Two-Cent Tuesday: Please Release Me

If you've been paying attention to this blog for the last couple weeks, then you'll know the sequel to my wildly successful novel A Hero's Journey will be released on February 12 in ebook formats.  I plan to have the third one out the month after that and the fourth one out the month after that...and so on until we hit number 8, which is the last one.  (At this point there are no plans for a ninth one.)

You might ask, why would you release them like that?  I mean, shouldn't you give it a few months for people to catch up?  And I would say no because I'm impatient.  Also, I've had these in the drawer since 2010 (though volume 2 I rewrote in 2012) and in the case of volume 3 since 2009.  I'm ready to get them out there for people to read.

Of course I don't expect people to actually read one each month or necessarily to buy one each month.  That would be absurd, at least the reading part.  I mean if you're like me you've got tons of stuff to read already and while the first three are pretty much the same length they start getting longer after that--by volume 8 it's up to something like 150,000 words, which if I were Peter Jackson I'd split it into five different parts and stuff each one with enough filler to make them 1000 pages long.

Another thing is that I've been talking about the first book for about 9 months now almost nonstop.  I really don't want to spend another seven years talking about the series.  I don't think anyone wants that.  Really now I get how bands refuse to play some songs, like for a while Counting Crows refused to play their hit "Mr. Jones."  As a fan you think that's pretty rude but on the other side of the fence I can see how you get tired of playing the same damned song everywhere you go.  So it is that I don't really want to talk about the same book or the same series endlessly.  I got lots of other books I can talk about too!

The more strategic reason is I think the more books in the series you get out there, the bigger your search engine "footprint."  The idea being that the more books you have out there, the more likely someone might stumble across one while searching for other books on Amazon or B&N or Google or whatever.  Search engines are incredibly dumb so the more different keywords you have out there, the better your odds.  And maybe when someone sees book 1 or book 7 or book 4 they might decide to get the other ones too!  I've actually seen this happen with the "Rebirth" series (First Contact/The Savior/The Final Battle) where I'd look at the sales report on Amazon and see where I sold a copy of each.  Maybe they were to different people but more likely (especially when I sold a copy of all three in Germany one day) it's the same person who decides to buy all the books at once.

So there's all the justification for it.  Some good reasons and some not so good.  Whatever, it's happening, so just make your peace with it.

Tentatively they're scheduled for either the 2nd or 3rd Tuesday of the month, which depends on how many weeks are in that month.  Basically around the 15th of each month.  Specifically it's like this:

• Volume 2:  February 12, 2013
• Volume 3:  March 12, 2013
• Volume 4:  April 16, 2013
• Volume 5:  May 14, 2013
• Volume 6:  June 18, 2013
• Volume 7:  July 16, 2013
• Volume 8:  August 13, 2013

So by the end of next summer the whole thing will be out.  Huzzah!

Tomorrow for the "first" Wednesday of the month it's Tony Laplume's favorite feature:  Phony Photos!...