Today I celebrate the posting of my new free short story, the one I wrote about Chase, one of the side characters in UNRIDDEN (Book 1, Studs in Spurs series). My short, 8 SECOND RIDE, is in the All Romance eBooks .com Wildfire Newsletter. I’ve posted the link below.
Today I also can’t help but ponder many things. There has been a firestorm of late in the romance industry, spurred by an RWA (Romance Writers of America) controversy regarding the legitimacy of ePublishing that encompasses both the authors and the publishers themselves. If you’re unaware of all the drama, count yourself lucky. I’ve spent far too much time and energy stressing about it myself. But I have to wonder, at a time when internet sources had been accurately reporting the death of Michael Jackson for hours while my respected ABC NY affiliate prime time TV news broadcast was still telling us he was only in a coma, when Twitter proved it could significantly affect a megagiant such as Amazon.com, when CA Governor Arnold has decreed CA’s textbooks will now be eBooks, how can any organization say that books delivered by the internet will NOT have a major place in the future of publishing? Yes, the argument circles about contracts and advances, ePublishing practices vs. NY. All I’m saying is, the future is here. Step up or be left behind.
To that end I will continue to happily straddle the fence, selling full length novels in paperback from both physical shelves in brick and mortar bookstores and online venues such as the aforementioned Amazon. I will also offer these paperbacks as eBook downloads in Kindle, ePub (for iPhone), PDF, HTML, Palm doc, etc. And using the amazing technology available to us today in the form of eReaders, eBook formats and delivery methods, I will also write and offer short stories only in eformat because unlike the RWA, there is room for both in my world.