Deadline met

 

Back in October I set the end of the year as a deadline for getting three of my manuscripts re-formatted and posted as free downloads on this blog.

Given that I have had a bit of writer's block for the last couple of days if was able to do the needed work on Roseate Dawn. This is the story which earned me the princely sum of EUR 3,58 from Kindle Direct Publishing in two years of self-publishing invisibility. The title change from 'Golden Dawn' I shall implement on Amazon in due course, since Greek right-wing hooligans are unlikely to find my story of any interest!

I am increasingly reading articles questioning the entire concept of self-publishing, pointing out how little chance the lone author in his garret has of gaining a readership, let alone earning money. There is still a need for facilitators, even if they may have roles subtly different from those taken by staff in the conventional publishing houses.

At the same time I am struck by developments in the audio-visual entertainment sector, in particular the encouragement by Netflix of 'binge viewing'. This exploits brilliantly our innate fondness for long-form storytelling, for seriality.

My own habit is to follow a series on novels in a binge of reading, over the holidays the eight books by L. J. Sellers. Kindle e-books enable this kind of concentrated indulgence; rarely in a bricks-and-mortar bookshop would an entire series be found on the shelves. But even Amazon has a weakness in respect of multi-volume collections. Too rarely is it clear in which order the stories are meant by the writer to be read for the maximum enjoyment. There is room, in my opinion, for a web application devoted exclusively to anthologies to enable discoveries in this regard.

Not that this would help me personally. The three manuscripts I have posted are not by any means sequential, even if the storytelling invariably features recurrent leitmotifs... okay, fetishes.