Late to the party...

Anyway, I loaded my novella up to Amazon, Nook and Smashwords. 

I use scrivener and it does a great job into compiling the work into a MOBI and EPUB format.  Sometimes you'll see the odd format blurp, like an extra blank line or something... but generally those two come out pretty well.

Smashwords... well, you dump your text file into their "meatgrinder" and it converts the file into all the formats they use... I've been extremely underwhelmed by the end results.

As for sales, the vast majority of mine have come from Amazon, maybe 10-15% from Nook... and not a darn thing from smashwords.  I'll still load to it, but basically as an afterthought.

I do everything from a first-person PoV.  Not by choice... it just... happens...

When I get stuck, or when I hit a point where the situation, scenery, or other characters feel wobbly or two dimensional... or when I just don't know how to get to the next milestone, I sit back and do a short story.

Here are the rules I use: 

1)  The story must be from another character's PoV.  A supporting character, an antagonist, etc.  It can also be from a "historical event" that affects the current situation.

2)  If the short takes place in the same time-frame as the WiP, then the narratives can only brush up against each other briefly.  I don't want to just tell the same scene from another point of view.

3)  The story MUST work as a stand-alone.  Knowledge of the other works might enrich the experience, elements might dovetail together... but it has to be done in a way that a person who's read nothing else in the storyverse can enjoy it without having read any other damn thing I've written.

This approach has helped me figure out where to go, solidify wobbly scenery, and flesh out supporting cast members.  It's also generated full-blown characters and events that the WiP "needed" without me knowing that element was missing.

Oh, and of course More Stories is another happy result.

Thanks DK, but my fresh look was cut short when the 2nd round of edits came in. So back in editing mode. Take a look at my new thread? Could use some of your insight.
 Consider yourself poked! And something is wrong talking to imaginary people? Since when? Is that why they stare at me at Starbucks?
Yeah! Ulfgeir! Doing a single writer's stadium wave from kitchen table. Best luck on sticking to it. Ain't that the truth, but I do enjoy editing too. I wish I could figure out how to do both--something new while editing something old. I either 1. don't have time or 2. I'm too inflexible...  It's good to have you post again, my friend! And how great to get second on your nod to the theme! Very exciting. I've a goal of getting into SFWA someday, but I've not proven to be a short story person or a dedicated regular submission-type person. We'll see. Someday...

I love the feeling that comes with fixing a scene that didn't quite work... figuring out what the hitch or burr was, and nailing it down... but the spellchecks/read-throughs and such are too damn much like work.    Still, it's the only way to get from A to B.  Slog on, MacDuffy!

Keep those original manuscripts and come back to them someday.  You'll be able to do a line item edit and revise and expand one day.  Even if you have to revamp most of the conversations.

Regardless, great work on your latest effort.  I hope it works out for you!




The Deposed King

What he said.  Never throw anything away.  Whether it's a story that doesn't work or just a scene that didn't fit, never throw anything away.  I've salvaged some good shorts and novellas from things that made for a narrative lump in the primary WiP.  Or you can find a way to salvage a broken story's key concept or characters and work them into something better later on.

Big, long slog to dial back Shaifennen's dialect and patter.  Aggravating but necessary.  On the up-side, it's letting me catch a number of other small errors as I go through it again.

I'd say you're off to a hell of a good start, just keep making "butt in chair" time happen.  In the meantime, I suggest getting "Scrivener."  Great program.  Any idea you get that you don't have time to sink your teeth into, just open a new project for it, slap down those basic concept or character sketches you have, and you can get back to them later without fear of forgetting the idea...

Most of the stuff I've seen over at Absolutewrite says "wait and watch for two years."  (Speaking of which, you could head over to absolutewrite and do a search for that publisher.  Might well be some other authors who've dealt with them.

Next thing is whether or not the CEO's issues are anything you'd be likely to deal with.  Is he an editor, or does he let his chief editor do the heavy lifting?

For me, scope is determined by the scope of the core concept of that particular story.  "Shaifennen and her sister encounter a local apex-predator and try not to get eaten," worked out as a long-running short, 7.7K or so.  I suppose it could be filled out to make a short novel... but 7.7 worked out just fine to tell that story, with a few hundred words worth of elements which are intended to dovetail with other stories.

Now, "Shaifennen finds a dig that will change the economic balance of power in her region and maybe even help her people reclaim their place in the stars" is gonna be three books at least. 

The initial find and immediate consequences are book one.  The less obvious consequences, reactions of other communities as they have the time to process what her find means to them socially and economically build the second book.  The endgame, the final conflicts and alliances which decide who will decide what direction the emerging civilization on her colony will take makes for the third.

Point being, I find it best to have had an idea where the story would ultimately go and allowed that to determine the length.  If a story had the possibility to be part of a more complex arc, I adjusted accordingly (as with the trilogy, which originally was going to be just one book.)  Flip side, I've had shorts grow to novellas, novels shrink to novellas and shorts because the core story was being overwhelmed by filler.  They dovetail with the rest of the stories but aren't dependent... but they really just didn't need to be longer to get where I wanted the story to end up.