Two of my beta readers have finished their read throughs, two more are in midstream, and the last three have yet to start (so far as I know). The lion’s share of the feedback thus far has been positive, which of course makes me happy, but I’ve gotten plenty of suggestions too, all of which have plenty of merit. All the same, the revision list for Alex is shaping up to be a hell of a lot shorter than it was for Children (which is no surprise, given the vastly decreased length and complexity of Alex). That is a relief. Not sure how long revision will take, but if it’s more than a month or two, I’ll be surprised.
Which means it’s time to start thinking seriously about the rollout plan. I know I’ll be publishing on Kindle, and most likely going through Smashwords as well – primarily because it will get me on Nook and Sony. Smashwords has a lot of cool options for authors – the ability to create coupons and have sales, to set your price as “let the reader set their price”, and other things – but I get the feeling that books there may struggle with a reputation as… to put it kindly… underdogs.
The honest truth is that a number of the submissions there are not really finished products (or at least, they didn’t read that way to me). They read more like first drafts, and for some of them, that’s being generous. I have a feeling one of two things will happen when I publish there: if my work is of higher quality, it will stand out (but most likely everyone who publishes there has the same thought), or, my work will just sink into the mire of thousands of unproofed and unedited books, never to be seen or heard from again.
I do plan to as much as I can to keep Alex‘s head above water. I’ve started doing some research on what other e-authors have done, and have several ideas of my own. The exciting part is that for once, I don’t feel like making these sorts of plans are putting the cart before the horse. Yes, I still have a lot of revision to do. But it’s a manageable amount of work, and when it’s done, the next step is publication. So getting the plan together certainly seems like the right step at this stage of the game.