Print Edition and The Next Pot

Well, it's been four days since the novel hit Amazon.  In case you stumbled through here by accident on your way to shop for cheese slicers, here is the link to the Kindle Edition.  Of course, right now, that's the only edition available.  I'm currently working on getting a print edition together via Createspace, which will provide me a POD (Print on Demand) paperback version that I can list on Amazon as well.

But.

I truly believe the future of books is the Kindle.  Just as iPod revolutionized how we consume music, the Kindle (which seems to be the device that's winning the e-book war) will change how we read.  It's already happened to me:  I wasn't sure I would like reading on a Kindle, but once I got one (the cheapest $79 version), I have to say I'm hooked.  It's light, it's easy on the eyes (literally), and I can carry around a whole library in a small package.  Just like the catalog of music on my iPhone.  The word revolutionary gets way overused these days when people discuss new technology, but I think Kindle certainly fits that description.

So why the print edition?  Maybe because I still have a little nostalgia for that nice soft newsprint of a paperback.  Maybe I just want to be able to sign the cover sheet for someone who will appreciate it.   Or maybe it will seem more real to me somehow.  I still haven't accepted the fact that I'm a published author. I suppose most of the big corporate publishers would say that I'm not, but there is my book, side by side the virtual "shelf" with John Grisham, Stephen King, Michael Connolly, and even J.K. Rowling!  (And, unfortunately, Stephanie Meyer, but I digress.)

Anyway, that's the next step for Latent Image.  I've sold, as of this date, 12 copies, and had one person borrow it through Amazon Prime.  If I can sustain that speed, at 4 copies a day, that's 120 copies a month.  Which I hope, one day, sooner rather than later, turn into 1200 copies a month.  We shall see.

Of course, I am anxious to get back onto the blank page.  Not only because I have this "revolutionary" avenue to share what I write, but also because I simply miss the act of writing.

I participated in National Novel Writers Month (NaNoWriMo) in November to write the rough draft of Latent Image, and I had the most exhilarating time with it.  It was a scary ride to put fifty thousand words down on paper (or computer screen) in 30 days.  And I loved it for two reasons:  because I always wanted to do it, and I did it.  The second one was the best part.

So, as Stephen King once said in my favorite novel of his, Misery, "You should find a pot and get it boiling."  And so I will be starting the next book in the next week or two.

Hopefully, it will thrill me as much as the last one did.