Well, I guess it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted on here, huh? I can’t believe my last post was almost two months ago already, which feels ridiculous, but 2024 is flying by. Literally, I feel like I blinked and missed the first half of the year, and I can’t believe it’s August already.

I’ve been pretty much off the map lately, both here and on social media. There are Reasons for this (partially business related, partially personal), but now that I’ve gotten my mess together, I knew I needed to get on here and do a few announcements / important notifications on a few things that have come up over the past couple of months since I sat down and wrote something up here.

I figure the easiest thing to do is make a list. So here we go!

(Note, there’s a TL;DR at the end of this post, since I know I tend to get wordy sometimes!)

1. The Becoming Series Audiobooks: I mentioned in my last post that I signed with Tantor Media for them to produce audiobooks for Under Siege, Redemption, and Bloodlines (plus the short story “The Night the Moon Died,” which I understand will be tagged on at the end of the Redemption audiobook). I’ve finally gotten all the details shook out and have received notification that the audiobooks will be released on the following dates:

Under Siege: 5/20/2025

Redemption: 7/1/2025

Bloodlines: 7/22/2025

These dates are obviously not in my control, so while they’re a bit further out than I’d personally prefer, it is what it is, and it’s not something I can change. At least it gives me time to figure out something special I can do around release time for them next year, though!

2. The Unnaturals Series E-Book Changes: I’m making some big changes in regards to this series. I’ve been doing a ton of assessments behind the scenes on sales figures and such, and between the two series I have out or in production, this one sells the least in most places. My read-through rate for this series is abysmal. (For those who are unaware, an author’s read-through rate on a book series is the percentage of readers who read book one, then continue on to the following books in the series.) At least, the read-through rate is abysmal everywhere except Amazon (comparably). I’m suspecting that many of the readers in this particular genre in general are more freebie hunters than anything else on a lot of retailers, just based on what I and other authors have seen. So after a bunch of hemming and hawing and after seeking some advice from a mentor of mine, I decide that The Unnaturals Series is going into Kindle Unlimited.

Why? Well, it’s purely for mercenary reasons. I’m trying to build my royalties up on my currently released books, mainly because I can’t afford to put books out as frequently as I’d like (since most of the expenses are not something I can regularly fit into my budget). This is part of the reason I publish so slowly—I kind of force myself to, since affording all the accoutrements that publishing involves is a hurdle I just can’t jump over frequently. But if I can get my royalties up…well, that means I can release more often. Since The Unnaturals Series does good on Amazon (compared to other retailers, where it barely moves), it seems like a smart financial move to shift that series into Kindle Unlimited.

This means that soon, the e-books for The Unnaturals, Hellforged, Wicked Creatures, Nightfall, and Reapers will disappear from Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Apple, and Kobo Books. Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity for e-books, so I have to remove them in order to not put my Kindle publishing account at risk of deletion. However, the paperbacks will still be available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and here on my site, since Amazon doesn’t require paperback exclusivity, just-ebook.

As for The Becoming Series, it sells well enough that I don’t think I’d ever shift that one into KU. I like having that series on “wide” release (non-exclusive, available everywhere), and it sells well enough with solid read-through on other retailers that I have no interest in messing with that. So it will remain wide, while The Unnaturals Series will soon shift into KU.

So if you’re reading The Unnaturals Series through any other retailers besides Amazon, and you don’t want to purchase the books through Amazon, I’d highly recommend you go ahead and purchase your e-book copies of any books in the series that you don’t already have, because within the next week or so, they’ll only be available on Amazon.

3. E-Book Availability on My Site’s Shop: Speaking of e-books and money, I’m also looking at cutting my writing business expenses as much as I can in order to increase the profit margin so I can afford those aforementioned more frequent future book releases. So one of the things I’m doing is ceasing the sale of e-books here on my website’s shop.

You see, I use WooCommerce on the backend to accept payments for my shop, which is fine and works well. The problem is, for digital products, WooCommerce isn’t really great about delivery; it doesn’t let me, say, upload an .epub format e-book to deliver to customers who purchase (which is the most common format for e-books out there). In order to facilitate e-book delivery, I have to pay a middleman to do it for me. That middleman is Book Funnel.

Don’t get me wrong—Book Funnel is great…when you have a need for it. They have lots of features for authors beyond just book delivery, and I highly recommend checking out their services if you are a publishing author. But right now, my sales aren’t exceeding the monthly fee I’m paying for Book Funnel to handle my e-book sales deliveries for me. So logically, it just doesn’t make sense to continue to pay the monthly fee for Book Funnel for that purpose. So shortly, I’ll be removing e-books from sale from my online shop.

Paperbacks will still be available, so those aren’t going anywhere. Since paperback delivery is seamless and doesn’t require me to pay a third party to handle everything for me, I’m going to continue to sell paperbacks on my site’s shop for the foreseeable future. Just not e-books for now.

I’ve got more to say, but that’s probably more than enough news to dump on you guys for this week! This post ended up being longer than I planned, and I don’t want to keep everyone from their busy lives.

TL;DR:

1. Audiobooks for books 4-6 in The Becoming Series (Under Siege, Redemption, and Bloodlines) now have release dates!

2. The Unnaturals Series e-books are going exclusive to Amazon / Kindle Unlimited. Paperbacks will still be available on Amazon, B&N, and my shop.

3. The e-books for all of my books will no longer be available for purchase on my direct shop but will still be available on all major retailers (save for The Unnaturals, which will be Amazon exclusive). Paperbacks for all of my books (including The Unnaturals Series) will still be available here on my shop.