A New Experiment: POD Omnibus Editions

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, wishing you a Happy-Day-After-Valentine’s Day by announcing a sort-of-new book and the story behind it. The Maine Quartet is the fourth and final collection of romance novels I wrote between 1989 and 1997. I had two reasons for creating these omnibus e-book editions. One was to introduce readers to a part of my backlist that they may not know about. The other was to give myself a chance to go back and edit what I wrote a quarter of a century ago. I’m a much better writer now, and no longer have to deal with editorial interference. I didn’t change any of the story lines or characters, but I was able to make the text read more smoothly, get rid of the occasional descent into purple prose, and eliminate one or two places where my heroes expressed sentiments that went unchallenged in the 1990s but struck me as offensive in the 2020s. That said, the books are still set in the year they were first published, which means some readers may consider them to be “historical” novels (ouch!).

I must confess a dark secret—I’ve always loved revising. When I was writing romance, producing three or more full-length contemporary category romance novels a year, I didn’t have time to do as much of that as I like. Going back and making them better has been both a challenge and a pleasure.

The four novels in this collection, all originally published between 1989 and 1997, have the common bond of their setting—the rural central Maine mountains already familiar to readers of my Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries.

Cloud Castles was originally published in the Silhouette Intimate Moments line under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Gorton. It is romantic suspense rather than straight romance. It begins when fate brings an optimistic Kendra Jennings and a cynical Alex Moreau together on a lonely country road in 1989. A deputy sheriff, Alex thinks Kendra is keeping secrets and he’s right, but she’s telling the truth about the peculiar things that happen to her after she inherits a house deep in the Maine woods. Those events are entangled with the activities of Alex’s rebellious teenaged son and end up putting both Kendra and the boy in mortal danger.

In Love Thy Neighbor, originally published in Bantam’s Loveswept line,  Linnea Bryan returns to Maine to discover her roots and encounters the unexpected in her next-door neighbor, Marshall Austin, a retired cop who now raises and races sled dogs. When she decides to stay in Austin’s Crossing to renovate her late grandfather’s house, Marsh is suspicious of her motives. Family plays as great a role as romance in this one. Marsh is the sole support of his aunt and his half sister but has an old grudge against Linnea’s mother, the woman who, years before, broke up his parents’ marriage.

In The Rapunzel Trap, formerly published as Hearth, Home and Hope under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Gorton for Silhouette Special Editions, Hope Rowan suspects that the fairy tale character Rapunzel had agoraphobia, just as she does. Is Cooper Sanford, former high school bad boy, the handsome prince who can rescue her from her tower? To persuade Hope to help him with his motherless daughter, he’s willing to give it a try, but first they each have to overcome the scars left by earlier marriages.

And finally, in Family Lies, formerly published as Separated Sisters under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Gorton, again for Silhouette Special Editions, Ariadne Palmer, part owner of an antiquarian bookshop in Maine, doesn’t believe Clay Franklin when he tells her she has a twin sister and grandparents she never knew about. As her grandfather’s lawyer, Clay has sworn not to tell her the whole truth about her family, but his immediate and growing attraction to her argues against keeping that promise.

As a bonus, this collection also includes “The Boston Post Cane,” a short story in the mystery genre which had its origins in Family Lies.

Although this isn’t the first time I’ve self-published an e-book collection (In addition to the romances collections, I’ve also done them for my two historical mystery series), this is my first attempt to produce a print-on-demand edition at the same time. Fortunately, revising The Maine Quartet meant the manuscript ended up being quite a bit shorter than it started out. I did much more cutting than I expected to, especially on Cloud Castles.

I use Draft2Digital for self-publishing. They have a maximum length of 740 pages for a trade paperback. This book came in at 812 pages at 5½”x8½” but when I switched to the 6″x9″ size it came in at 692 pages. That’s a big paperback, but since this is an experiment, I moved on to the next step—pricing. Draft2Digital’s suggested price was $34.99, which would mean I’d receive $5.35 for each copy sold. Since I couldn’t imagine anyone paying that much, I looked for a price point that would be more reasonable. Keep in mind that the author share of a traditionally published paperback is usually 8% of the retail price. That would be $2.80 for a $34.99 book. With that in mind, and also keeping in mind that it wouldn’t cost me anything to make a print version available, I started playing with the price. At $28.99, I’d get $2.62 per book. At $26.99 it would be $1.72. At $25.99 it came in at $1.27, and at $24.99 my share would be down to eighty-two cents. I opted for $25.99, which still seems very expensive to me, but I would like to see a little income from this project! The e-book, which I expect will be the preferred way for most people to read the collection, is priced at $8.99. I receive $5.35 for each copy sold and various amounts for rentals and/or library usage.

I haven’t seen the print version yet, although I’ve ordered a few copies for myself at $10.43 apiece. I want to make sure the physical book is sturdy enough at that size to make it worth the price. If it seems likely to fall apart, I’ll take if off the market. If it passes inspection and it turns out that readers actually want to buy it, I’ll make the other omnibus editions available in print format as well, as long as they come in under the page limit.

So what do you think, MCW blog readers? Would you pay that much for a trade paperback? Do you even read print editions anymore? And will you take a chance on the romance/romantic suspense genre if the stories are set in Maine, even though your first love is mysteries?

In case you are in the mood to buy, there are links below to some of the places where The Maine Quartet is available. You can also find it at Kobo, Smashwords, and other e-book outlets, and libraries should be able to order either format for you to borrow.

Apple iBook and other outlets:

https://books2read.com/u/bPDR0z

Amazon Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV1CL4WH

Nook:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-maine-quartet-kathy-lynn-emerson/1144776764?ean=2940179759782

B&N print edition:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-maine-quartet-kathy-lynn-emerson/1144776764?ean=9798224198184

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new omnibus e-book editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.