot of people seem to take issue with the serial format, thinking that they are being jipped in some way.  Once the series is complete, I will compile them into an anthology and post that anthology for a reasonable price, typically the same price that a lot of authors take onto a single installment of their serials, so people have the option of waiting for that to be released.  I don't price my work cheaply because I don't have faith in it.  I try to price my work affordably because, again, I don't write for the love of money.  If I can use writing to keep a roof over my head and enough ramen noodles in the kitchen to survive, then I'm happy.  I don't want anyone to not read my books because my ego demanded that I charge a certain amount.

I hope this doesn't sound like a rant.  It isn't intended that way.  Just addressing some of the criticism of the shorter books and hopefully allaying some misconceptions.

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