The Bright Black Sea launched on schedule last night, as an ebook on Amazon for their minimum price of $.99 and on Smashwords.com for free. It should be available at Barnes & Noble, iBooks and Kobo within a week or so for free as well. Once that happens I'll point this out to Amazon and they have in the past matched their competitors price, so it could be free on Amazon (US) within a week to ten days as well. I hope $.99 won't break you, but neither Amazon nor I want you ticked off that you spent $.99 that you didn't have to, if you're willing to wait a bit.
I've now published three books, all of which I'm sharing rather than selling. I'm an amateur writer – I write for pleasure, not for money (not that there's much money in writing for most writers anyway), so publishing them for free is a natural way to complete a book. If I wanted to make money writing, I'd have to do a whole lot more than write. I'd need to identify and study the market and its bestselling books, craft a minor variation of those bestsellers and promote the snot out of it. All of which sounds very much like a job to me – one without the certainly of a paycheck every two weeks. So, instead, I simply write stories I want to read for fun and never ask myself "Will it sell?" or "How can I make it so that it might sell?" There's a niche for any work of art, and though some are pretty small, I think making my work just a (free) click away is the best, if not only way, of finding my readers and that niche. Without making it a job.
The three books I've published this year are the work of five years. I don't know what I'll write next. I have a few story ideas, but they're just the noses of stories, which are easy enough to come up with. It's getting the idea from the nose to the tip of its wagging tail, and then into words that takes some doing. Still, winter's coming and it'll be long and empty, so I'll have plenty of time to type from nose to tail, if the inspiration comes.
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