Does anyone remember what happened to the Richard Jackson Series by Bandin? What is currently on SOL is only a portion of his Freshman year.
Does anyone remember what happened to the Richard Jackson Series by Bandin? What is currently on SOL is only a portion of his Freshman year.
Removed and sold on the Dread Pirate Bezos' site. Also broken up into smaller books, for a total of 16 IIRC.
Also broken up into smaller books
That's when he lost me. Only reason I could think of it is greed.
I've always said that I liked his original postings here more than his books. For me they "read" a lot better. Was still a good story/ies though :D
SunSeeker
Well I went and looked. Most of the books look to be about 400+ pages, so I suspect some content was added. However, I will keep what I have saved and leave it at that. The book currently on his page ends at an odd spot. Let me rephrase that, 'it just stops'.
IIRC book three on SOL is the first six, maybe seven books on Amazon. After that it's original material.
Those were the best and most believable books and then it went off the rails ending with Rick becoming king of the moon.
It's a tricky thing. Mind you: this is a generic response, with no commentary on the quality of the material in question.
If the average book on Website X is ~400 pages (pages is a vague measure, so perhaps ~100,000-150,000 words, or 'par for the course' for novels), and a book lists for ~3.99 (fairly common pricing; $4.99 is also common), then that's 'what the market will bear.'
If an author has a ~1,200 page book (300k-450k words), do they list it for $11.99? $14.99? Will the market bear that? Will people pay that much for a book? Or are you better off splitting it into three books and selling each one for what other people sell similar-sized books for?
'Greed' is, perhaps, accurate, since the goal is to increase income. But the goal is also, to some extent, fairness.
This is especially true for first books in a series. Will readers pay over $10 for a book from an author they've never read? I suspect fewer will than will pay $4 or $5. Once you're splitting the first book, though, why not continue and produce roughly even-sized books?
And, of course, any shift from a free-as-in-beer publishing site to a for-profit publishing site is always 'greed,' to some extent. Now, you can publish on both, in which case it's less greedy - but still greedy.
As someone who's thinking of trying to monetize writing, while still being committed to publishing my work for free, I've thought about this a fair bit. I'll likely split my books for pay sites. The material will also remain free. That includes future material within my existing series. New series? Who knows? I haven't gotten there yet.
Note that doing so cuts out Kindle Unlimited, which requires exclusivity. I could potentially see a case where it would be justifiable to remove a book from free distribution for 90 days (one cycle on Kindle Unlimited), then restore it, but that seems fraught with trouble.