Testing Grounds

Last night I had a bit of a brainwave, but before I can go any further, I feel I should step back and give you guys a bit of background.

Over the course of the past 9 months (starting with Nanowrimo in November 2011), I wrote a science fiction novel entitled Colonisation that is currently in the hands of a select few beta readers, and I hope to be hearing back from the first soon to make the changes needed and get the book ready for general consumption.

I’ve also always had the intention of publishing Colonisation on the Kindle store for people to buy there and enjoy on their Kindle e-readers and so on. I’ll add it to Smashwords (another popular ebook distribution site) and maybe even a print-on-demand physical copy in time but the Kindle avenue is going to be my main means of distribution for my writing works once they’re polished and pristine and perfect.

However, I have no experience whatsoever on Kindle publishing and I felt it might be prudent to test the waters before I drop Colonisation, a 78,000 word labour of love and effort on there, so it occurred to me that I should release something now, something short and, not inconsequential, but not as boneshakingly important as Colonisation just to see how the Kindle publishing process works and help Colonisation’s eventual release be as painless as  possible.

Over the summer I have written two 10k-ish word stories, Quigley Hubb 1 and Oranges and Lemons, and it is these that I will take test material (rather, the entirety of one of the works) from. As Quigley Hubb is part of a hopefully-on going series and will be collated into collections and anthologies eventually, it left Oranges and Lemons the only story available to be my Kindle debut, to test out how this thing works.

So what I plan to do over the next week or so is get Oranges and Lemons edited, polished, and then… onto the Kindle store! Then I can gauge how easy this process is and adjust my workflow for the biggie – still aiming hopefully to have Colonisation out before the year is out! For now, enjoy the Oranges and Lemons cover image i prepared!

Look forward to seeing how this happens!