Do different versions matter?
A few months ago, I followed the advice to authors on the Amazon Kindle store recommending to do a paperback copy of my book “A New Past: Book One“. Their advice is:
Reach new readers by creating a paperback version of your book. KDP automatically prints and ships your book whenever customers order copies so that you do not have to pay any up-front printing costs or maintain any inventory. Earn 60% royalties (less printing costs) on paperback sales. Learn more about publishing paperbacks.
They were not wrong. It took about a month after I uploaded the formatted paperback version of the book to get a sale, but it was in a country (Germany) where I had not had any Kindle-based readers. For that reader, I went ahead and formatted books two and three for printing and posted them in the Kindle store as well. Slowly, I’ve seen sales build across all three books. As a note for other self-publishers, it appears having multiple version plays into the sales ranking on Amazon. I don’t know if it is based on revenues or pages read, but it is building.
That experience led me to think about different versions as well as formats. By latest book Cosimo: a Families of the Empire story, was originally published online in serial format. It started as a collection of related stories more so than a novel.
As I was writing, I was also creating some GAI imagery on the side for both inspiration and just because I thought the technology was cool. That led me to creating an illustrated collection of the stories and publishing it on Bookapy.com. Feedback from a reader of that version indicated they enjoyed the idea of the images, but were reading on a non-color Kindle, so the pictures did not add much to the reading experience.
I took this feedback to heart as I worked on concluding the tale and publishing an edition for Kindle and sold through Amazon. I did post the second half of the story with illustrations on Bookapy, but did not use any of the GAI generated imagery in the Kindle edition.
Additionally, for the Kindle edition, I added some of the pre-Cosimo back-story of how the early settlers solidified their view of society. Most of the story remains the same, but the order of chapters has been modified and the new material is all in the first few chapters. With these changes, I published the Amazon version under a different title, using the Bookapy title “Families of the Empire” as a subtitle.
This is a long-winded explanation of how one story-arc is now published in three books, all with slightly different ordering of the tale. In the end, they are all still about Cosimo and his trials and journeys. However, this did allow me to put the story on KDP Select:
With KDP Select, you can reach more readers, earn more money, and maximize your sales potential. When you choose KDP Select, you elect to make your Kindle eBook exclusive to Kindle.
We’ll have to see how this performs and if a print version is warranted. Stay tuned for other updates on the publishing process.
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