Wow, where has the time gone. My last entry here was at the end of August last year. I had just begun the seven episode publishing adventure for Borrowed Souls. I had full intentions of updating every two or three weeks through that process, but something didn’t quite work out. I know exactly what it was, and it was myself and my overindulgent publication schedule.
My self-imposed deadline timetable dictated that I stay on a pretty rigorous three-week schedule for writing and editing each of the episodes. Granted, the episodes were smaller, around the 12,000 to 14,000-word count. But, regardless of the minimized story size, writing—rewriting—editing—rewriting, and finally editing again certainly takes a lot of effort. It left me with very little time to do much else, so the blogging took a back seat.
But, I’m here now, and I’m hoping to right the ship. All seven episodes of Borrowed Souls have published, as well as has the omnibus. And now I’m about to begin to focus my time on a new project. This new project is going to be a little bit different from what I’ve written before. It is back into the science fiction arena, but it is heavily laced with an espionage/thriller motif. Think Jason Bourne in outer space. It’ll be a Spi-Fi! You like that? I think I just made up a new genre.
With this new story, I will be writing a targeted 70,000-word novel that I’m will initially submit into the Kindle Scout program. What is Kindle Scout you ask? Well, it is a program that Amazon puts on that allows independent authors like myself to write and submit a story for publishing consideration. Once I submit the story, it will be put up on their website for the general public to read a short excerpt and vote whether or not they would like to see it published. It will stay on their website for 30 days, taking in has many votes as possible. In the meantime, their editors will review the book to see if it would be a fit in their publishing catalog. Then, at the end of the 30 days, they’ll tally the votes garnered by the reading public and combine them with the comments from their internal editors. They will either offer a publishing contract or opt to decline the title. Obviously, I’m hoping for the acceptance and the contract.
The contract will not be enormous, but it will be a published book, carried by a real publisher. A royalty advance is part of the deal, but it’s not enormous. And if I recall, the contract is for five years, renewable based on book sales. Either way, I think it’s a win-win. I will get a slightly lower royalty cut as opposed to publishing it by myself, but I will get the assistance of a publisher for marketing and promoting. If it does get declined, I have hopefully made it enough of an impression with some of the voting public that they will tune into Paul B Kohler, Author, and pick up the title after it goes live under my own imprint.
So, here’s my proposal: I’m going to write a blog post every two or three days outlining my progress on the project. Some blog posts might be longer than others, and I will certainly be talking a lot about my approach to this new book, as well as my writing process. So, I hope you continue to tune back in and follow along with this next publishing adventure I’m embarking on.