One book, or three smaller books?
Recently I did a full read through of what I’ve done so far on ‘Blood of a Fallen God‘ this epic fantasy story I’m working on. And realized I had some really good break points in the story, which meant if I wanted, I could break it up into three books. There’s advantages and disadvantages to that however, and so I went on some social media to ask. What was interesting to me was the while the voting actually clearly favored breaking it up (78 to 12) the comments were mostly in favor of keeping it as one large book. Note, the people I was asking were, for the most part other self-publishing authors, and if there’s one thing a group of authors will do, is come up with 1001 different ways of doing the same thing and being 100% sure they are in the right.
Some of the comments were somewhat amusing.. the idea that for something to be an “epic fantasy” requires a certain word length I found rather funny. But I guess if you think length of story means it’s epic, sure.. though that’s not where I go. Epic fantasy to me means a grand story, covering multiple locations with multiple characters. Now this usually means a larger story, but that doesn’t really mean a minimum word count.
But I digress.
Advantages to breaking it up:
More $. Fact is, three books will, traditionally make you more $$ than one. Assuming the price points are good.
More reviews (hopefully)
Lets me say I’ve written 10 books instead of saying 7 *heh*
Disadvantages
Costs are higher.. instead of one cover, I have to provide for three.
Usually a single book that large costs a fair amount more to buy.
If you don’t publish all three at once, it becomes a pain for readers to wait.
The other side is break it up into three, but publish them all at once as both separately, and as a ‘box set’. Nice idea.. but…
I want to put this out over kindle scout. I don’t think that strategy will work there.
I think I’m leaning towards putting it on Kindle Scout as one book. If it doesn’t end up getting ‘picked’ then I’ll break it up into three and sell it as three seperate books and a ‘box set’ that way I’ll get the best of both worlds, so to speak.
