I've recently changed the price on every one of my titles. It was a slog, I can tell you that. While doing it, I ran into two problems. One was the sheer number of books I had - making it a long process. The other was the pricing tiers at Amazon and Kobo. Both offer a reduced royalty rate for titles priced at under 2.99. My episodes - ie, shorter books like Broken Episode One - were previously priced at 2.99. I had to reduce them. If I only reduced the price of longer titles, they'd end up being the same price as the shorter episodes - but a different value proposition. My only choice was to take the episodes down and leave the complete series up.
Now my shorter series only have the first episode and the complete series available. So for Broken, I have Broken Episode One and Broken: The Complete Series, but not Broken Episode Two, Three, and Four.
To be honest, even if this pricing problem hadn't pushed me to do this, I would've done it anyway. My catalog is simply too large and unwieldy. It's better value for you, the reader, to buy the box sets, anyway.
I realize this leaves some people in the lurch if they're mid-way through buying episodes in a series. Please contact me if you have this problem.
The pricing structure for my series is 6.99 for shorter series - which are usually around 160,000 words long. And 8.99 for most of my longer series - which are usually 200,000 words long. Longer series and series of longer books are priced slightly higher. In the future, if I publish a shorter series in the 160,000-word range, I will only publish the first episode and the box set.
At some point, I will rationalize further and remove some of the single books from my longer series. Again, it'll be better value for you, the reader. It'll be simpler for me in the long run.
I haven't removed any episodes from Google Play. Why? I can update everything there with a spreadsheet in minutes, and they don't have royalty tiers. I will eventually rationalize there, too, but not in a hurry.
Again, if you're partway through a series and the books disappear, contact me.
In other news, I'm experimenting with Kindle Unlimited. I started writing longer books this year. Wild Magic is 10 books of roughly 100,000 words each. I'm now hooked - it's a more engaging writing process. I have found books like that do quite well in subscription services. But Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity. So Wild Magic will only be available on KU for a while. I've only put the first four books in for now, with more to follow. I will still publish the remaining titles in the series - Books 8 through 10 - wide. They will remain up on other retailers for 1 month.
I plan to put the Your True Vampire series in KU for a stint too. They'll remain on my website for a week or two before I put them into KU mid-month.
As for going forward, you might've noticed I didn't publish a new series last month. While I'm pivoting to writing longer series, my publishing schedule will be less predictable. I much prefer publishing with books banked. This means I can plan my schedule in advance and stick to it because the books have already been written. It's also a much easier career - I'm not constantly struggling to meet deadlines.
Going forward, I'll likely only write longer urban fantasy books - in the range of 100,000 words each. And they'll be in longer series. I still haven't decided what to do with sci-fi. For now at least, I'll stick to shorter series. If it changes, I'll let you all know.
Phew, what a long blog post. I'm not sure I've ever had so much news! Hopefully that'll be it for a while.
Happy reading!