Type Those Money Makers Baby

There was an article recently in the NYTimes (the link is escaping me) about how the boon in digital publishing for indie writers has created something of a sprint to generate as much material as possible.  The nutshell is that if you are not producing multiple books in a single year, then you are not sustaining your brand and worse yet, not making money.  Dean Wesley Smith actually breaks this down in a post on his blog that is well worth reading.  There is a lot of thought that goes into his reasoning, and that of all the advocates for blitz publishing.  The e-reader consumes at a pace that is both electrifying and terrifying.  If you want to build a readership, you need to give them a reason to stay around.

Even if I wanted to, I couldn't write more than one book a year.  I will probably publish my second novel later this year.  I feel the same pressures other indie writers do.  I feel the same spirit of opportunity.  Money simply doesn't motivate me, and I'm not going to sacrifice the quality of my writing for the quantity of my output.  It will cost me in income and readers.  The fact that I can't focus on much else beyond my slow writing - including this blog - already does that.

When A Country of Eternal Light comes out, the people that read The Book of Elizabeth may or may not find it.  They may or may not wonder why I spent so much time on something that isn't a sequel to the last book.  They may think this guy spends a lot of time on nothing much at all.

It's a price I'm prepared to pay.

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