Just to help out those looking to determine whether or not this post announces any new actual content, let me say now that no it does not. (Unless you count the sequels to my five free short stories that I’ve published. If you didn’t know about those, there’s information below.)
This is basically just a big list of tiny-to-medium changes I’ve made to my works that I thought some people might be interested in.
So as I’ve been saying over the past year or so, I’ve been learning stuff about writing and selling and being an indie author and, more specifically, being a harem author. Obviously I’ve been doing way better during 2021 than any other year, so naturally, I’m trying to figure out why that is, and how I can keep doing better.
It’s become obvious to me that the fact that I started as an erotica author and then made an awkward transition into harem is a hinderance to me, and that my backlog is, if not weighing me down, then at least not doing much to help me.
But because I don’t want to just discard all these stories I’ve written, all these characters I’ve created, I’ve worked hard to make little tweaks to them in terms of presentation. A bit of changed cover art, better formatting, updated back matter, etc. That time has come again, sort of. I learned a handful of little things and also decided it was time to experiment a little bit.
So the biggest change is that I decided fuck collections. Specifically, collections being collected while in the process of writing the series. Complete Collections are where it’s at. Consequently, I have removed A Warm Place Collection 1 & 2. The two shorts available with them are now only available via paperback, but they will be reinserted with A Warm Place - The Complete Collection, once I do that. That being said, I’m not writing bonus shorts anymore. I feel like they fuck with the flow of the story too much and they’re also oddly difficult to write and they also seem to sort of confuse some readers, so I’m just doing straight up ordered novels from now on.
As you can see, I have a really good new banner! Also, A Warm Place has new cover art! Not all of it, but most of it. The rest will come soon. This is thanks to author Kirk Mason. I don’t have any way to thank him more than I already have, so I figured I’d plug his book. It’s sci-fi and harem and new. Check it out.
His way of rearranging the cover art inspired me to do some of the same, and so I’ve rearranged the cover art for all of Parasexual and Like A Fine Wine. I think they look better this way and I like the style a lot more.
I changed the position of my name on the spine of every paperback, because it didn’t occur to me to do this until just recently. Like wow I feel dumb. My name will now be vertical, just like the title. This looks way more visually appealing.
I have lowered the price of just about every single paperback significantly. I recently gained access to an immense amount of sales data and after studying several things, something occurred to me: my paperbacks don’t make hardly any money. I actually ran the numbers and for the run of my entire career, my paperback sales account for less than 1% of my overall income. It’s actually close to about .6%. So I figured the only people buying the paperbacks are super fans, and super fans should be rewarded, so I’ve lowered the prices and will continue to do so going forward.
I’m sure some of you may have noticed that the product description on the Amazon pages for the paperbacks all tended to run together. Amazon finally fixed this! So I’ve gone through and made it all look good. I also bolded the last sentence in the description, talking about how the story contains sexy sexiness, because we can do basic formatting now!
I updated almost all of the title images that appears at the very beginning of my ebooks. The reason for this is because when I first did this, I mass-created a bunch using dimensions that were too big and made them appear like past halfway down the first page. By the time I realized this, it was already too late, they’d been made and implemented. I’ve begun using ones with better dimensions since beginning A Warm Place, but now I’ve taken the opportunity to go in and fix all the others.
I updated the back matter of everything yet again. So there’s updated links to like Valkyries and Our Own Way. I wonder how many people actually follow those links and go on to read stuff specifically because of the back matter. I’ve poured probably a few dozen hours into making, updating, and maintaining those over the past six years.
I removed the Kindle version of Kyra’s Game from Patreon because I’ve heard some rumblings that Patreon is cracking down on sex stuff and although I’ll probably get away with naked drawings, traditionally Patreon has gotten mad with incest stuff. Basically, I don’t want to risk it, and you can still read it on this site.
I made a few tweaks to A Warm Place. When I looked back over the original version, I realized that I liked the phrase An Ice Age Apocalypse Harem way better than what I had, so I changed it.
I’ve stopped Wanderlust, Paranormal Passions, and Desire from being free. The data is in: it doesn’t really help as much as I thought it did. Hellcats, for whatever reason, is still strong like almost a year later. Honestly I doubt anyone reading this cares but I like transparency. The five freebies are still free and will remain so.
Speaking of the five freebies, I made a decision to go ahead and publish the sequels I wrote for all of them. They’re no longer available on my website because the KU demands exclusivity. The reason I did this is because hardly anyone reads them when I put them on my site. I get some traffic, but not much, and it’s mostly to check the blog and look at the nudes. Which is fine, just…I put effort into writing those five shorts, and I figured there’s probably a ton of people who have no idea they exist. So why not put them up on the Kindle? Also, the cover art for Snakeskin II was originally the cover art for Women of the Wild II.
I also updated the back matter of my Smashwords stories but like, has anyone who visited my site ever used Smashwords even once?
I lowered the price of every Haven title (except for the Complete Collection) by 1$.
I removed Parasexual - Straitlaced from the store. It is now only available in Parasexual - The Complete Collection. The reason for this is because I’ve been learning more about what’s permissible on covers and what isn’t, and apparently if your book is labeled erotica and a woman’s hands are bound in any way, it’s a red flag and Amazon might take issue with it. So instead of fucking with getting new cover art for a 7500 word short story that has, for the entirety of its run (November 2019 - August 2021) earned me a grand total of 89$ (which was actually 1$ less than the creation of the cover art lol), I just took it down since it’s already a part of the Complete Collection.
I had to make a bunch of updates to my site to reflect all this new stuff.
I changed the color scheme of the Our Own Way cover art, thought I’d make it pop a bit more. I like experimenting with covers, I’m finding.
That’s about it. I obviously don’t know how to take vacations anymore.
I haven’t started working on A Warm Place 8 yet as of right now, unfortunately, because I’ve been so busy doing all this stuff. It takes up a surprising amount of time. Also, I’ve had a headache for a week straight and I’m scared. Hopefully it’s nothing.