I had a realization today, that there was nothing stopping me from releasing The Fallback Plan as a series of eBooks. My original plan had been to wait until I finished everything and then release a single eBook at the end. While I do still intend to do that, there’s no good reason why I shouldn’t release it as a series of smaller eBooks so that folks who don’t want to do subscriptions, or who are in countries where you can’t do Vella or Ream, can take advantage of it.
So to that end, Book 1: Awakening contains Eps 1-14 of The Fallback Plan. As Ep14 was released over 30 days ago, there is no reason I’m not able to release it in eBook format at this point. Both it and Book 2 are priced at about the same as it would cost in Vella tokens to read these chapters; Vella readers and the eBook readers both pay about the same for the same amount of content.
On a personal-victories note, I have literally not gotten to click publish on a finalized eBook since 2017, when I published Progenitor 3. It’s a good feeling to be moving forward again.
To those who have already read the episodes via Vella or Ream… there is nothing new there, so please don’t mistake this for new content. I would hate for anyone to double pay for it thinking that this is something they haven’t read before. You could literally buy this book, then decide you don’t want to wait to read the rest and pick up reading from Ep15 onward. Things are of course different for direct subscribers; if you’re paying the monthly fee on Ream, you have unlimited access to what’s there already.
In further fair disclosure, once the entire story is complete I intend to release a single eBook as well as paperback copies. Might do hardcover as well; not like the print-on-demand setup process changes any. As for length, I think it’ll be ~130k words when complete, which places it at the long end of science fiction novels, but only 2/3rds as long as “Dune”.
At any rate, the eBook is in pre-order status both on Smashwords and Amazon at the moment. Amazon is weird and they insisted on holding it until the 2nd, while Smashwords is honoring my request for a 5/1/23 release date.
As a side note, once The Fallback Plan is complete, anyone with a subscription to read it via my Ream site will receive a voucher for a free copy of that final large eBook upon request. Amazon doesn’t give me a way to verify who has unlocked my episodes, so I’m not able to offer the same thing to Vella readers. But Ream does give me email addresses, so I can certainly validate my readers there and will happily ensure that you have the final eBook in addition to having gotten to read the episodes as they’re published.
If you are a Vella reader and would rather read via Ream, well, nothing stops you from changing over to Ream via my Subscriptions link up top. The episodes are posted on the same schedule on both sites, and that will entitle you to the finalized eBook once it’s done. (Insert obvious disclaimers for if I were to die or something; my wife may not know how to handle that. But I’m in my late 40s, pretty healthy, and have a resting heart rate of 53, and I expect to finish The Fallback Plan by this summer. Not much risk here.)
Last note: Book 2 of The Fallback Plan is expected to roll out on 6/1/23. Ideally, I’ll have it available for pre-order a month in advance. I think the publication windows and the 30-day interlocks will allow me to publish the third book on 7/1/23, and then the fourth and (expected) final one might have to wait a little longer due to that 30-day window I mentioned. I’ll sort out the exact math on it once I’ve got Book 2 in pre-order state.
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