As I described in the previous essay in the series Ecology of Fiction Publication, launching my fiction will be like a tree or a bush blooming or producing seeds. Customers will buy the books only if they notice them. The tree or bush has to attract animal pollinators or dispersers. Those that rely on wind pollination and dispersal do not have this problem; nothing can attract the wind.
I have a good problem. I have about two dozen fiction books to publish. If I publish one at a time on Kindle, I would have to allow more years than I have remaining in my life to finish them. But if I publish them in cohorts, that is, a group of books at more or less the same time (say, in the same month), then I can finish before I die. I think. But I should not have each cohort of books be randomly chosen from my works.
In nature, a tree can produce a bunch of flowers early, then another bunch of flowers later. One common pattern is that the trees start releasing their pollen first from male parts, then start receiving pollen later on female surfaces. That is, the temporal pattern is not random, but is functionally defined. It might be male vs. female trees, as in cottonwood; or male vs. female parts of a flower, as in maples. There is not enough room in this essay to explain this pattern.
Here are the categories by which I will release and publicize my fiction:
The first group would be the fiction that would be hard for me to publish commercially. I have a good novel called Meet Me In Strasbourg. I think anyone would like to read it, but it would have to be categorized, by a publisher or a librarian, as young adult intellectual romance. This is something I do not have the professional credentials for. If any agent or publisher would read even a little of it, they would like it. But they do not have time, or else their AI bots will not forward it to them. Another good book I wrote is The Princess of Kashgar which would be classified as intellectual historical romance. Once again, I have no credentials here.
But when readers search on Amazon, they do not look just for authors who have credentials in YA or historical fiction. I think I might sell some of these books, of which I have about six.
The second group would be fiction collections. I have six of these. Agents generally do not accept, nor do publishers release, story collections. Which is strange because readers like them. Well, they can find them on Kindle.
The third group would be novels, and sets of novels, that have good commercial promise. I have a bunch of these. I will hold off on these for a little while. If my first one or two groups have reasonably good sales, I can use this to get the attention of agents and publishers for this third group of books. Publishers generally do not like to publish something that has already been on Kindle. But this third group might be successful with commercial publishers if groups one and two have earned me enough money that publishers and agents might want some of it.
The fourth group is my poetry. Poetry hardly ever sells very well. And I do not have poetry credentials. I have good poetry, but Kindle is my only option for it.
A fifth group is my bad stuff. Yes, I admit I have written some. And it will just stay on my computer.
As you can see, I have a plan, and I got it from thinking about what the trees do to get their seeds dispersed out into the world. They have evolutionary fitness. Maybe I can too.
There is more, which follows in later essays.
No comments:
Post a Comment