Almyrigan Hero
Minstrel
With the triumphant rush of finishing and publishing my first novel now well past, I've had plenty of time to look back on what kind of foot I got off on. It was a stumble. I've made no more than 12 sales, that much I'm certain of, and I only have two ratings. Both five stars, both presumably from generous relatives, but I don't even know that for sure because only one left a review. I've got basically no money for advertising (not nearly enough for effective advertising, at least,) and I've been putting off actual review sites by updating, then finagling, then nitpicking my manuscript, and replacing the cover with something a bit more professional. That served as a good distraction, but now with things about as good as my first full book is likely to get, I've found myself just sitting there and staring at the screen, paralyzed from moving ahead by a seemingly infinite progression of 'should I?'s" and "how should I?'s" and "when should I?'s" The good news is, the people I've been able to hand copies off to not only like it well enough, but have reliably listed certain tangible positives (pacing, mystery, well-spaced 'hooks') instead of just saying "uhhh, nice book, cool." I'm confident that it is ready, but this time I want to be a bit more ready.
The first question is, should I just update the manuscript and cover, or should I quietly unpublish, set up a new page for the revision, hold onto it while I get a better game plan set up, and pretend the first publication never happened? On one hand, I'm - as the first paragraph explains - really losing nothing, and it's easily obscure enough that nobody'd notice if they weren't looking. I doubt I'm the only first-time author to get swept up and make these kinds of stumbles. On the other hand though, I'm not sure about the etiquette of doing that, and how obvious the hows, whens, and whys would be. For further context, I'm published through KDP, and it's been up for a bit less than a year. The revisions really don't change the plot, but instead serve mostly to polish up structure and dialogue and dangle just a few more hooks in front of the reader a bit more frequently.
The second question (or set of questions): if I do commit to the 'second edition' route, how should I tackle it?
- Is it better to make it more, or less, obvious that it's a revision of prior work?
- SHOULD I unpublish the first version, or would it be just as well that I sell both?
- Do I bother with pre-orders, and all of that guff, when I'm already starting from more or less the bottom?
- How do you actually handle distributing advanced review copies, and - once again - is it important when people
aren't going to be watching for and anticipating the launch anyway?
The first question is, should I just update the manuscript and cover, or should I quietly unpublish, set up a new page for the revision, hold onto it while I get a better game plan set up, and pretend the first publication never happened? On one hand, I'm - as the first paragraph explains - really losing nothing, and it's easily obscure enough that nobody'd notice if they weren't looking. I doubt I'm the only first-time author to get swept up and make these kinds of stumbles. On the other hand though, I'm not sure about the etiquette of doing that, and how obvious the hows, whens, and whys would be. For further context, I'm published through KDP, and it's been up for a bit less than a year. The revisions really don't change the plot, but instead serve mostly to polish up structure and dialogue and dangle just a few more hooks in front of the reader a bit more frequently.
The second question (or set of questions): if I do commit to the 'second edition' route, how should I tackle it?
- Is it better to make it more, or less, obvious that it's a revision of prior work?
- SHOULD I unpublish the first version, or would it be just as well that I sell both?
- Do I bother with pre-orders, and all of that guff, when I'm already starting from more or less the bottom?
- How do you actually handle distributing advanced review copies, and - once again - is it important when people
aren't going to be watching for and anticipating the launch anyway?