I'm looking at KDP Select for Doomimals and Just Us Chickens, our chapter books, at least to start out with as we build a readership. I understand it may not be a long-term solution, but we'll see. It doesn't pay lavishly, but those who sign up for this service through Amazon have ready access, which gives me a ready and eager audience, especially as we approach the summer when kids have lots of time to read.
In the meantime, I just learned about a new self-publication platform, Kindle Vela. It wouldn't work for children's books because it allows for words, not images of any sort. And you publish through it 500-5000 words at a time. This got my brain churning about a couple of longer books for an adult audience I wrote and had a freelance editor look at. These books have been waiting since for me to have time to work on them, while I polish my kids' books.
Several years ago, I wrote my first romance novel. It's called After the Dream and is about a woman whose first marriage goes wrong. When she becomes a young widow, she has to take her broken soul and face the dating world again. It's about finding love and hope in the face of imperfection and damage. It was specific to my religious group. I've been thinking since that I wanted to widen the audience of this and its spinoff, Pigs Fly, to a broader Christian romance audience. Pigs fly is about the first book's brother, a man pushing 40 who says he'll only marry when pigs fly. Things get complicated when he meets a female pilot with a copilot who is a pig. It took inspiration from Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing," while the first one tips its hat to "Romeo and Juliet."
When I heard about Kindle Vela and its approach to storytelling in bite-sized chunks, I started to hope I can also bring these novels out soon to you as well, juggling both kids' books and romantic novels. Step one will still be to finish polishing book one of Doomimals and then Book one of Just Us Chickens. Then, maybe the first romance novel will be next.
