For a number of years I’ve been selling my out-of-print books via my website. I had a large initial stock – at least of the Bantam books – because my former editor moved her office to a different floor, and in the process she discovered several cases of my books in a storeroom and was nice enough to send them to me.

Selling these books is not exactly a lucrative enterprise given the time, trouble and postage it takes to mail them – especially from Hawaii – but I would much rather the books were read than not, and it’s really gratifying that people will seek me out.

I’ve also found that as time goes by more and more of my orders are from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. This is really flattering, because these buyers are willing to pay additional postage of $22 or more. But the paperwork!

Generally I am not one to bash the US Postal Service. In my experience they almost always do a great job, and generally speaking it’s just as efficient and far cheaper to send something to or from Hawaii by Priority Mail than by one of the delivery services.

But with international packages a customs form needs to be filled out. Recently the USPS decided that this should be done online. If I don’t fill it out online, then the clerk at the post office will have to take my hand-filled form and enter it into the computer there. But the online form requires a phone number, both mine and the recipient’s. Well, mine is an unlisted home number not for distribution, and I may or may not have the recipient’s via PayPal. However, I have to enter something or the form won’t submit, so a string of zeroes has to do. Naturally it turns out the final form says “phone number if available.” Maybe the website and form should get on the same page?

But here is my primary complaint: the form is 4.75 inches high, there are five copies, and each copy prints out on a separate sheet of letter-size paper! Two forms could easily fit on one sheet of paper, but no. Apparently a decision was made to waste resources. So instead of the post office paying to produce a five-sheet form of very thin paper of the correct size, everyone using this form must now waste 2.5 pages of much heavier, letter-size paper.

I will be very interested to hear what our postal clerks have to say about this when I go to mail my package tomorrow.

Thanks again for all the input on what to do with my young-adult novel Skye Object 3270a. After considerable thought, and looking at the rather long timeline for revising The Wild and getting it into print, I’ve decided to go back to my initial plan of charging a small amount for this e-book edition of Skye Object 3270a.

So I am happy to announce that Skye Object 3270a is now available at my publishing website MythicIsland.com, priced at $5 for the PDF file.

So what’s it about? It’s a young-adult novel, aimed at an advanced middle school audience. Those of you familiar with my work will recognize the setting from the Deception Well story world, but Skye Object 3270a is otherwise independent of that book and its characters. It’s high action science fiction designed to be fun, exciting, and maybe a little scary. If you are fortunate enough to know avid young readers, why not buy them a copy?

Preview the first chapter here.

Click here to purchase the download.

In 1998 I wrote a young-adult novel entitled Skye Object 3270a. It was set in the Deception Well story world, but was otherwise independent of that book and its characters. The novel didn’t find a publisher – no one knew quite what to make of it, I suspect – and it has been sitting ever since, until this spring when I decided I would offer it as an e-book. My first plan was to charge a nominal $5 for the PDF, and I already wrote most of the script to automatically email a copy when a purchase is made… but now I am reconsidering. Is it better to follow instead the model of most open source software, and make the novel available for anonymous download? Certainly it should get much higher circulation that way, and then those who enjoy it can make a small payment if they wish, or return to the website to purchase other books.

So what is the best business model? To make a few dollars upfront? Or to try to get my name out to a wider audience? At the moment, I am definitely leaning toward Plan B. If anyone has thoughts on this, I’d be interested to hear them.

Thanks!

The name of this website comes from a place name in the fantasy novel that I finished last fall, and which went to market in January. Long after I had started writing this novel, but long before it was done, my agent called to say he was concerned – the market for heroic fantasy had collapsed, and almost nothing was selling anymore. I wasn’t too bothered. This was typical of my career – the collapse of science fiction arguably began around the time I started breaking into the market – and anyway, I was writing the book I wanted to write. I hoped to have it published – I thought it would be published – but if not, at least I would have written it.

So I kept at it, through some very stressful years.

When my agent read it last fall, he was… shall we say ‘concerned’ again? ‘Finely crafted, but doesn’t draw the reader in until well-along in the story.’ I was surprised, and none too pleased, but after some discussion it went off to market anyway. His premonitions proved accurate, for the novel did not find a home among the last of the major fantasy publishers. The general reaction was very similar to my agent’s, “Doesn’t grab me enough; Doesn’t draw me in.” Well, okay.

Strangely enough, I am not depressed. I still think there is a market for this book, but now I will have to find it without the involvement of New York publishers. This is not a horrible fate. Truthfully, I have had such awful experiences with the publication of the last two books that it’s not hard to look at this positively.

So unless I am struck by a bolt of good sense and persuaded otherwise, it’s my plan to self-publish the novel. Not as it is, of course. The book did not garner the reaction I expected, and I want to try to understand why, and re-write it, if I can see a better way to do things. So now the book – and all the risk of publishing it – belongs to me alone, which is frightening and pleasant all at once. Since no one else can tell me what to title it, or what cover image to use, I would like to finally introduce it to you, at least by name. It’s called The Wild. I look forward to working on it again, and I will do my best to make it a better book by the time it sees print.