Thursday, June 16, 2011

Where next for Hal Junior?

When my current publisher passed on the Hal Junior series (see my previous blog post) I realised I was sitting at a fork in the road. Start the submission/rejection merry-go-round, or go straight to ebook?

I must admit I was tempted by the idea of publishing an ebook right away. Commission a cover and internal art, edit and polish the text and then make the work available to all and sundry via the magic of Amazon, Smashwords and my own website. I've already published a number of short stories this way, and my ebook-generating scripts could be rejigged in a matter of minutes.

If this were an adult series I wouldn't have hesitated: you'd be able to buy & download the ebook right now. Unfortunately I don't think the market for kids ebooks is there yet - lack of dedicated readers in kids' hands, most kids books seem to be bought as gifts, etc, etc.

Therefore I have two queries for my junior Hal Spacejock novel out at the moment, and one submission. Each of these Australian publishers specify a 3-4 month response time, and I'm not expecting any favours just because I've been published before.

If I haven't heard anything positive by the first week in September I'm going to prepare the ebook edition of Hal Spacejock Jnr book one. If nothing else I'll be able to put that one out of my mind and move on to book two.

(Cue overwhelming sense of deja vu. A decade ago I went through the exact same process with the adult Hal Spacejock series, only back then we didn't have dedicated ebook readers. I put out an ebook version first, followed by a POD edition, and there were three books in the series available before I finally scored a publishing deal in 2004.)

Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Slings 'n' arrows 'n' silver linings

This was a bit long for Twitter, so I've turned it into a blog post of sorts.

I've mentioned my new Hal Spacejock Junior series a few times, and a while back I decided to post all the ups and downs I encountered on the way to eventual (hopefully) publication. Today was a down and an up.

I submitted the first book to the Hal Spacejock publisher a couple of months ago, then put it out of my mind to get on with other things. The response came this morning, and the upshot was something along these lines: We loved the book, we're pleased you offered it to us first but we think it needs to go to a bigger publisher.

I'm not kidding here, my initial reaction was 'bring it on!' I loved writing this book, I believe the series has a big future and now that future lies squarely in my own hands.

So, I have some homework to do. I'm going to make a list of aussie publishers putting out kids books and find out who to approach, and then it's submission time.

I'll keep you posted.

Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)