Some of you may have been wondering if we are going to post anymore sample chapters of MWB here. Our plan always was to keep posting sample chapters until we got to the end of Part 1, if we hadn’t finished the draft at that point and sent it out to our beta readers.
Having reached that point, and with the draft as yet unfinished (although we are working feverishly on it), we faced a bit of a dilemma. We enjoy the valuable feedback we’ve been getting and want to keep people engaged, but given the length of Part 1 (within is, by itself, a shade over 15% longer than Alecto), we’ve decided not to post any additional chapters publicly.
We do appreciate that we have some awesome readers to whom this will not be welcome news, so we are going to do the following. If you want to continue reading sample chapters until we get the draft completed, leave us a comment here. We will contact you directly via the email you provide and make arrangements to send you additional chapters as they become available and (hopefully) we’ll have the draft done soon.
Thanks to everyone for your continued support of our endeavors!
So, a question. Why are you insisting on making this a 500 page book when book 1 was only about 165 pages?
Why not simply publish part 1-which is already completed? Then make part 2 into a separate book to be published under the same name adding a sub part to the name to distinguish it from part 1, then finally make part 3 into another book, or novella finally finishing it all off.
IMPO having been reading SiFi since I was about 7(now almost 64) I have seen many authors get lost in the book, not knowing where to stop. I believe that is happening to you. If part 1 is just about the same length as the first book, then publish it and leave us with a cliff hanger(a device long used by writers) to continue in the next book- part 2. Then if you can only come up with a novella to finish the current adventure, then do so.
But making the second book 500 or more pages is again IMVPO a very large mistake. Making a book too long is almost as bad as making it too short.
So, since part 1 is in your words “done” then publish it already. Far better than just keeping going forever. Making your current 500 pages a thousand pages.
Unless of course you are, like the pulp writers of old, getting paid by the word.
Book 1 was about 162 pages, so publish part 1 already, you already stated it was about the same length as book 1.
Always remember this, the longer you wait to publish and the thicker the book, the easier it will be for the casual reader to have forgotten book 1. I have discovered over the years that most authors writing a series try to keep to a schedule of about 1 year between books, otherwise you simply start losing readers. And while you might have several hundred at the most reading your chapters, you might remember that you want a mass audience, otherwise your publisher-paperback or hardcover-will quite simply drop you. I know of 2 authors that that happened too. They had to stop writing under their names and find new pen names so that they could finish their series. E books are not that old, I have seen far too many authors over the years not being able to find publishers, no matter how good their books were.(I am referring of course to Sharon Lee & Steve Miller)
So please think about publishing part 1, then parts 2 and 3 later. After they have all been published you can then combine them into 1 book and sell even more books
Thanks for the input. In fact, late last year, when it was clear we’d bitten off a much bigger task than we thought, we did consider publishing Part 1 as a separate book. We decided against it because while Part 1 is (short) novel length, we felt it wasn’t good as a short novel; it ends a bit awkwardly for that. We are quite new at this and getting a feel for it as we go, and there are a few things we’ve learned in the process, all of which support your points.
One is that eBooks tend to have a shorter shelf life. Back in the day, authors might produce a book in a series every two years (Lois McMaster Bujold is an example, and sometimes it was longer), but once a year was more typical. For eBooks. Successful authors recommend a book every 6 months; one author we noted has a goal of 3 or even 4 books a year. (I think one would have to be extremely gifted to produce a high-quality book in 3 months, and personally I’m not aware of any author who has ever done that consistently, so I have my doubts.) Also, eBooks are general shorter than print books. The expected values of a ‘normal’ print book in genre fiction is between about 300 and 400 pages, so MWB is quite long. (And the glossary might be considered monstrous, in the view of some, though they are at liberty to ignore it.)
These are all good points and there is certainly something in what you say. We claim no superior knowledge of these things. So the answer is simply that we felt MWB was best as the length it is. Time will tell is the market agrees.
We do feel that, since we foolishly raised expectations before we’d thought things through, that we owe our reads two books at this point, one of which we are very late on and one if which we are about on schedule. The problem we created for ourselves (at this point) is that if we release a short novel (Part 1) now and tell people to expect Part 2 (another short novel) soon, they have little reason to believe us, and might justly savage us for making them wait about a year for at short sequel. In our (fallible) judgment, we might better go ahead an release a whole book (that is twice as long as we’d expected).
As for your question on the next book: no, it is not 450+ pages. Our best guess right now is that it will be maybe about 300 pages, probably a bit less. As far as we can tell, there will be no more 400+ page books in the series (though one might approach that). And we hope to (and think we realistically can) do better than a book per year.
I love your book.Please, I would like to read more chapters.
I love your book and would like to read more chapters, thanks.
Thanks! See your email.
Same here. Thanks!!!
Thank you! Check your email for instructions,
These chapters are like crack, but I think I’ll wait for the whole book to come out, thanks for being AWESOME!!!!
These chapters are like crack, but I think I’ll wait for the whole book to come out, thanks for being AWESOME!!!!
Well, I didn’t mean to post it twice, but it is SUPER true~ so THANKS AGAIN for being awesome!!!! XD
Thank you! At least we can report that progress is being made, slowly but (mostly) surely (and trying to make it less slowly!)
Yes, please.
Ok, Well I would like some chapters.
Ditto, that yes is, I’d enjoy reading a couple more.
Very good! See your email. 🙂