My First-Book Rearrangements

Well, I made a pretty major decision today regarding my first ebook. Major for me, anyway. I combined parts 1 & 2 into a single book. For most it will mean nothing, though others may be a little interested. Well you must be, as you are on the third line and still reading!

When I first published it, I think I must have been a little impatient. I wanted to break into a flooded market which I thought would be aided a bit by throwing in a smaller, cheaper book first, then expanding on a possible fan base over time. I also had read in a couple of places that with this whole ebook craze, people were after shorter style books; 40 to 50 thousand words. My original manuscript being a whole 79,000 odd sounded somewhat epic (I know; I chuckled at that too.) when compared to that. So I found a spot in the middle somewhere that left it on a cliff-hanger and chopped the book in two.

Sounded like a good idea at the time, but as the year went on, I have found the take up of Part 1 as pretty good, while Part 2 was somewhat flailing. Perhaps people simply haven't caught up on it yet, still happily reading Part 1 with the view of grabbing Part 2 in a few weeks or months when they need. Or perhaps people don't really realise that the two parts were effectively the same book, just split, hence thinking that it ended too abruptly and they were jolted out of buy the next instalment. Not to mention that I personally have found it bloody confusing swapping between a 2 part ebook and a 1 part hardcopy. Plus many people, I guess, would not like the idea of going back and forth to re-purchase the different parts. You buy a book, you buy the whole darn thing, right? I get it now. Either way, I made the call that it was a bad idea, and went about rectifying it.

Wasn't a big deal to do really, which makes me only love this digital self-publishing dizzo even better. Simply changed the name, cover photo and uploaded the new full file. I had to unpublish the old Part 2, which means that while I can still access it, it will vanish from ebook stores soon, with that section now fully absorbed into the full Winchester: Saviour ebook (available now at Smashwords.com - shameless plug there!). I hope it hasn't inconvenienced too many people, but really in the long run I feel it has made for a better book. Especially since I published the paperback (available at Amazon.com - Another one! Stay low; they're coming thick and fast.) I think it just makes it less confusing having only one title, exchanged between formats, rather than the mish mash of parts that and books this that I had going before.

And in the end, one has learned a valuable lesson: Impatience leads to crap. Feel free to quote that in your social circles!

Till next time,
-Damien.