you know i love it when you talk dirty to me
I certainly understand your predicament. I've got a novel that people like, but don't like the escape that kills 150 people in an airliner. Especially when there's a crash days after I've submitted it.
It's one of the reasons I converted my Flyover War on-line project from a "gritty, ripped from the headlines" thriller to a parody. It's much more difficult to write than a straight thriller, but it has better potential in todays market.
I'm still looking into ways to monetize the project, so I don't have any good answers for you.
You never know what can happen with a 99 cent Kindle story, though. Look how many unknown musicians became known after a 99 cent song on iTunes. A bit of cover art and a compelling 30 second video on YouTube and you never know.
One of my Facebook friends is a multi-published author with a lot of stuff in bookstores, but his steadiest income is from a couple of Kindle only books that sell at the rate of a hundred copies, or more, a week. (Heck, it might even be a hundred a day. It's been a while since I chatted with him and I don't remember the specifics.)
Yeah, Kindle's something I've been thinking about a lot. BUT, I do think you need to have a name and following to hit it big or it's just as iffy as anything.
My gut reaction is you should never give up. You're probably only considering these options out of frustration, not because you've exhausted all possibilities for this story.
I'd vote for finding new markets and relaxing your restriction against trying to sell to markets you've sold to before.
After all, you can always give up two years from now.
True. What's the half-life on a story anyway? Five years? Ten? I guess for a futuristic it's when you hit that particular moment in the future.
You've sold a bunch of stories here and there, no? Don't you have rights back to some of them yet? Couldn't you sell a group of 8 or for $1.99 or .99? Probably one story would be .49, usually.
Self-publishing isn't a cop out. I'd kill to have some available stories to test out self-publishing with. In fact, I'm writing one that I hope I will finish mid-December. An erotic novel in second person, love story... everything I'd love to write but never, in a million years, would fit anywhere.
Go for it!
Hi Betsy:
I have a nearly completed novel and the HERO is a bombmaker with the IRA. The villian is a priest who lies to a woman about the hero (who at that point is in prison). ANYHOO, 9/11 happened. There was NO WAY that a hero, even if he believed in a righteous cause, would EVER be accepted. So I shelved it. Since then, I occasionally take it out and know something is "there." So maybe someday.
Futuristic . . . well, seems to me you can get away with more. But there's also the way this entire country forgets tragedy when the next one occurs. Give it time and . . . it certainly would be given a fighting chance, I think.
E
Commenting by HaloScan
