the Author
July
11
29 Comments

Huntbrother

Posted in ebooks, Essalieyan, self-publishing, Short Stories.

Hunt­brother ebook cover

I’ve mentioned that the best thing about this whole process is seeing covers, right? Given today’s trial and error, it’s never been more true (I had some minor version control issues while format­ting for Smash­words, and ended up uploading the wrong version the first time. And no, the first story, Echoes, has still not cleared the Premium Cata­logue queue, which is called the Barnes & Noble queue in this house).

I was orig­i­nally going to do all of the several rounds of proofing for all of the stories and upload every­thing at once (Hunt­brother was proofed in printout 3 times, on the iPad twice (epub and Kindle), and in MS Word, because the font there is Times New Roman, a font in which I gener­ally don’t do work). But there has since been a change of plans. Why? Because I actu­ally feel like I’m not spin­ning in place when I upload some­thing, even if it then goes into long queues. Once it’s in a queue, my part of the work is, in theory, done. It’s kind of like submis­sion. The in theory perfectly proofed and entirely correct short stories are also being collected for the Print collec­tion and the ebook collec­tion, and I’m adding to that file as I finish.

The Weapon and Warlord are out making the print-proofing rounds now, and I’m am at the end stretch of the Skir­mish revi­sion, to which I am returning after making so many mistakes in format­ting the neigh­bours could hear me shrieking from the side­walk spending a calm, produc­tive and entirely reason­able day.

This is a novella that was written because I was asked for a Hunter story. I was happy to write this one because it’s about Cynthia of Maubreche and her son, named Stephen (yes, this could cause confu­sion down the road, but it was the only name she wanted). It’s there­fore set in Breo­danir, the land in which the Hunters rule. It’s the fifth longest short story I’ve written, and I will not tell you what length I was actu­ally asked for, because the initial requests usually come in form letters. Well, that and it’s embarrassing.

Hunt­brother is avail­able at Smash­words now, in their epub format. It will be avail­able at Amazon​.com in between one and two days in their kindle format. It will be at least two weeks until it clears the Smashword’s Premium Cata­logue and makes its way to Barnes and Noble, and while it’s in the queue at the iBooks store, the first book has been in the review queue there for five days and hasn’t cleared it yet, either.

A word about pricing:

The stories range across lengths; most are less than 10,000 words; one is over 30,000.

For any story under 7,500 words, the price is 0.99.

For stories over 7,500 but under 17,000, the price is 1.99.

For stories over 17,000 the price is 2.99.

Every­thing I’m doing now is, of neces­sity, exper­i­mental. I under­stand print publishing and the demands of phys­ical books and book­stores (writing and working in one for ‘lo these many years), but the ebook market is new to me, and I’m figuring it out as I go along.

The first six stories are set in Essalieyan, and I’ve never written a story set in that world which was under 10,000 words.

But the next ten or so that follow are the early Sagara short stories, and all of those are under 7,500.

29 Responses to Huntbrother

  1. Aaron says:
    July 11, 2011 at 7:24 am

    So, awesome. In a fit of curiosity, I visited the Smash­words website to take a peek at the story an noticed a typo in the second para­graph. I believe “adored” should be “adorned”. Sorry!

    *Ducks and runs*

  2. Genna Warner says:
    July 11, 2011 at 8:15 am

    Yes. I will start looking for this on for my Kindle. :) Can’t wait to get the rest. These are keeping me occu­pied until Ruins comes out in Sept.

  3. Mark Galpin says:
    July 11, 2011 at 10:54 am

    Michelle –
    Thank you so much for doing this. This will be causing me to fran­ti­cally switch between refreshing this page, and refreshing the search for you on the amazon kindle page… actu­ally heck with waiting smash­words it is.
    And wow. This makes the scene from Sea of Sorrows make much more sense, and is an awesome story. I’m so glad you put the work in to make it available.

    As a numbers-sensi­tive person, I have to ask… why 17000?? Does that have a signif­i­cance in the publishing world, was it chosen because of the gap between two partic­ular stories, randomly?

  4. Estara says:
    July 11, 2011 at 10:57 am

    “had adored herself in the colors of mourning”
    You’re right ^^ *buys*

  5. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 11, 2011 at 12:06 pm

    And since that was the first mistake I caught, I went back to snap­shots. Did I mention diffi­culty with version control? Now, pardon me while I try not to break things >.<

  6. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 11, 2011 at 12:09 pm

    As a numbers-sensi­tive person, I have to ask… why 17000?? Does that have a signif­i­cance in the publishing world, was it chosen because of the gap between two partic­ular stories, randomly?

    It’s appar­ently not the publishing world, but in SF & F, there are three length desig­na­tions for the Hugos and the Nebulas: Short Story, Novelet, and Novella. I have become aware, over time, that outside of SF & F there are two desig­na­tions — Short Story and Novella — and that, for instance, most of the Amazon indie people use only the two.

    So the mid-range here would be the Novelet, which for the sake of the rest of the world’s nomen­cla­ture has been lumped with Novella for the purposes of the ebooks.

  7. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 11, 2011 at 12:34 pm

    It is, in fact, a version control issue. I had a heart attack when I read this — but it seems that only my round of July 8 changes failed to be prop­erly merged with the master docu­ment; everyone else’s changes seem to be there.

    I will, of course, now be prop­a­gating those changes >.<

  8. lyssabits says:
    July 11, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    t’s the fifth longest short story I’ve written, and I will not tell you what length I was actu­ally asked for, because the initial requests usually come in form letters. Well, that and it’s embarrassing. 

    Heh, yes but the intro­duc­tion to the story by the editors of the anthology gently poking fun at the length of the story was very, very cute. ;)

  9. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 11, 2011 at 1:37 pm

    Heh, yes but the intro­duc­tion to the story by the editors of the anthology gently poking fun at the length of the story was very, very cute. ;)

    For some reason, I’d forgotten this completely…

    My “favorite” example of the way my publishers acknowl­edge this small flaw in my ability to stick to word length was the DAW 30th anniver­sary anthology story. We were initially all asked for 6,000 words. I phoned my editor and told her it was possible (she laughed), but not if she wanted a story set in Essalieyan, for which 10k words was the absolutely, base minimum I had ever come close to managing.

    So she graciously allowed me 10k words. I swear, there were bets in the office.

    The story I submitted was 20k words. During the DAW dinner at the worldcon the year of its release, one of the DAW staff got up and talked a little about the anthology, the authors, and the content — in which he mentioned dozens of short stories, and “one novel”. Everyone imme­di­ately looked down the table at me.

    Sigh.

  10. Michael says:
    July 11, 2011 at 4:07 pm

    Yeah, but when I bought that hard­back for *one* story, I certainly felt like I had gotten my money’s worth!

  11. Ann Kopchik (amergina) says:
    July 11, 2011 at 4:55 pm

    Thank you for doing all this with your shorts (or medium-longs, if you will)! I’ve been wanting to read this story (in partic­ular) for a while, after hearing others talk about it.

  12. Hilda says:
    July 11, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    I hate when good stories are too short, because I’m left wanting more. If you need more words to deliver the perfect story, then you need more words. Besides being a wonderful story­teller, you are also very, very funny in your other­wise writing. So, maybe my hope that the Avatar, or the person at the heart of Castle Night­shade, be a very funny char­acter and an embar­ras­ment to Lord Night­shade, may become a reality.

  13. lyssabits says:
    July 11, 2011 at 6:12 pm

    Ack, you’re right. I mixed the stories up. I just read both of them, I’d tracked down used copies months ago (before you announced you were going to release the e‑books) but only gotten around to reading them now. The intro I was talking about was to the one in the DAW anthology.. but it’s a great introduction. ;)

  14. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 11, 2011 at 9:22 pm

    Yeah, but when I bought that hard­back for *one* story, I certainly felt like I had gotten my money’s worth!

    And you are not shy about mocking me either. Hmmmm. I really, really like Memory of Stone. I really like A Quiet Justice too, but no one liked that except me and one French editor.

    Memory of Stone is an ancil­lary story. Actu­ally, I think all of the shorts are, with the single excep­tion of Hunt­brother. In the last Arc of this world, Stephen of Maubreche and his hunt­brother are significant.

    Actu­ally, I’m never sure why my stories work for some readers and not for others, or why they work for me and not for anyone else — because inter­nally, I approach them simi­larly (single excep­tion is How to Kill an Immortal which I wrote to get Kelly Link out of the inside of my head).

    When we reach the farther future and Colors of Augus­tine, which is the longest of the short pieces, there’s a funny story about that one, too.

  15. Jacob says:
    July 11, 2011 at 9:26 pm

    OK, this may be a dumb ques­tion, but I still read my books old-school. Do I just need to wait until every­thing is ready and then you’ll announce a print-on-demand where I can get every­thing in one volume (or a bunch of short stories — I’m not picky as long as it’s in actual print)? Thanks.

  16. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 11, 2011 at 9:48 pm

    OK, this may be a dumb ques­tion, but I still read my books old-school. Do I just need to wait until every­thing is ready and then you’ll announce a print-on-demand where I can get every­thing in one volume (or a bunch of short stories — I’m not picky as long as it’s in actual print)? Thanks.

    Because — clearly — there are still prob­lems in quality control at this end (I had 3 rounds of my own proof-reading correc­tions, and the first was over-written in the master on Hunt­brother), I’ve been doing each story singly in an attempt not to let my natural orga­ni­za­tion (which is not stellar, sadly) eat the work.

    Each story, as it’s proofed and finished, is being collected for a print version. So when I finish the last one, I will send the whole thing off to the type­setter, and take the docu­ment that comes back and do the print version at Lulu, at which point I’ll announce it here. Lulu has a 75.00 option which will allow the book to be sold through any of the on-line sellers — Amazon, B&N, etc., but the book should also then be avail­able via Ingram’s, which means in theory, any store could special order it.

    It’s not at all cost effec­tive to do a phys­ical print version for one story, the excep­tion being Colors of Augus­tine — so all six of the stories, when finished, will be in the print collection.

  17. Joey says:
    July 11, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    I love love love the Augus­tine stories! I LOVE them!

    I also love Ghost­wood. And Elegy.

  18. Michael says:
    July 12, 2011 at 7:21 am

    And you are not shy about mocking me either.

    True.It’s prob­ably because your reac­tions are always so great. In fact, my friends all know how proud I am to be routinely mocked and threat­ened by my favorite author.

  19. Estara says:
    July 12, 2011 at 10:31 am

    Well I can redown­load as often as I want from Smash­words, so I’ll get the prop­a­ga­tion the next time around ^^

  20. Joey says:
    July 13, 2011 at 12:16 am

    Urelat­edly, did you get my email, Aaron?

  21. Ralph Walker says:
    July 14, 2011 at 2:31 pm

    I am one of the lucky few who have been able to track down most of your short stories. Will the stories in your Speaking With Angels collec­tion be included in this new compendium? That was the most diffi­cult short story collec­tion to find! I am also fond of Ghostwood.
    I will purchase all versions I can get ( kindle or print) to have them all in one place.

    Ralph

  22. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 14, 2011 at 7:17 pm

    I am one of the lucky few who have been able to track down most of your short stories. Will the stories in your Speaking With Angels collec­tion be included in this new compendium?

    Yes, but…

    The stories are being published singly in ebook form (which is why there are numbers on the covers of the ebooks. Actu­ally, there are numbers because my husband likes numbers for things, but it makes it harder in some ways because once the list is in the back of the book, it’s harder to change the order in which they’re released). There will be a print collec­tion of the first six — the Essalieyan short stories — because those are the stories I get the most email about. But at this point, the print collec­tion is actu­ally harder for me to do, and it’s more expen­sive (both for people purchasing it, and for the format­ting itself; I will spend far more money, even including covers, on the Print on Demand version of the six stories, than I will on the sepa­rate ebooks — with the assump­tion that my time is, of course, worth zero dollars).

    If you already have Speaking With Angels, you’ll have a number of the earlier stories already, though. I think one or two are even less easily avail­able outside of Canada, and I really really want to reach Colors of Augus­tine, because I think people will actu­ally like that one :D.

  23. Genna Warner says:
    July 14, 2011 at 10:08 pm

    I just have to say that your time is not worth zero dollars. And I appre­ciate all the time, trouble and money you are putting in to get these short stories back in print for those of us that haven’t been able to find them. I just feel so guilty that there isn’t anything I can do to help other than purchase them as they become avail­able and get more friends addicted to your stories.

  24. Michelle Sagara says:
    July 14, 2011 at 10:45 pm

    @Genna: Don’t feel guilty! Because, of course, if you do, than I’ll feel guilty – guilt is commu­ni­cable. It will make me feel like I’m whining way too much >.>

    Here’s the thing about readers: they make a book real, for me. Until a story or a novel of mine has readers, it exists in a curi­ously suspended state: it’s all work, it’s all an attempt to commu­ni­cate — but if no one’s reading, there’s no communication.

    The short stories have taught me some­thing I suspected: I’m not, at heart, a publisher. I’m not an entre­pre­neur. One of the hardest parts of the process was actu­ally figuring out the pricing — because having a publisher make pricing deci­sions takes it out of my hands; it leaves me free to interact with readers in a way that doesn’t involve busi­ness, that can be just about story.

    I know that some of my readers haven’t seen the short stories, or that they don’t gener­ally like shorts. I don’t expect all of them to rush out and buy the short stories, because it’s not what they want to read. I am grateful that people do want to read me – at all. So you honestly don’t owe me anything; this was my deci­sion, and if it was biting off more than I real­ized at the time, it’s kind of par for the course.

    Although, I admit I get a kind of childish delight in looking at the Amazon dash­board and seeing that someone’s bought a story .

  25. David Youngs says:
    July 15, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    Michelle:
    Put up a note when the hard­copy is in Bakka and I’ll fight my way into the city that dislikes me.

  26. hjbau says:
    July 16, 2011 at 8:48 am

    This is hyster­ical. I love that you go long and am very glad that your editors seem to be so good natured about it. It is lovely.

  27. hjbau says:
    July 16, 2011 at 8:53 am

    I am going to ask a stupid ques­tion as well. Can i buy a book that exists for a e reader and then read it on my computer because i don’t have an e reader? My guess would be no.

  28. Genna Warner says:
    July 16, 2011 at 10:59 am

    Yes you can. Both Amazon and Barns & Nobles both have apps that will allow you to read their e‑books on a computer or smart­phone. And I am pretty sure that there are other third party apps out there that will allow you to read any e‑book format. Just do a search for them.

  29. Mark Galpin says:
    July 16, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    Calibre http://​calibre​-ebook​.com/ is my favorite tool for both orga­nizing and reading e‑books on my PC… it also converts between different formats synchs with some e‑book readers, etc. etc. Nice tool, and free.

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