Simultaneous Release Off the Table – Current Focus is “Desert Empress”
Recently, I teased the ambitious idea of doing a simultaneous or near-simultaneous release of Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress along with Cassan Astor and the Sea of Krakens. It looks like I may have gotten ahead of myself.
The plan truth is, Sea of Krakens requires more work. That leaves me with two options: either I release the books separately as they are ready – meaning Desert Empress will come out soon and Sea of Krakens will come out later, or I wait until both are ready and release them later this year as a simultaneous release – possibly months later.
What would you rather see? The books to come out as they are ready? Or a simultaneous release down the line?
I think I speak for most people when I say, as a fan, I like things to come out when they are ready.
Besides being a fun marketing stunt, I don’t frankly see much value in holding onto a product that is ready to sell, especially if readers are interested in reading it now. Additionally, the last time I had a near-simultaneous release was when I released Seas of the Red Star on April 30, 2019 followed by the Daltus Conspiracy on May 7th, 2019 – books 1 and 2 in the Pirates of Vexa Prime series. That back-to-back release really did not seem to generate any additional readership beyond what I believe would have happened if they came out months apart.
All that being said, from my own preference as a customer, to assessing the value of holding onto unreleased product, and my own case study having done something like this in the past, what I am going to do is release the books as they are ready. That means Sea of Krakens will still be some months off, but Desert Empress will be released soon.
How soon? Well, quite!
Beta reading is finished on Desert Empress. I now need to make some minor edits, as well as do some reformatting on the cover art (the latter of which is going to take me a long time). All in all though, we should absolutely see Cassan Astor and the Desert Empress released before the end of this month.
Hopefully after that, Sea of Krakens can be ready by the end of the summer.
