Ebook Updates
by wjw on June 27, 2011
All three Maijstral books have been uploaded to Smashwords.
Smashwords pretty much requires that books be submitted in Microsoft Word, a program I’ve never used because it was designed by aliens intent on world conquest. But I’m better at Word by now, and I’m happy to report that my Smashwords .epub formats are now much more successful. Pretty, even.
I’ve uploaded a newer, cleaned-up version of The Crown Jewels, which has none of the formatting errors seen in the earlier version. Enjoy it in good health.
This is probably a place as good as anywhere to ask this question (pardon me if I’m using this post for my own intent): Why aren’t there more short story Ebook collections of writers available?
This has bugged for some time now. On the one hand, I often hear that it’s pretty hard even for moderately successful writers to sell a short story collection to a publisher, yet I don’t see (as I was expecting) more and more authors bringing out their stories in Ebook collections themselves.
Is it a rights question, or do all the writers hold out in the hope to one day sell a (or further) collection(s) to a dead-tree publisher? Because, if you’re going with Ebooks, you don’t have to care about size anymore. The writers could bring out a massive tomes that are usually reserved to only the most successful writers, or they could publish their stories in chronologically sorted volumes, starting with their first published story and each volume covering 5 to 10 years (depending on output).
Is it just a pipe dream?
Good move, Walter. I hope this works out well for you.
I just bought all three Maijstral series books from Smashwords.
One mild nit to pick — I notice that the mobi format is not available for the Maijstral books on Smashwords. Was this on purpose? It seems odd because Mobi format has always been an option for my previous Smashwords purchases. (I read primarily on the Kindle at present.) It isn’t any big deal to me as I will use Calibre to convert the format, but format availability might be a stopper for some folks.
FYI. I purchase eBooks preferentially from DRM free sites (Baen WebScriptions, Smashwords, etc.). I have been reading eBooks for over eight years now. (Bought the Dread Empire’s Fall Series in eReader (Palm) format some years ago!) I have changed my primary reading device three times over those years, and I had to go to the trouble of breaking the DRM on a lot of books just move my library forward. I refuse to be tied to any particular format or reader. There may be a few other folks like me out there.
Keep on chooglin’,
-CW
Scotoma, I can’t answer for other writers, but a goodly selection of my own stories are available electronically. A number can be had from Fictionwise, and my collection The Green Leopard Plague is also available as an ebook. I’ll get the rest up as soon as I can.
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