STEPPING INTO THE E-WORLD

by Earl Staggs

After seeing so many success stories from authors in the incredibly rapid growth of epublishing, I’m finally taking the plunge. I’m a few steps behind a lot of others, but that’s typical for me. I do a lot of looking before I leap.

I’d love to make my novel MEMORY OF A MURDER available for ereaders, but I can’t. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

For now, two of my short stories have been accepted by Untreed Reads, a forerunner in the digital publishing industry. They’ve been doing it for a number of years and publish novels, novellas, and short stories in all genres. Their products are made available worldwide for Kindle, Nook, and every other reader out there.

I could have converted my stories to digital form on my own and uploaded them to Amazon/Kindle and other estores. Learning how would take time as would actually doing the uploading. I’ve heard horror stories from some who have gone that route. Some have paid someone else to do the conversion. Specialists have emerged to do that. I don’t know what they charge, but that would be the easiest way to go.

But then, there’s the promotion, advertising, and beating the bushes to sell my work after it’s available to the ereading public. I’d have to do that myself, which would take more time and, most likely, more expense. My head aches just thinking about all I’d have to do to attract buyers. My whole body aches when I think about all the time it would away from my writing.

That’s why I decided to let Untreed Reads do the converting and publishing. I'll still do a lot of promotion and bush beating on my own, but they’ve mastered the process and know what they’re doing. I'll have less time away from my writing, a process I’m still trying to master. Maybe I’d make more money per sale if I did it all myself, but I’m convinced their established network will result in more total sales that I could possibly achieve on my own.

Anyway, that’s the plan. We’ll see how it goes.

As for getting my novel converted, my publisher is not interested in doing ebooks at this time. When I approached him about doing it myself, he made it clear I could not. The terms of the contract state ebook rights are his, not mine, and the contract does not have an expiration date. When I signed that contract, who knew ebooks would take off into the stratosphere as they have? Maybe some people knew, but not me.

For now, I’ll continue to make my backlist of short stories available in eform, maybe put a bunch of them together as a collection.

At the same time, I’ll be searching for a loophole to get out of the contract for my novel.

We’ll see how THAT goes, too.



Earl Staggs
MEMORY OF A MURDER earned thirteen Five Star reviews online at Amazon and B&N.
Want a signed copy? Write me. Read Chapter One at http://lifeloom.com/III1Staggs.htm