At it's beginning, Tales from the Green and its subsequent sequels were created as an experiment of sorts to answer a simple question: can I go from unfinished short stories and reams of notes to actually writing a complete, coherent novel? The answer seems to be "sort of," seeing as how I'm three books into a series without writing an ending for the story arc yet. Either way, I'll take it. I can take a project from start to finish and begin another even when I know it'll be years before I get a finished product out of the ordeal, and to me that was the first hurdle I had to overcome in becoming a writer.
Likewise, the journey into self-publishing was an experiment to see whether my products could hold up in the free market and garner positive feedback. Again, I'd like to say that this was successful. I've sold hundreds of eBooks at a variety of online stores with minimal promotion and no paid advertising, and that's not counting several hundred free downloads through Smashwords. I've actually made some decent money off of something I wrote, which in and of itself is flattering, not to mention getting some great reader reviews in the process.
Which brings me to my real point: I'm removing all three Tales from the Green books from all online stores this summer. In order to take my writing as a career past the 99 cent bargain eBook stage I have come to the conclusion that I need to up my game. The major revisions that I made to my first book only served to make me realize that books two and three need the same treatment, and that I am only hurting my brand by leaving what I now consider to be incomplete works on the market.
So, to break it down, here's the plan:
1) Remove my books from Smashwords affiliate stores (Barnes and Noble, Sony, Apple, etc). This will take a few weeks. They'll still be available at Smashwords until July 1st. Those who have already purchased will still be able to download new copies.
2) Remove my books from Amazon, also around the end of the month. Those who have already purchased will still be able to download new copies.
3) Spend the next year or so revising Wizard's Tome and Spider's Web until I'm satisfied that they are too my liking. There is a good chance that Spider's Web will be split into two separate stories due to the fact that it is already as long as my first two books combined, which means that the story will likely see some big changes.
4) Rather than getting myself in a rush to put out each book as soon as I finish the revisions, I plan on sitting on them for a while until I finally finish the story arc. This will ensure that all is as I want it so I don't end up pulling everything again in the future. By splitting Spider's Web into two books I am fairly positive that I can end the series with a fifth installment, at which point the entire set will go back online at once.
That's about it in a nutshell. In the meantime I am also working on a few non-Green related projects that shall remain nameless until I am sure that they are ready. From here on out I'm playing this all as a serious business as opposed to a hobby.
