My Date Night with a Monster series released here on substack has been a fun way for me to experiment with ideas that wouldn’t fit in a full-length novel, and to sort of soft-launch myself as an author. But after a year+ of this and being actually launch-launched as an author, I think the release strategy I’ve been using isn’t sustainable or all that helpful to me anymore. It’s less confusing to put these stories out in the world as actual books to be purchased, instead of putting them on substack for free for a while before collecting them into an anthology. Now, I want to get your opinions on how I can publish them in a way that works best for you!
Short Stories vs Anthologies
Would you rather see these short stories released one-by-one on Kindle Unlimited, or wait until 3-4 can be collected into one anthology? The benefit of releasing them one-by-one is that they will be available faster. The benefit of waiting for the anthology is that I’ll have more capacity to try things like special book boxes, stickers or other book merch, etc. What would you prefer?
Early Access vs Waiting For Release
Last year, I decided to disable the paywall function substack offers because I know people are lowkey sick of monthly subscription models and I didn’t really have any content I was willing to put behind it. Now that I’m choosing to move these short stories off of substack, I want to know if there’s any interest in seeing them released early for a subscription fee. This would be assuming that I only published the short stories in anthologies, so there is a longer wait between releases.
Kindle Unlimited vs Going Wide
Kindle Unlimited is an Amazon subscription service where you pay a monthly fee, and in exchange you can read any books published on KU for “free”. The author gets paid by the amount of pages read, rather than by individual purchases. Unfortunately, Kindle Unlimited ebooks can’t be released on other booksellers like Barnes&Noble or indie sellers as long as it’s on KU. It’s called “Going Wide” when an author chooses to publish on other platforms besides just KU.
So I want to know—would you be more likely to read my Date Night stories if I published them on KU or on as many platforms as possible?
I really appreciate your feedback! If you have any other thoughts on this, like something I didn’t think to include in the polls, let me know in the comments. Y’all are the best 🥰