I’ve been writing, more or less for a living, for more than 20 years. I’ve written for magazines, books and newspapers. But this week I’m trying something new. I’m self-publishing a short story through Kindle.
The publishing world is changing — daily and dramatically. The digital age has given more and more people a forum to say what’s on their minds. Blogging has in many senses of the word become the new journalism. News stories break on Twitter or Facebook.
I remember, in the early 90s, talking about the idea of digital newspapers. We talked how some day people would read their newspapers with “liquid ink” and get their information on small tablets that could fold up. What was amazing about this conversation, in hindsight, was that the newspapers I worked for weren’t even using digital workflows to produce the print paper. That came a couple years later. At the time we were still laying out the pages by hand and I mean stripping up cold type for those of you with a printing background. I probably still have a copy knife around here somewhere. Today, those ideas are more real than I think any of us imagined at the time.
Any writer who has ever tried to get a book or a magazine article published will tell you that you have to deal with more rejection letters than you could ever imagine. Sure, there are the occasional lucky ones who get a book deal and a best seller on their first try. That is definitely not the norm. Most writers will tell you they have files of curt rejection letters, often into the triple digits.
And that brings me to Kindle. Many writers are turning to self-publishing their books and looking for their niche markets online. There are several options, but Amazon’s Kindle seems to be the biggest. And they make it very easy to do. There have been some real success stories on Kindle, too. A few authors have sold millions of copies. Most of the Kindle ebooks, though, like everything else get a small following.
So, I’m experimenting. I have a book manuscript completed and waiting in the wings to be published. I’m not 100 percent sure I’m ready to go the self publishing route for it…yet. So, I’ve just made a short story of mine available through Kindle for download. It is part of the Withrow Key short story series from my website. These are adventure short stories with a scuba diving theme. The entire series is set on Withrow Key, a fictional island in the Florida Keys.
You can read earlier stories on my website. But, if you want to read the latest story in the series, called Sea Monster,you will have to download it from Kindle. It is priced at 99 cents. If it were printed in book form, it would be about 50 pages.
If you do buy it, or borrow if from the Kindle Lending Library, let me know what you think of the process. Of course, I want to know if you liked the story as well, but I’m genuinely interested in the process and the convenience of reading and downloading.
As a side note, my three previous adventure novels — all with a diving theme — are also available through Kindle as well as in print. You can find the direct links from my website, or on the Sea Monster page on Kindle. Just click on my name.