Under urging from friends, I’ve decided to start a new project and resume an old one.
The first is The Curious Kinky Person’s Guide to the Fifty Shades trilogy, a version of the live-blogging series on my other blog. After more than 80,000 words of commentary and critique on this bestselling erotic romance, I decided to revise, expand and edit them into a book, with some new material. It will be published via ebook on Amazon Kindle and other channels, though I won’t remove the original posts. I see this as charging a premium for a more refined product in a more convenient format (unlike the Fifty Shades books, which look like the original fanfiction postings were published without any copy-editing.)
Yes, it’s somewhat parasitical, but since EL James is freely cribbing from Stephanie Meyer, who says she was cribbing from Jane Austen, why break the chain? In part, this is motivated by money. I have the much discussed “platform”, with my website and my satellite content on Tumblr, Pinterest and Scoop.it, but no revenue short from a trickle from the ad banners and the Amazon affiliate links. I want to see how much money I can bring in, even though the high-water mark of the trilogy’s commercial success has passed (at least until the movie hits theatres).
I’m just dipping my toe into the murky waters of self-publishing via Kindle. I’ve already applied for an ISBN (free in Canada), and I’m grappling with the Kindle’s idiosyncratic formatting. There’s still a myriad of other issues like making the cover image, deciding on the licensing and so on. In part, this is a training run for the next big thing.
The second project is getting back to writing my history of BDSM book. I know I promised I would finish a draft last year, and didn’t, but let’s give it another shot. I intend to finish a draft by the end of year and if possible, and self-publish it. I’m even considering launching a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign to finance getting it professionally edited and formatted.