Considering Inkshares

Hello friends,

I’m pleased to say that the progress on the Shadowbinder series is coming along nicely. It looks like I will be completing Book 1 by late summer of this year. Yay! This is pretty exciting stuff, considering it is going to be my first full-length novel. And let me tell you, this book is going to be A BEAST. I estimate that ‘The Edge of Light and Shadows’ to be somewhere between 200 and 300k words. That’s a very thick book. But hey! It’s epic fantasy. It sort of comes with the territory.

So, for those who don’t know me, I am a planner. I like to look ahead and make plans accordingly. The question has crossed my mind many times: how the heck am I going to publish this thing? I can see the way the wind is blowing, and self-publishing is obviously the way of the future (which, honestly, appeals to the entrepreneur in me), but I of course am open to other options. One of the things that has caught my attention is this service called Inkshares. For those of you who don’t know, Inkshares is a crowdfunding publisher that is similar to Kickstarter and Indiegogo, only instead of products being developed by indie types, it is books. The idea is that if a book/author gets a certain number of pre-sales, then Inkshares will publish them, giving the writer editorial services, marketing, artwork, distribution and whole list of other benefits.

I’m not going to lie, this sort of thing really intrigues me. I’ve launch a few Kickstarters in my day, and the idea of crowdfunding my work appeals to me because it is something that I understand. One of the things that scare a lot of self-published authors is the initial investment to get artwork and editing done on your book. Inkshares addresses this pain point. They also have a platform that allows a no-name like myself to garner some sort of a following, which is something that traditionally has been very hard to do.

I wanted to get your opinions on the matter. Is Inkshares something that I should pursue? Leave your comments below, or feel free to email me directly.

Thanks for reading!

Blake