AHMAD WILLIAMS

I have had the pleasure of gaining some extra exposure over the last couple of days and as always there’s some good and some bad. In the new world of electronic publishing there seems to be a disconnect of what that means to the reader and and the author.

For authors this is a blessing and a curse in the world of e-books. If an author is very serious about their writing careers, there needs to be some leverage in terms of expenses. I know that the world expects authors to write, write, and write. And yes, we in fact do such practices. Even when we aren’t writing we are thinking about writing. Authors now have the power to cut out the middle man and are fortunate enough not to take advances from publishers and not have the critique of some executive that they have never met before at some big publishing house in NY.

So here we are in the land of freedom. But, we have to remember that freedom is not free. We have crossed the Red Sea, but now we as authors are expected to do everything on own. We are now responsible for cover artists, buying software, buying updated software, paying editors, interior layouts, distributors’ percentages for holding our books in their catalogs. For example, a simple book of 160 pages could easily cost anywhere from $500 -$1000 to produce and that’s being modest. Not to mention all of the hours spent laying out the plots, sitting down and going over the flow of stories. A good sized novella could easily take about 50 hours to write and that is without rest.

Now…once the book is available for purchase there is a minimum wait of 60 days before that money is even touched by the author. It is a business of entertainment and nothing comes fast for the serious author. The greatest secret is that authors are not all full time writers. After reading the math, how can they be? For most passionate writers it is more of a burden than income generator if their work is not selling as expected. It is not a business of guarantees. It is very slow, harsh, and shallow.

I am sure that most readers have no idea about the process that authors go through to make sure that they have the right people lined up to make things look good for a quality purchase.  So when an author puts out a short work, they are simply thinking about how much it is going to cost to have a good piece of their work edited. The more words, the more money. And if the author isn’t exactly raking in the dough, then maybe it is smarter for them to protect their family and save a few bucks to put food on the table. It is no doubt a great gamble that some authors have paid for.

So for me personally, I put all of these factors into play when I am producing a project and there is no way that I could ever produce a book for less than $2.99. If someone can go to a 2 hour movie and pay $10 I have no qualms of pricing a novella at 4.99 for something that is going to take at least a few hours to read, not to mention it would take twice as long to write.

Some reviewers were upset with my work, since they were as long as their “standards” or the books were serialized into series. I know that they don’t know the in’s and out’s of the business and that is simply what I would want my readers to know. But, if I were to do better as far as sales go, then production and cost would not be a thing. So keep on supporting me so that I can get these greater works out to all of you faster and better!