eManuscripts
The books and other writings posted on this website will eventually become available through outside vendors. I’ll be relying on Amazon and their associated print publishers to distribute my work – you’ve caught me in the beginning stages of learning the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) process. Once I’m finished, you can order my books online, or (hopefully) pick them up from a store bookshelf.
In the meantime, I am offering eManuscripts for download at a very reasonable price from this website (pre-releases are free). Not only does the cost-conscious reader save a buck or two, but I can recover a tiny bit of the steep expenses I must pay in advance to the professional editors who polish my work for release.
The question, then, is what is an “eManuscript?” In short, it is the complete book exactly as originally submitted to a publisher, producer, or studio. It will arrive as a bare-bones PDF file, formatted in double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font to fit standard eight and a half by eleven pages. Unlike a print book, there is no cover, ISBN page, or custom page sizing. A PDF file does not behave like the more sophisticated Kindle downloads from Amazon (that is, eBooks), which may reformat themselves to better fit the device you read it from, have prettier fonts, and present decorative chapter starts. The Amazon and print versions may also have additional editing, including illustrations and cover art, to bolster the appearance or better serve host devices or the target audience.
If all you care about is the story itself, eManuscripts may be a good way for you to go. And because eManuscripts are so basic, Amazon and print publishers do not consider them as competition (at least, so far as I know now), allowing me a way to fund a portion of the work I must outsource.
eAudioBooks
I’ll offer the final (released) version of everything I write in audio format in addition to print and eBook versions. The retail editions will generally come from a major audiobook vendor like Audible. Their audiobooks will likely be voiced by a professional voice actor, or by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) text-to-voice software. They may display artwork between chapters on the playback device or app.
eAudioBooks, on the other hand, are very basic and inexpensive. While they do meet all the standards required for playback in any audiobook player, the voices are created by the same neural network software used for test-to-speech in the latest Edge browser. The same voice will be used throughout for both narration and character vocalization. It may sound robotic at times, and there will be occasional mispronunciations and awkward pacing. You may hear slight gaps where there shouldn’t be or missing pauses where there should.
In short, eAudioBooks are not of the same quality as pricier commercially produced audiobooks. However, if your primary concern is the story being told, eAudioBooks might do the trick for you.