This one took longer than expected, but 'Strong Medicine: The B3 Trials, Volume #1.5' is now available for purchase on Amazon for $0.99, both as a standalone eBook and via Kindle Unlimited:
EF1.5 is a shorter installment at ~10,100 words, at least compared to EF1's kaiju-sized ~68,000 words, and is a direct continuation of Marv's journey – albeit via other, more peripheral characters – that helps set up future installments. EF1.5 takes place later on the same day as EF1, but mostly from the perspectives of Dr. Sumen and Phoebe after their earlier encounters with both Marv and each other. EF1.5 will give readers a better idea of how B3's spread across campus and beyond will play out in the coming days and weeks.
Additionally, I made a few content-related formatting fixes for EF1 and updated its cover for readability, although the aspect ratio is still slightly off, so the skinny white bars at the top and bottom of the cover's thumbnail remain. I'll aim to crop/rescale that down to Amazon's optimal 1.6:1 ratio if I do another update pass on EF1, but the ever-so-slightly cleaned up "EF1.1" should be easer on the eyes either way. I also added an "Intro" page to EF1 and EF1.5 to make it really clear what day it is in-universe, since that's going to matter as the larger story progresses.
EF1 also has a paperback edition available! It's priced at $9.99, mostly since the production cost is far greater for anything that's print-on-demand, so reaching an acceptable per-unit margin makes these much pricier to offer. I have zero idea whether there is any interest in paperbacks, but it was mostly just a matter of compiling the EF1 manuscript in a different way and spending a few hours fighting with Amazon's self-submission portal. My tentative plan is to see if EF1's paperback sells at all, and if so, to start doing paperback versions at bundle-sized intervals. That will still depend on the pricing breakpoints, though.
In technical terms, I'm getting better (or, well, less bad) with Scrivener each time I finish a new book or update and recompile an older one, but there's still plenty of room for optimizing my workflow. It's fun to do research, outline, and actually write, and Scrivener is really helpful for facilitating all of that, but fighting with its compile function or more advanced toolset is typically a major PITA, so I'm always looking for ways to reduce the friction and user error that creeps into my workflow by the time I'm done writing/editing a manuscript and am eager to just get it published (although this sounds promising). Plus, process improvement is fun and something I enjoy nerding out on.
In terms of platform management, I'm not 100% settled on how pricing is going to work long-term with these eBooks and eventual bundles, but I'm planning for "regular" installments (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc.) to be sold for $2.99 each, or whatever Amazon decides is the minimum price point for the 70% royalty rate, while any notably shorter or more experimental pieces (1.5, 2.5, etc.) will be priced at $0.99 each. Bundled eBooks would be priced at $9.99 and combine multiple story installments at a slight per-unit discount, once my catalog is deep enough to merit any kind of bundling.
I also don't plan to crank out any more single installments as large as EF1. That was a fun, content-dense experiment, but I don't generally think niche erotica benefits from being that lengthy; EF1 is big enough to be a bundle's worth of content in its own right, and easily 4-5 books worth of story by BE genre norms, but that isn't an effective use of my limited writing time overall. I suppose it would set me apart from many other BE authors, but that word-to-dollar ratio isn't sustainable beyond EF1, and especially not if I want to make actual money from any of this. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy to keep EF1 as an enormous, cost-effective standalone for anyone that wants to get a good feel for how I write, but everything else will have more traditional pricing and word/page counts going forward.
I still need to put more thought into the book blurbs, mostly in terms of their "calls to action" and other framing language, but I'll iterate on those in the coming months as I get a better feel for keyword searches, other metadata, and how all that drives traffic (or not) to my content. Ideally, I'd like the blurbs to entice a prospective reader (as all good blurbs should) *and* succinctly frame where we're at in the larger story – what day it is, who the primary POV characters are for this installment, and the general state of the larger B3 "outbreak" and its assorted lactescent, tit-growing effects – but a lot of the particulars there are a work in progress. I'm trying to keep things sufficiently PG on the storefront, mostly to avoid any capricious de-listing or book-banning from Amazon's content bots, but I still think my blurbs could be stronger and more informative up-sells. I'll hopefully have all of that in a better place by the time I release EF2, which is pushed back to sometime in Q1-2024.
And finally, I've started listing my completed and planned works here, to have a single spot to point folks to and not clutter up these posts with too many links: BEB's Ever-Expanding Emporium of Breast Expansion Stories
I'm also planning to do do another round of Giveaway and Kindle Countdown promotions for both books in January or February, 2024, so feel free to hold out for those if you'd like to try them but money is tight. I haven't forgotten about posting blog-only content, but I just haven't had time yet – I'll try to do at least one online-only vignette this year. I'll post again about any of these as they occur.
That's all for now, folks, but have a safe and happy New Year *and* keep those titties growing! ( . )( . )
