[Edit: I am waffling on my waffling, so this may happen faster than I originally said it would.]
I’m getting to a point where I am increasingly uneasy about my books being Amazon-exclusive. It’s not like it just started to be evil, of course, but we’ve gone past cartoonish into just insultingly evil. I’ve said for a while now that I made the decision to go into Kindle Unlimited based on the situation at the time, and that it was up for reconsideration later. Well, here we are. It’s being reconsidered.
First off, Kindle Unlimited readers, I thank you for taking a chance on my weird little books. This is not about you.
Healers series plans
The Healers series’ current term in KU rolls over on Feb. 2, meaning I would have to decide to keep it in or pull it by that date. Will I be ready? Maybe. If I don’t jump on the 3rd, I’m stuck in it for another 90 days. On one of those dates, it’s coming off KU.
Since Healers has been back in KU, a little over a year now, it’s made 40% of its money from that system — so this is not a simple decision. But the fact that the first book still sells a steady trickle after ten freaking years gives me some more faith in the series. It won’t make as much, I’m sure. But I can live with that.
What will that mean? At some point, it won’t be available in Kindle Unlimited anymore, and it will be available in other storefronts, like Kobo and Barnes & Noble. I plan to use Draft2Digital, which is a service that organizes submissions to ebook retailers on the back end and takes a cut of profits, so that I don’t run myself ragged trying to manage all of those places separately. Once that’s situated, I may add a couple of storefronts that aren’t included in D2D, like Gumroad or itch.io. We’ll see.
Therapist series plans
This is more complicated, and ended up being two-layered. First, since it’s been in KU, Therapist has made about half of its income through KU reads. Technically, that’s not so much more than Healers‘ percentage. But something about 50% crosses a threshold for me. Still not enough to quash my desire to get out of Amazon exclusivity, but I am more worried about this series.
Layer 2: The novella curse. I’m slightly kidding. It’s been fun to write in a shorter format, and I think it’s been a good skill exercise. But novellas are unusual in the fantasy space, unlike genres like romance. The demand/readership is lower. It’s hard to know how to price them. And bundling the first four books has turned out to be a lot more useful. Somehow, the vol. 1-4 omnibus has made more than the entire rest of the series put together. Even though it had its best sales waves while the price was drastically cut, it was still enough to add up.
I’ve resisted bundling books 5-7 or 5-8 because I’ve already invested in individual covers for them, and I’m dragging my feet at double-dipping and investing in another cover for the same stories. I, personally, could afford to commission a cover for a second omnibus, but the series hasn’t earned back the cost of its individual covers yet. And maybe it won’t for a long time! But looking at the stats for the omnibus vs. the individual books, I think I have a clear way forward as far as format goes.
- I will, eventually, put together an omnibus for the next set of books. It’s likely to be 5, 6, and 8 — Herald, Level 99, and Bardbarian, skipping Salty and Sweet for the moment. Because…
- I’m already working on another Dread Army story, with a third outlined after it. So the third omnibus would be those three linked stories: Salty and Sweet, Care and Feeding, and TBA working title Dark Lord for Hire.
- The biggest change: I’m going to stop releasing individual Therapist novellas and only release them as omnibuses. My plan is to write three or so, then release them as a novel-sized block in both ebook and paperback. This wipes out the problem of double-dipping for covers: three novellas, one cover, one fairly meaty set of stories for readers. The releases will be further apart, but I haven’t really noticed any advantage to releasing them close together anyway.
- I will leave the extant individual volumes up for sale, just not release any new ones.
All of which does not address Kindle Unlimited. The most likely situation is that I will leave Therapist in KU for now, get the hang of things with the Healers series once its KU term expires, and consider opening up into other storefronts with the omnibuses alone once all the KU terms expire for the individual novellas.
So, here’s the new road map.
- Go wide with Healers once its KU terms expire in early February. Complete, Feb. 3.
- (
I plan to wait on this step until some non-writing-related life circumstances settle down. I am bad at delayed gratification.) Put together an omnibus edition of The Sylvan Dragon’s Herald, Starting Over in Another World with My Level 99 Self-Doubt, and The Ballad of the Bardbarian. Ebook and print versions, not enrolled in KU, similar to the first omnibus. The draft has been compiled; working on commissioning a cover - Go wide with the Therapist omnibuses — the existing one and the second one, outlined above — once I have the hang of things on D2D and the novellas’ KU terms expire. [Based on when the KU terms expire, the first omnibus can go wide in mid-March; the second one, TBD because of the cover as well, can go wide in early April.]
- The Strangers’ Shrine is slated for a developmental edit in February/March, with my last major round of edits afterward. Beta reading after that, timing dependent on how long my edits take. Bottom line, I hope to release this book before September 2025. Not carved in stone; it would just be nice.
- Once the next two Dread Army stories are finished, release an omnibus of those two plus The Salty Mageknight and the Sweet Dark Lord. This could be later this year, if all goes well.
On top of that, just because I’m excited about it, my spouse’s first book is almost finished. I’m going to yell about it a lot once it’s out. Fair warning.