What's in a release?

Today’s topic is one that I’ve talked about a little bit in the past, but I wanted to look at it from a slightly different angle. It’s also one that greatly related to Tuesday’s topic, so it seemed fitting for this week.

How many releases do you have, in a year?

I ask this question because there’s a rumor going around, that authors have to be putting out multiple releases in any given year, or no one will want to read them. Let me tell you right here and right now that it isn’t true.

At least, it’s not true for every genre.

If you’re a romance/erotica writer, then yes, by all means, get as much content out as you can. But if you’re in basically any other genre, please don’t do that. Your focus shouldn’t be on the amount of content you have on the shelves, but the quality of that content. Readers of romance and erotica aren’t looking for deep reads or fascinating plots (you know what they’re looking for, so I won’t go into detail). But by the same token, readers of sci-fi aren’t looking for shallow plots and easy-to-predict situations. Which isn’t easy to release multiples of, in a year.

If you’ll remember from our series on Amazon versus everyone else, more quantity generally means lower quality, when it comes to books (and lots of other things, if I’m being honest).

So my question to you is, how many releases are you putting out in a year? Are you putting out a number of releases that is suitable to your genre, or are you following the trend of I-must-release-as-much-as-possible? Remember, not every reader is looking for an easy read.

Like we talked about on Tuesday, if you’re writing so many books in a year that you can release more than two or three things, you’re probably not growing in your writing style—and if you’re not growing in your writing style, then it’s hard for real readers to actually attach themselves to you. You might make some sales, yes, but it will be more difficult to attain avid readers who follow everything you release.

Now, this next part isn’t fully tested at all, but this is what I’m doing as of this year.

I release one full-length novel per year. Even though I have fifteen books complete, I don’t have the time to release more than that in year, nor do I have the will to do so. If you’ll remember, The Druid Novels are all rather long. I can’t expect readers to get through that in a couple months and be ready for the next one. In fact, I expect them to take about a year to read it.

So, in the meantime, I’ve been releasing shorts. Chapbooks. Letters From Hell was just released a few weeks ago, and it’s already doing very well. And I have another coming out in the coming weeks, which I’m sure will do just as well.

This is a way for me to cheat the system. I’m still releasing works. This will mean that I’ve released three works this year—but only one of them was a novel.

This way, I’m still following the Amazon rule of “release as many things as you can in a year” while sticking to the rule of thumb for my genre, releasing only one book in a year.

You’ll have to do a little bit of research to figure out exactly what you should be doing in this vein, but it’s definitely something for all of us to consider. Find out what your readers are looking for, and determine whether or not mini releases would be a good idea. Personally, I’ve found it very helpful.

Oh yeah, and being published in a magazine counts as a published work, so don’t forget to try to get your work published elsewhere as well—like, for instance, Mavguard. ;-)

[love]

{Rani Divine}