Just wanted to post a “quick” note on my future plans, now that I’m solidifying a little more what I want to do.

The next 1-1/2 to 2 months will be spent getting the Daughter of the Sun screenplay finished up.  I’m enjoying the transition to a more visual representation of the story, and I think I got lucky that the story has so much visual impact already that it translates fairly easily. The hard part will be giving up parts of the story to make it fit on screen. I can already tell that the majority of Rickward’s story - the child that was given up for dead by the husband in the backstory - will be scrapped. I think I’ll still have to mention some of it since it explains a whole lot about Johan - the husband/father.

After that, I will have hopefully heard from Tor about the manuscript submission. If they buy it - fantastic! If not, then I am seriously thinking about self-publishing it. I’ve already got over 1,000 listeners (and growing) over at Dragon’s Landing that I can start the marketing with. Many of them are fantasy roleplayers, and so are a good fit for the book. Other than that, there are other writing/fantasy related podcasts that I might be able to get a promo onto, not to mention the Dragon Page, which I can at least get a voice mail to, if nothing else.  Either way, I plan on starting up a podiobook of the novel. Scott Sigler has broken the ground in big ways for podiobookers, I believe, especially now that he has gotten his podiobook for sale on iTunes.

I believe that, while very much in its infancy, podiobooks with a combo of self-publishing and lots of marketing, are the new publishing model for first time authors, and can be a help for experienced authors as well. I’m not saying it will replace the traditional publishing by a long shot, nor would we want it to. Traditional publishers have such a powerful marketing engine and such a wide distribution that it would be crazy not to want to be picked up by them. The new model, however, is the perfect way for a first-time author, who is traditionally a huge risk for the traditional houses, can get their works out to the public. If they have a product the public likes and can prove it with numbers, the author can take those numbers to the bigger houses and have a better shot at getting picked up by a bigger house with actual marketing put behind it.

Well, those are my current thoughts, and the more I hear about both sides, the more I’m starting to believe in it.