I get reviews of my work nearly every day. I also get a lot of mail from readers, telling me they liked this or that about the Far From Home series so far. And I thank everyone who takes the time to either write a review (whether it’s good or bad) or email me personally.
But I wanted to clarify something that I’ve seen come up in the reviews of late. It’s a question of length.
Some reviewers are questioning whether or not I should describe installments of Far From Home as books. Aren’t I ripping people off by releasing a ‘chapter’ at a time? Aren’t I just another one of these greedy writers fooling people for their hard earned coin?
1. Every installment of Far From Home is a book – an ebook – in it’s own right. It is not a novel, or I would have described it as such. They’re not novellas because they are all the same story. I’m writing a new series of crime stories, and these will be listed as novellas because although they’re in the same series and feature the same main character, they are not all a part of a bigger, broader story.
But Far From Home is just one big story. I can’t describe each part of it as a novella. But it is a book. An ebook. It’s not a short story. Its not a novella. It’s not a chapter.
2. I wish I could just release the whole thing in one go. But what I’m aiming for is a 12 part adventure, running to about 1000 pages in length when all is said and done. The trouble with people saying that I’m ripping them off by not doing so, is that IT’S NOT FINISHED YET.
Regular readers of the series will know that they are released, on average, one installment per month. EVENTUALLY when all 12 are out, probably by October this year, there will a collected edition with additional material. But I can’t travel forward in time. When they’re done, they’re done.
3. Back to length. These installments are certainly not ‘chapters’. I wouldn’t be capable of writing a single chapter 15,000 words in length, and I certainly wouldn’t release a book a chapter at a time.
4. I plot each installment when I start to write it, however I do have a general overview of how things will transpire throughout the series, including how it will end. I also have outlines for extensions to the series in the form of stand-alone adventures and spin-offs. However each one ends up the length it ends up. If it finishes at 50 pages, then that’s that. If it runs to 150 pages, I’m cool with that too.
Overall it will balance out.
5. In the interest of fairness, there is another author on Amazon selling his work at 20 pages a piece for $2.99. I’m charging 99c for 50-100 pages.
Still think I’m ripping people off?
To wrap this whole tirade up, I just want to say one more thing, and that is that I don’t force readers to purchase installments of Far From Home. They do so of their own free will. And on the product listing, it clearly states the page count.
My response to people accusing me of ‘cashing in’ by selling ‘little scraps at a time’ is:
IT’S A SERIAL. GET OVER IT. IT’S NOT NEW.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324020504578396742330033344.html
And just what IS a book these days anyway? Surely the definition of the word is a far more flexible thing than it used to be. Can you really define something like an ebook, that in a physical sense, doesn’t really exist?
By the way, I do not see the same criticism aimed towards Far From Home given to the ongoing DEAD MAN series on Kindle. My god, aren’t Amazon RIPPING people off by charging them 99c for 80 pages?
Thank you for your attention.
Now that’s out of my system, I’d better get back to finishing up Far From Home 6.
I have readers waiting for it.
Tony Healey 
I can say that I’d rather pay 99 cents for each of your books each month then wait a year for a new Tony Healey novel to come out. I await the next adventure of Captain King with the same anticipation as one awaits a new episode of a beloved tv series. To have it all at once would lose something in my own opinion.
Thanks!