Release all 3 books in new series on same day or space them out?

[muckrakerjg]

I've never published a book before. I have written 3 LitRPG/GameLit books in a series, it's a complete trilogy.

I've been reading Kboards for months and I'm aware of the various series strategies including making book one permafree.

But I'm wondering if it is better to release all 3 books on the same day or to space the releases out even though they are already finished. I was thinking I could publish the first one for 2.99, put up pre-orders for book 2 and 3 and then reduce book one to free once the entire series is out. Among multiple other options, as you can see in the poll.

 I will be releasing exclusively on Amazon and in KU, at least for now.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

[C. Gold]

LitRPG seems hot enough and with less saturation, so I wouldn't go free on the first book. I'd do 99 cents and try to market the heck out of it since you have two other books in the series. The goal with book 1 is to get it into Also Boughts of other LitRPG books and get it in front of as many people as possible.

If you go with the 30 days separation to enjoy cliff soaring, then have both of the other books up for preorder, 30 days apart, and links in the back of book 1 (and book 2) so people who enjoy book 1 have a way to click buy before they forget about it.

I'll let more experienced authors debate whether to delay books 2 and 3 or put them all out at once.

[D A Bale]

Putting your books in Select means you can't do permafree until you go wide once your Select period is up.  If it were me, I'd release book one for .99 and put up a pre-order for book two to release two weeks later at $2.99 and then book three pre-order to release thirty days after that at $2.99.  Get your links updated in all three manuscripts the moment you have a page created.  Then about thirty days after all three are released, up the price on two and three to $3.99 and leave one at .99.

After releasing the first one and getting the pre-orders set up for books two and three, start implementing your marketing strategy on book one.  Two weeks before you up the prices, send out a notice to your mailing list and social media that the price is about to go up on X date, so they better get it while the price is good.  Then shortly before your Select ninety days is up, run a couple of your freebie days on book one with some promotional AMS ads.

[Flay Otters]

As I have said in another thread, and based on my readers' (such as they are) tending more to page reads than to purchasing...
Release them all at once. That way you don't have to worry about any subtleties -- no release schedule for people to remember, all books available for binge reading. It's like Netflix rather than remembering to DVR episodes a month apart.
Readers will devour each book in a day or two, and if you don't suck they will get through the whole thing in less than a week.
Then promote the crap out of book 1. LitRPG should take off. In fact you might want to leave book 1 at 2.99 for a couple of weeks.

[Ryan W. Mueller]

I'd release them maybe two weeks apart, perhaps even a month apart. But put the others up for pre-order when you release the first.

It seems to me that releasing them all on the same day would make it harder for the other books in the series to make a splash and get on Hot New Releases because people will need to finish the first book before buying them, and a lot of people don't read a book immediately when they order it.

[MelanieCellier]

What's the norm in LitRPG these days? Are most releases 99c or $2.99? If it's a hot genre and depending on reader expectations, you might be able to get away with launching straight to $2.99, $3.99, $3.99. Then you can do 99c promos of book 1 at various future points.

Regarding how to space them apart, I would say it at least partially depends on what your future plans are. Are you going to continue writing in the genre? How long will it take you to produce the next book? If it's going to be a fair while, it may be worth spacing them out more, to give yourself time to work on the next one, so you don't end up with a huge gap between releases. If you're confident in your ability to produce your next one quickly, there are advantages to releasing all at once or close to it. Generally speaking, releasing all at once will reduce the reader loss between books as mentioned above, but releasing with a bit of a gap will let each release hit higher as your audience grows (assuming the first release gets at least some visibility and action, of course).

[Lady Runa]

One genre where preorders definitely work is LitRPG. Having said that, if you have all three books finished, I don't think prolonging the agony is worth it. I should release all three books, the first one priced at 2.99, and include the links to the sequels at the end of each book. As in, To Be Continued [link].

And as for your next LitRPG books, I suggest you put them on preorder as soon as you get the cover and rough draft done. You'll have three months to finish the book, and all that time sales will be trickling in.

[GeneDoucette]

If there is still such a thing as a new release 30 day cliff (or 45, or 90, or whatever it is now), why would you have all three books with the same cliff? Especially when preordering allows you the opportunity to send everyone to a link to order the second and third books?

[grimshawl]

I would release them in stages 30 days apart and honestly I wouldn't make the first book free. I would start it at 2.99 because that's where you need to be to be in the KU and get the most out of your books. Setting up preorders and advertising them in the back of the first book are both good marketing strategies. Good Luck with your books. I read a lot of books in this genre and its definitely hot right now. I put a dungeon book out three weeks ago and its been performing very well at the 2.99 price point with a ton of page flips and decent book sales.

[WasAnn]

You could do a modified Liliana Nirvana technique. Her technique calls for a release of five books at once, then one more 30 days later. In your case, doing the first two at once and then the third at the cliff.

Why? Well, for one thing, reading two books gets the reader really invested in the tale and invested in continuing the tale. They're more likely to search and see if the third is out, or even sign up to your mailing list (the sign up for which you'll prominently place at the end of the book).

I'd try that if I were you based on the current market for your genre. Underserved and wide open is an invitation to readers to engage with something new that really fulfills the need.

[LilyBLily]

I've done the one-book-a-month release and the one-book-a-year release, and on a third series it's working out to one book every two years. It makes no difference at all if there's not much audience for your work, or if, conversely, people are thrilled to discover it whenever you get around to releasing the next in series. I've experienced both situations. 

Probably the best strategy is to release one at a time but close together, however you want to define "close." Then you get a good sense of how the market is reacting and you can adjust your ad copy or your ad tactics to help the second and third books.

[notjohn]

I rarely read series fiction, unless the author is Lee Child, Daniel Silva, Donna Leon, or Philip Kerr, and I think that Mr Child is the only one of those who publishes as frequently as once a year.

But I would think once-a-month would be ideal. Stay away from Kindle Select so you can offer the first one free when the second one comes out.

[Puddleduck]

Personally, when I do my first series, I'm planning to get the whole series up at once. We'll see how that works for me, I guess. My thinking is that consumers are being trained to prefer binging thanks to Netflix, etc. Even having the others available for preorders won't satisfy those readers who just want to read the whole series through at once. So, since that's what I'd prefer as a reader, that's what I'm planning to try with my own books. But like I said, we'll see how it goes. If it's a total failure, I'll probably try something different with the next series.

Actually, now that I think of it, there's a trilogy I may put out before that series that I'll likely do each as they're ready, but those ones aren't as closely tied as the other series (more like three related standalones than one continuous story), and they're planned as shorter books, so they're less of a big release. So maybe it also depends on the series. If each book is mostly a standalone, spreading them out is probably more okay than if it's basically one continuous story.

[C. Gockel]

If you've never released a book before I'd:

- Get book 1 to some ARC readers (hopefully you've already gotten it to beta readers and critique partners ... yes?? If you haven't, do that first.)
- Publish as a paperback and get some reviews going approx. 2 months before launch. Heck, maybe get all the paperbacks out there at once so you have reviews ready release day.
- Get Kindle book 1 on 1 month preorder so you can book promos.
- Release day go out at 99-cents with lots of promos.
- By release day have the other two books on preorder. I wouldn't have them actually release closer than 2 weeks apart though, because you do want to have something on the New Release charts for as long as possible.

All that said, I release about two books a year with maybe two short stories here and there. (Yet I do make a living from it, so ... if you don't do as well as you expect your first time round, all is not lost.)