My Summer Project

Since Amazon stopped price matching the free price of my books in other stores, my sales on Amazon have declined to hardly any at all, save for the two remaining free books. I've decided to take advantage of having nothing to lose, by withdrawing The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea and re-releasing the stories in those books as a six book series on Amazon. They will, however, remain in print in the other ebook/audiobook stores. I've several reasons for making this change on Amazon

The first is that I can. The two books are episodic in structure. Indeed, I originally wrote The Bright Black Sea as three 100K novel-length series of episodes, each of which has a fairly well defined story arc, making dividing that book into three equal length novels simple.

The Lost Star's Sea, on the other hand, consists of one long episode, Castaways of the Lost Star, which I'd originally released as a novel the year after The Bright Black Sea. It was as a stop-gap measure until I could come with enough material to make an equally long sequel. The rest of that book, though episodic, does not have novel-length story arcs, but given that the series complete, the readers can simply move on to the final book, so I don't see this as a problem.

The second reason - and this is a big one - is that they are currently too long to be converted into auto-narrated audiobooks on Amazon. By breaking them into six novels, I can offer the stories on Amazon/Audible as a set of six audiobooks.

A third reason - which is a benefit to all readers - is that I'm taking the time to run then through Grammarly and Scribbr's grammar checkers to clean them up and, it seems, add a lot of commas. I will release the improved copy in both The Bright Black Sea, and The Lost Star Sea's, so everyone benefits.

A fourth reason - a minor one - is that in the paperback versions, when I get around to them, I'll be able to increase the print size of the text, which is pretty small in their current paper book form - something like 7 pt. to fit the book size and page count limits.

A fifth reason - inconsequential - is that instead of charging $10 for all the stories in two volumes, I will be able to charge $24 for the complete six volume set, and in doing so, I'll be able to get, rich, rich, Rich!!!

As you can see, I've already worked up tentative covers for all six books. Most of that artwork I already had on hand. The first two covers, Captain and Enemies, use art that I created for The Bright Black Sea cover and used them for a short time. The Ghosts cover is a new painting. Castaways uses the art from the first Castaways of the Lost Star book, though I've tinkered with it, Islands uses a one of the scenes I painted set on an island, with Hissi floating along side Wil, and Secrets was another painting of the Pella that I don't think I ever used for a cover.

I'm currently in the process of running the text, chapter by chapter, through the grammar checkers. Once that is done, I will assemble them into ebooks, write blurbs for each of the volume, and use the Kindle Create program to give them tables of contents, so I'll be able to release them as audiobooks as well as ebooks. The paper back books will follow, as they're just a vanity project. I'm hoping to complete the conversion by the end of July and then release all six books, one per week starting early in August.

I'll post the release dates when I'm set to go. Next week, the first peek at my 2025 novel, including its cover. Stay tuned!