This post is not about money

Like all good unpublished writers in this day of modern technology, I'm strongly considering self-publishing.  Even though I still dream of seeing my glossy cover on the bookshelf, I also like the idea of just getting the sucker out there.

On the one hand, traditional publishing does the marketing and finish work for you.  However, I may rot and die before I manage to get anywhere near a traditional publisher.  I also really like the idea of publishing my work electronically or print-on-demand so there aren't cases and cases of books being printed and then sitting around languishing in a warehouse somewhere.  That is so wasteful!

Although self-publishing could get my work out there faster, I wouldn't have the comfort of an editor and would have to do so much work!  Any of you who have an e-reader of any kind know that electronic books can have absolutely appalling formatting.  I don't want to put out a product that looks like crap, which means learning how to do a quality formatting job for a variety of e-readers.

That is almost as boring to me as funding my kids' college education.

So while I argue with myself about whether to self-publish or not, you can read the first chapter of Ravenswood.  My father-in-law thought I should post some of my writing on my blog, and I thought that was a great idea.  The best part is that it forced me to read it over again, and I made quite a lot of changes.  (Really, an editor would be a nice thing to have.)   Perhaps by the end of the summer I'll put the whole novel through it's tenth revision and get the Kindle version up on Amazon.com.

I hope you enjoy!



Update:  The link above takes you to Google Drive, which is the next generation of Google Documents.  I've given viewing permission to anyone who follows that link, so it should work, but I have had some complaints that it's not working.  If you can't view it, please send me your email address and I'll email you the .pdf directly

One cool thing about Google Drive is if I'm viewing the file I can actually see how many other people are viewing the file and chat with them.  It makes me giddy with joy, taking me back to college when the Internet was new and all the students would chat with each other for hours while seated side-by-side in the computer lab.  I just chatted up my husband for a few minutes, and he's sitting in his office upstairs. Ah, the simple joys of life!