Keeping the New Releases Coming: Rapid Release for Hybrid and Indie Authors

Once, long ago, back in the halcyon days of decent sized advances – or advances, period! – when many of us snagged contracts that guaranteed we’d have a new book out every year unless we didn’t turn in a book every year, an author could make a living – a meager one, but still a living – with less pressure.

Unless you were Nora Roberts or Janet Dailey who were whipping out short romances on a monthly or nearly monthly scale, that is. But the only way most of us had more than a single book out was to have a spin-off tale with characters from one book appearing in a book of their own, or we jumped from one category to another, or write for more than one publisher. I did romantic comedy for four different publishing houses plus historical romance back in the 1990s. While the words “rapid release” were never mentioned, since the majority of them were under my Beth Henderson name, it was the only version of “rapid release” back then.

Rapid Release is frequently bandied about these days. Most frequently for writers who have dived into being Independent publishers. But many of us with backlists, went Indie with reprints, so we already have a foothold in two places if we’re still pursuing traditional publication as well.

But traditional publication doesn’t promise “rapid release”, mostly because there are so many small companies picking up the slack the large traditional companies have left available, and editing, cover creation, formatting, as well as office overhead means each traditionally published title, even those not offered in paper editions, is high. Rapid Release isn’t something they can afford to do in the manner we might like. Which means, we need to do it ourselves.

In this 4-week workshop we’ll talk creating new shorter series to release independently to achieve the Rapid Release benefit – which is keeping our readers primed, reading, and eagerly hitting those Pre-Order buttons. We’ll also talk formatting of books, cover creation, and everything else that goes into getting these stories ready to load to Amazon as Shorts or Quick Reads or lined up with pre-order buttons. But FIRST, we’ll talk what to put into a rapid release system of our own.