Tora, our cat
Last night as I was plowing through online discussions on ISBNs, and the necessity for copyright, and tons of advice on how to get my novel “out there.” I was suddenly struck, as writers often are, by the fact that I know absolutely zero about marketing.
It was unnerving, but not overwhelming. I can learn. And I’ve got my blogger friends who know about these things. Great! I stated in my last blog, At Last, that I’m going to self-publish which, I’ve slowly come to realize, means starting my own publishing venture—and that means marketing! Yikes!
Here’s my first marketing issue. I’ve just finished my first novel, Girls Who Don’t Believe. It is my intention to publish it online. The novel is 147K words in length, which when printed out, comes to 523 pages. I’ve gotten excellent comments from a marvelous Beta Reader, and I’ve killed tons of “darlings.” I’m done with revision. I’m done with rewriting. So, at 147K, it will remain.
Now, having made that declaration, I’ve read that online readers can’t handle long novels. For instance, this passage from Gundi Gabrielle’s book, Kindle Publishing.
Short books do a LOT better on Kindle than full length 60-80K word books. Fiction writers find that their short novellas are often much more popular than big long novels though there certainly is a place for those as well.
12K-24K is a good range on Kindle. More feels overwhelming to many readers because the way we read on digital devices is different from holding a book in your hand.
It’s more effective to split a complex topic – or novel – into a series of smaller books, than overwhelming your readers with one, big chunk.
So, I’m looking at this as a marketing issue. My solution is to put my novel out in five separate volumes. I’ve found separation points for each section–turned out to be easier than I thought. But this is NOT five separate novels, but rather five separate sections. The Title and cover (I’m using Vellum) will be the same, but each volume will have a different subtitle.
Question #1. Is putting out five volumes sensible?
Question #2. Should I put the five volumes out at the same time or wait a few weeks or longer between each volume?
Question #3. Should I just forget about multi volumes and put the whole 147K out there at one time?
If you have any thoughts about the above, I’d be happy to hear from you!
Windblownwords 
Hmm. Windblown words was stuck in a hurricane. Need to borrow an extra leaf rake? Haha. I like the continuing sagas that I’ve gotten hooked on. That’s a lot of pages for someone like me with limited time. Maybe work in a teaser at the end of each section, but hell, I don’t know.
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A leaf rake and a rope to tie myself to something solid! Ha! Your comments are spot on. The teaser, sort of a Dickins like tease, is what I tried to do. Thanks a ton Jim.
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You’re right about short stuff on kindle. I too use kindle a lot. Somehow, the technology a more attuned to shorter books.
I’m sure you’ll do very well
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Thank you!
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https://ashivamchoudharyblogger.wordpress.com/
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Releasing each of the volumes with a break in between is probably best for the reader, and the reader’s wallet. My advice is to stagger the releases, say 4-6 weeks in between. (I aim to have at least 6 months – ha! usually it’s more like 8 to 12 – between releases, since I only do paperbacks, which, of course, cost more.)
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Okay, thanks so much Daley. I was thinkin along those lines. A month in between was what I thought might be the best bet. Okay. My hand is in the winding chain, as the old foks used to say. 🙂
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Good luck, Paul!
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I’d say you can definitely release it that way – but get all of them ready at the same time – get all the editing / covers done and then release them close together. I’m doing a book series and the first book just came back out on Kindle and has a Kindle promotion this weekend (I’ll let you know how that goes, LOL!), paperback is still going through checks. Each book in the series of 5 is about 50K, so one big book would scare people, and 5 reasonable sized books is not too bad.
But do also remember that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is 257,000 words and people buy that on Kindle all the time.
So in answer to your questions:
Q1 – 5 volumes need 5 covers, and you need a professional looking cover for each – is that doable?
Q2 – I would release them with a few weeks apart – then you can have coming soon on Kindle and then use your other volumes to promote each other in the description and on your website.
Q3 – it’s totally doable to publish the entire book in one go, which saves on cover design, but get a few beta readers to tell you if they feel it’s too long. I have read many books that long on Kindle.
Candy
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Thank you Candy for the great reply. I’m getting the whole book edited as we speak. A bit costly but I think worth it. My Beta reader felt that it read easily, so that’s a go with the single volume idea.
Yeah, so on the covers. Vellum will be doing the covers and what I thought was to simply use the same cover for each volume, BUT do you think I should have a different cover for each? It’s doable.
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The mind boggles at the complexity. Reading the comments suggests that you are going with five volumes. I’ll just throw in that in an age when reading books was the only entertainment for some the great Victorian novels were published in instalments and people who might today have balked at the lengths avidly looked forward to the next one. I wish you every success.
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Thank you so much Derrick.
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Hi Paul, I’ve always been a believer in holding that good ole hardback book in my hand turning page by page, always anxious for the next chapter and the next intriguing predicament or mystery being solved or the unveiling of the assailant that has successfully just avoided being caught around every corner in the previous chapter. I never was put off by the size of a book or the price if it was one I wanted to read. I also don’t have a problem laying the book down at the end of a chapter and coming back to continue there the next evening. Well, I say that but I’ve seen nights when I could not put the book down and could be found sitting on the edge of my chair in the wee hours of the morning so I wouldn’t fall asleep. If I’m really into a book, I really don’t want to wait until next month to get the next installment. That all said, I’m in my 70’s and the trend these days with younger people seems to be going towards getting things they can get done quickly and towards doing all their reading on things such as the kindle. So in keeping up with the times, I guess you are on the right path doing this in a series sort of way. It seems to be working for others. It also seems that self-publishing has become more common than not. I wish you much luck in your endeavor and hope it turns out well. You are what you and I would have called a bit of a pioneer in this writing method. Oh yes, the kindle has been out there a long time but this is a learning process for you to go this route it seems, and I for one will be interested in how this turns out for you. Keep us all posted on the results, will you please. I have not been participating here on WordPress for about two years so I probably missed much of what you and some of my other favorite people have been doing. Life got in the way as it sometimes will but I hope I’m about to make a turnaround. Good luck, oh, and when do you think this will come out?
Sandy
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Hi there Sandy, thanks for the great reply. I too am in my 70s and I know exactly what your’re talking about regarding the long novel. I love them. I can remember getting George Eliots’ Middlemarch and being in total heaven! But to my decision whether or not to publish this novel in one big book or send it out in a series…well, after thinking I’ll do it in five parts, I’ve now changed my mind. I’m going to send it out as a single volume. What the hell. Doing it in a series, simply complicates things and I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Plus, putting it out in a single volume means one book cover and that’s that. I’ve read a good number of advice books and articles and yeah, young folks do tend to read or purchase smaller books, but it might be a pricing issue as much as anything else. So, I’m going Kindle Direct and with a $2.99 price tag. Big savings! 🙂 and hopefully all of this will happen before the end of December. Right now, the book is being edited. That will be done by the first week in Dec. Then I’ll get it copyrighted. I’m now in the process of finding a cover designer and get that going. So, I’m hoping to have it out in the e-stores by the end of the year.
Thanks again sandy, It’s great to hear from you and hey we’ll be here when you get back into the ol WP racket.
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Spacing it out seems like a good idea. Though – go with your gut.
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Very good and solid advice!
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Hi – what about a compromise – as mentioned earlier the old way was do installments in magazines or newspapers. Then those old classics became one book. What about doing both? Start with installments but in the end release one. That teases the public at the beginning but also gives others who are in for a long read the final product.
And thanx for stopping by my blog and following along on my Color Flash Series. I developed that to share with my Facebook group so there was something positive in that world every day.
Good Luck!! I have a book in me too & this is fascinating to see how you are getting that dream to come true.
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Thank you so much for the kind words and support. I still haven’t decided which path to take but hey, it’ll get out there. Oh, you might be interested to know that a family of crows is a feature in this novel. There’s Flipwing the wife, and Gap her husband and Pretty their daughter. My protagonist is a nature lover and she takes a great deal of interest in this crow family who live near her cabin. Just thought I’d mention! 🙂
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