How Kindle Is Making Me Work Harder

Yes, I've been lax with my blogs.  I have broken the unwritten promise of delivering new Dirt Road nuggets on a regular basis.  I accept your verbal abuse.  I would promise to do better, but the thing is, I'm trying to figure out how to make more work for myself despite the fact that my creativity has obviously hit a wall or I would have been posting here. 

My possibly-insane desire to create more work stems from a lunch this week with several other published authors and an industry professional.  We were discussing the impact of e-books on an industry in a serious state of flux, and how we could best position ourselves to survive.  (Did you yawn?  This lunch was definitely a tax-deductible business expense.)  Cutting to the basics: e-readers (Kindle, Nook, etc.) are growing fast in popularity.  Owners of e-readers often skip the $7.99 downloads (i.e., our books) in favor of discounted or free books.  To lure readers into springing for the bigger buy, authors are putting together short stories and novellas that tie in to their new releases, and offering them for 99-cents, or even free.  If readers like it enough, they'll buy the full-length novels.  Which means I need to come up with more fun plots so I can write some clever novellas that connect to my next series of books, and put them out there for little or no money in the hope of attracting new readers.  But my deadlines don't change - I have to write those novels, too.  So, more work in less time.  In my possibly-addled state, I believe this is a good idea.

All that is to say it was a busier-than-usual week.  It may turn into a busier life.  And I thought it already was.  So...tying this back to my humble farm life (didn't think I could, did you?), I vote with Fritz.  Time for a nap.