Resolve: Less Languishing

While migrating recently to a new PC, I organized my writing files and was heartened to rediscover a number of works-in-progress and completed pieces … and disheartened to see them languishing. I moved the drafted stories and essays to a “To Finish” folder, and the finished pieces to “To Query.” Some might fit traditional print magazines, but I decided to explore the breadth of online opportunities, too.

And into this mobilization came another option -- from a writer-friend who emailed that he’d just self-published a short story on Smashwords*, which describes itself:

Smashwords publishes and distributes ebooks [and shorter length pieces]. Authors and publishers retain full control over how their works are published, sampled, priced and sold. … [Readers get] multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.

For writers, self-publishing involves some heavy lifting in terms of text formatting and product marketing. But for readers, it’s still all about the story -- for example, how my friend K. G. Deloas accomplishes the twists and reveals that pull together the threads of his supernatural short story, It’s Happened Countless Times Before.


*or see others, e.g. Scribd and Amazon’s Kindle Singles