The Lost Star Series (Part Two)

 

The Lost Star Series' last three books are currently still, for some reason, in limbo awaiting approval from Amazon. I don't know why it is such a problem this time around, but it is, and it has been very frustrating dealing with Amazon and it's form email which tell you nothing. However, I am confident that they will eventually be available for sale at $3.99 each. I'm also waiting for the green light to make them into audiobooks @ 3.99 each as well, which is the main reason for creating these books. Apparently they have to be live and published before you can create the audiobook. The first book is, but it is still not  eligible yet for audiobook conversion yet. Amazon is being a pain these days. However, I'll give them time - I don't expect much in the way of sales and it is a beta program. I'm just covering all my options.

As I mentioned in a previous post, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea were too long to make into audiobooks on Amazon/Audible. I had entertained the idea of splitting each of them into two volumes in order to make them eligible, but that would've have involved also publishing the split versions as ebooks as well. If I did this, do I keep the complete versions also available while selling the split versions as the "Audio Versions," or replacing them with the split versions? Splitting the versions into two would've very awkward, as The Bright Black Sea was written as three novels, and The Lost Star's Sea was written as one novel, and then assorted episodes. The better solution, I decided was to break the series down into it component parts and sell it as a typical SF series of six books - the four natural novel-length story arcs, and the last two with less defined but still good story arcs. This six volume version will only be offered on Amazon - if I can get them to release the last three books they're holding hostage.

In producing the series, I ran each of the books through the grammar checker at Scribbr to clean up at least some of the remaining errors in the books. The process did add a lot of the missing commas, which should make the auto narration sound better. These books were written in a somewhat telegraphic style, reflecting the way some of the old nautical stories I was inspired by were written, so I chose not to follow the many suggests to add more words to smooth out the flow. The style is my artistic choice.  

I have also re-released both, both The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea as omnibus versions, each with three novels included, on Draft2Digital ebooks as well as on Google ebooks and audiobooks, using the new, improved versions of the text, making them read better as well. Changes to Draft2Digital/Apple audiobooks I believe cost money, and given that it took something like seven months for them to be processed the audiobooks in the first place, the old audio version will remain on Apple for the time being. I'll look into updating it when I am confident that they will update it in a timely manner.

In a somewhat related move, rather than upload the new versions to Smashwords, I unpublish all my books on that platform, and just added the Smashwords store to my Draft2Digital list of distribution. At that time I had only two free book sales in July on Smashwords. However, with the change, I ended up selling generated 142 sales in just four days after the move. The reason being that the books were treated as new releases and featured on Smashwords' home page for a couple of days. They have continued to sell well on Smashwords, all of which goes to show you that as in real estate, selling books is a matter location, location, location - if they are where readers can find them, readers will buy them. If they're fifty pages deep, no one will.