To e or not to e? That is the question.

 I’ve been hinting in my blogs lately about plans I might have that I’m unsure of (there’s a lot of certainty in that sentence, isn’t there?). Some of you have probably guessed, or you know because I’ve talked to you privately, but I have to admit, I still don’t know what I want to do. There’s been a lot of discussion lately on blogs and writing sites about the sudden surge in popularity of e-books and I’ve been thinking about jumping onto the wave…seriously thinking about it.

I have three completed novels. The first, an adult fantasy, has been sitting on my computer for the last three or four years. I’ve done nothing with it, telling myself that I don’t really know where to send it. The truth is that it’s my favourite ‘baby’, the one closest to my heart. I didn’t feel ready for anyone to reject it. That’s the one I started my other blog  about.

The second is a young adult fantasy. It’s still in need of a good polish, so I don’t feel guilty about not sending that out yet. It’s not going anywhere till it’s as shiny as it can be.

The third, a children’s fantasy has been ‘doing the rounds’ for the past two years. Twice it has been read as a full manuscript by a mainstream publisher. Twice it has returned after many, many months with a polite ‘thanks, but no thanks’. It’s frustrating, but is that frustration good enough reason to throw in the towel and head to Kindle land? Not with my children’s novel maybe, but with one or both of the others?

I know there are authors, such as Amanda Hocking, who have sold thousands, hundreds of thousands, of their books as e-books. The catch cry seems to be ‘you, too, can make your fortune’. I have two problems with this. Firstly, I don’t write because I want to make a fortune. I write because I have to. When I got another rejection the other day, my first reaction was “I give up, what’s the point?” But I can’t give up. If I stopped writing, I’d go mad. These characters inside my head would keep screaming to get out until I wrote or I turned into a jabbering mess. Giving up is not an option. 

I don’t want to be rich. I just want to be read!

My second problem with the e-book ‘thing’ is that I’m not good at self-publicity and all the social networking that’s involved in getting an e-book out there. I’ve joined places like the Kindle Boards, I’m on Facebook and I Twitter, but would that be enough? The last thing I want is to put my book out as an e-book to see it sitting there, doing nothing. ‘The good books will rise to the top’ they say, but there are so many ‘not good’ books coming out, I don’t know if I have the energy to make mine swim.

My reasoning so far has been that if I put a book onto Kindle and it flops, I’ve lost it. It will never have the opportunity to be ‘published’ in the traditional way. If, however, it’s picked up by a publisher, it will more than likely come out as an e-book as well anyway. There's no doubt that e-books are the future. But that 'if' is so BIG!

Oh, it would be so much easier if I could just give up writing!

Tweet, tweet.

Recently, I gave way to temptation and joined 'Twitter'. It wasn’t that I felt any great need to inform the world of my every thought and action. It was just that I had heard so many people talking about the information they’d got from 'Twitter' and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So I signed up and stepped out. No fanfare or balloons, just a nervous ‘hello’ into cyberspace. Pretty soon, friends from other sites discovered me, or I discovered them, and I began to get ‘followers’. I very soon learned how to block those I didn’t really want following me – strange characters who seemed to have no connection with anything I was interested in, yet used my name in their tweets for no apparent reason…no thanks. The list of people and groups I follow has built up quite nicely, too – everyone from friends to publishers, writers to harpists.

There are those who see Twitter as a waste of time. It is. At least it is if you’re going to use it in the way I described earlier – to summarise every thought and deed. But as a tool for getting information, it’s wonderful. Publishers notify writers of competitions. Agents give hints and advice. Writers chatter about themselves and their lives, proving that quite ordinary people can get published – if they have the right story. People post links to sites, videos and photos that would never be seen otherwise. The rich and famous become human, showing a side the ordinary person would never see. Great for a writer to see these normally two-dimensional characters being fleshed out!

Then there’s the entertainment value. I follow two tweeters with names of book/musical characters I love. One of them even follows me back. These two chat as if they are the book/musical characters, constantly arguing and using well-known lines. It’s fun to read. Then there’s the Italian opera singer I follow. He’s been dead for twenty-five years, but his tweets about opera and music in general are always interesting.

I’ve still a lot to discover. I have no idea how to post a link or photo. But I’m enjoying the journey. It’s only a year since I joined 'Facebook', but I’m getting quite adept at using that now. Maybe this time next year I’ll be an expert Tweeter. It makes the world smaller. That can’t be a totally bad thing.