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It’s just over a year since I bought a Kindle reader so ebooks are still somewhat new to me. Though I’ll never completely abandon print books, I’ve adapted quickly to this technological advance and regularly download new books to my collection – probably more than I’d have bought if they were paper copies. I love being able to read several books at once without needing a rucksack to cart them around with me. As a reader it’s like turning me loose in a sweet shop when I was ten years old (or even now, for that matter).
I’m also excited about ebooks from a writer’s perspective. I know we have a couple seasoned ebook authors on our site so what I’ve been learning won’t be news to them but it is to me so I’m babbling on about it.
So how do ebooks benefit writers? Obviously there is less financial outlay to publish an ebook than a print one. The book is also instantly available and eliminates the need to ship stock to distributors or post online orders to customers. These are considerations for traditional publishers and writers who self-publish. Ebooks can also be priced lower than print books, encouraging readers to buy them.
But there’s one benefit that really struck me: it’s cost effective and practical to publish works of any length. This opens up so many possibilities. Works that might have been too long or too short to release in print form can easily be published as ebooks.
I first began to think about this when I read a couple of Nina Croft’s novella length books (I started with Chosen). I did some lateral thinking and realised that there are wonderful possibilities. I have several short stories that had been printed individually in magazines, websites and a couple anthologies and I didn’t have any plans to submit them to any other publications. So their ‘lives’ may have been over or I could have waited until I had three times as many stories lying around and produced a print collection. But I decided to take advantage of this aspect of epublishing and Dancing Shadows, Tramping Hooves was born. It’s short enough to read at one sitting and there’s a place for that in the ebook world. Of course, I’m excited about my own ebook but I’m also excited about the opportunities epublishing offers all writers of short stories and novellas.
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