From The North Rim 47

From The North Rim 46 From The North Rim 45

From The North Rim 47

If any of the new readers want to catch up, the newsletter is archived on the Flatlanders site: Flatlanders – science fiction novel (wordpress.com)

I mentioned writers having so many opportunities nowadays. I was referring to get published, not necessarily to get paid. That’s a whole other story. Right now I’m interested in getting as much of my stuff out there that I can. The money will come later. So I have availed myself of yet another opportunity. I’ve been reading that episodic fiction is the future. It’s also the past. In the past, many books were published in installments in newspapers and periodicals, such as The Saturday Evening Post.

This style of publishing is coming into vogue once again. Segments of stories that are formatted to be easily accessed by phone and quickly read in short chunks. In an earlier newsletter I wrote about one such endeavor I had posted a novella to – ‘Clans’, on Readict. After having read my novella on their platform in order to see how it looked, I chose another to read. Wanted to check out the competition. As I said before, the selection is mostly romances, so it took a while to settle on one. I was pleasantly surprised by ‘Minute Zero – Stronghold’, by Chris Jayne. It is very well written, an exciting adventure filled with fascinating characters. It is the first book of a series. Many authors use this marketing strategy – offer the first book in a series for free in the hopes to hook the reader into buying the following books. Which I probably will, at some point. The Readict site is a good place to check out new authors. If you don’t like their story, merely quit reading. You’ve lost nothing but time. If you do like it, the first book is free. It’s up to you if you want to purchase additional books.

I recently learned of another such platform where you can read books on your phone – Kindle Vella.

Kindle Vella logo – Google Search

The program is still in beta. But they are collecting material for the launch, which might yet be several months. I have set up an account there, and submitted the first 2 installments of my novella ‘The Dead Sister’. Here is the pitch: “You lose all track of time when you’re dead. What you don’t lose is the rage.” The spirit of a young woman lures her sister to the scene of the crime to find out what happened to her. I have arranged for it to be posted in 6 installments. I’ll let you know how it goes.

From the bookshelf of goodread’s Indie Authors at the Round Table