One of the positive things about owning the content of your novel is that you neither have to explain or provide justification for decisions you make concerning it. And that is fair, considering that you are the sole stakeholder in the creation and publication process. While it is true that Amazon (thru Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP))—or similar service–provides the means for publication, KDP is just a tool whose services you pay for with a cut of your royalties. In this way they are no different than a vanity press publisher, albeit one with a global reach.
With that said, I’ll get to the reason I am posting today.
Earlier this month I decided to publish Any Tomorrow as a paperback, in addition to an eBook. Although the formatting process isn’t technically difficult, having to touch the contents again brought up some issues that, as an experienced technical writer, I just couldn’t ignore.
First of all, Any Tomorrow is a long book, depending on the format, close to nine hundred pages. That triggered a number of technical issues with KDP. KDP has a page count cap that depends on the physical size of the paperback (i.e., 6×9 inches is favored). For Any Tomorrow, I had to move it up to 7×10 inches, single spaced, to get an acceptable page count (580). The 7×10 format, however, triggered other issues that would either limit the market to just Amazon.com or make the ratio between selling price and royalty unacceptable. Amazon not only sells directly from its website but is also marketing to brick and mortar bookstores through its “expanded distribution” program. To participate in this, I’d have to set the sell price at something north of $22 a copy–which I think is out of reach for most casual readers–garnering a royalty of only about a dollar a copy.
The second thing is that while working with the text, I couldn’t help but notice that there were some areas that might be improved upon. Other than straightforward technical grammatical issues, in the years since Any Tomorrow was first published, I’ve both grown as a writer and my understanding of the physical manifestations of evil in our world have changed. When I first published in the eBook format, I convinced myself that what I had written was good enough, but faced with the prospect of a “real” book, I can’t let it stand as it is. While I firmly believe that eBooks will eventually prove to be the primary publishing mode in the future, a physical book has the lure of a lover to whom I must remain true.
And that is the reason I chose to unpublish Any Tomorrow. I need to revisit the story, to make it stronger and more relevant. Owning the content will let me do this. Once I have thoroughly reviewed and updated Any Tomorrow, I will publish it first as a paperback, then as an eBook. In the meantime, I have another novel that I want to publish. This one is shorter and as such will be easier to work with.
Looking forward, with luck I should have ten to fifteen good years left for writing. I want to make the most of them. Even if no one ever buys my books or ever reads this blog, as I pass into obscurity, I want to know that I wrote something worth reading and followed through from inception to publication. Moreover, I controlled the process and that the decisions were mine.
Reach out to me by leaving a comment or emailing me at kevin.fraleigh@anytomorrow.com.
©Copyright Kevin Fraleigh 2019
