What Happened to “Maria’s Romance”?

No one probably noticed, but I’m in the process of taking down old copies of “Maria’s Romance.”

Originally, I wrote this short story as a gift for the readers of Charlotte Collins to thank you all for taking a risk on an unknown author and to share how I envisioned Maria’s story to end.

I released “Maria’s Romance” in November 2010, and since then, I’ve been using it for marketing purposes. It’s been my go-to piece for the #samplesunday hashtag on Twitter. I also have long-range goals of putting it in an ebook bundle, which will include Charlotte Collins, Caroline Bingley, “Maria’s Romance,” and a short story in relation to Caroline Bingley. But that’s a long way off.

After reading Konrath’s latest blog post, I’ve decided to try out his advice and use this story as a stand-alone Kindle offering. Because views of the free version of the story have stagnated on Scribd, Smashwords, and my website, I assume that everyone in my blog/Facebook/Twitter ‘verse who wanted to read the story has done so already. So I’m going to see if the marketing power of Amazon can help it reach more readers, but in order to do this, I can no longer offer it for free. (Users of KDP must charge something for their books; no indie can make their book free.) Instead, I’m going to try it out at $0.99 and see what happens. If the whole thing is a flop, well, I’ll just go back to the old way.

I have redone the cover, made a few alterations and corrections, and changed the title to “Maria Lucas” to better reflect my larger vision for the Personages of Pride & Prejudice Collection.

What do you think?

3 thoughts on “What Happened to “Maria’s Romance”?

  1. What a great idea, Jennifer, I guess i will talk to you when I want to go indie (when I finish my own writings, but that is way long from now, hehe), so you guide me with the “how to” question.
    Wish you best luck in all your projects

  2. I don’t mind being the guinea pig. I’ll definitely let everyone know how it goes. It should be live on Kindle tomorrow.

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