TL;DR: Raw VIII is coming out as intended, Our Own Way is delayed for an unknown amount of time, I need to instead write and publish a new book to test how hard Amazon is going to fuck me.
So…
I figured that I should probably say SOMETHING about the whole thing happening with Amazon right now. In truth, I’ve been considering what to say for a long time now. Normally I have a policy of being very open about my work with my readers, but behind the scenes, pretty much every author has been advising every other author to shut the fuck up about this. For a number of reasons.
I’ll say what I can.
Earlier this month, Amazon added some updates to the publishing process and one of those was a mandatory YES/NO question on ‘does the title contain adult content?’. Obviously, this is a fucking ridiculously vague and broad question, and really, it wouldn’t even be a problem except that apparently answering YES cuts your visibility. Which, in turn, cuts your profits.
So far, not a whole lot has actually happened.
There’s a lot of authors that seem to want to just keep going as they have been, but I’m extremely reluctant to do this.
My plans, unfortunately, have changed as a result of this.
For the immediate future, I will write and release Raw VIII, ideally sometime in July, thus wrapping up the Raw series. I will also continue working on Our Own Way 1 until it is completed. However, I am now forced to hold back on the release. Something I really don’t want to do, but the situation is far too unknown right now for a major release. And I was planning on Our Own Way being a major release. And if you fuck up a title’s launch, that’s it, you can’t ever take it back. Fucking up a Book One’s launch isn’t just fucking up that book’s launch, it is permanently fucking up the entire series, because series don’t really pick up in haremlit. For the most part, you can’t really have a shitty launch for a Book One and then pick up the slack with Book Two, it just doesn’t work that way.
This means that my new plan is to write a brand new novel as a sort of test novel. I need to see precisely how much damage answering YES does to a book.
The novel in question will be the first in a trilogy. It is post-apocalyptic and will take place in an underground society. It’ll be sort of along the lines of Monster Girl Inn in terms of balance with making a home life and going out to do action-adventure stuff, just grimmer.
I will hopefully have something further to say on the 1st.
Wish me luck.