Off Topic Stuff

I haven't found much to write about with respect to Disney related thoughts lately. I've had some other stuff on my mind, and found myself drawn to the ideas of self-publishing. I love books, and I love reading and writing, and I've kicked around the notion that perhaps I could start my own small press publishing operation.

With that in mind, and some thoughts about coming up with a different model, I started to research the self-publishing industry and some small presses, and was interested to find out how easy it is to publish your own work these days. Anyone can publish a book for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Sony e-Reader and other platforms by using services like Smashwords, CreateSpace, and Lightning Source. The up-front fees are manageable using these models, and the amount of money that is being generated from some mid-list authors using these models is impressive.

Dean Wesley Smith has a very informative blog which includes plenty of posts on self-publishing. J.A. Konrath is also blogging about his experiences becoming his own publisher. My friend Annetta Ribken also blogs about her experience in getting her collection of short stories published at WordWebbing and has plenty of useful information if you're inclined to do something like this.

I have a novel completed from several years back, and several others in varying stages of production. I also have a handful of fair to middlin' short stories. What I've noticed is that a lot of authors are publishing their short fiction and selling it electronically for $0.99, which to me seems like a lot for a single short story. Annetta Ribken collected her flash fiction short shorts in a book called Not Nice and Other Understatements and sells it for $2.99 through Kindle, or more for a print version at Amazon. So I'm debating whether, and when, I should begin trying to publish my own fiction. It's one thing to be an established author like Konrath or Smith, or even like Tim Pratt or Michael Jasper, and another to be unpublished and trying to break through.

We'll see what happens. In the absence of any Disney stuff that is intriguing me enough to blog about, this entry will have to suffice.

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