Monday, April 28, 2025

This is the thirty-first installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season.

Have you ever wanted to support our mission by purchasing an ebook copy of Octave of Stars or Paper & Feathers through Barnes & Noble to read on your Nook device or through Kobo to read on that kind of reader? Well, as of today, you can’t! I’ve de-listed the three main books from all external marketplaces, excluding library services like Overdrive. Why? No one was really using them. Through extensive market research (spreadsheets…) I’ve learned that physical books are how people want to read my stories, and ebooks just aren’t the thing.

When I first started this publishing journey, I wanted to go as wide as possible, listing my works on every site that I possibly could, except Amazon, of course. I thought that by putting it in front of as many eyes as possible, I could get people’s attention and have them buy a copy. This extended out into other publishing surfaces as well, such as Campfire and Laterpress, both of which I recently shut down because of low interest.

As part of this initiative, I’ll also be closing down the main storefront that I currently have through Payhip. But why close the primary source of your direct sales? Because I won’t be closing it entirely, just moving it somewhere else.

Payhip provides this neat feature where you can integrate buy buttons directly into your own website, allowing users to build a cart or just directly purchase a single product. The paperback/hardcover editions are the first things presented to users, you have to click over to ebook, if you want it, and it’s clearly marked that the physical version includes an ebook.

Simplification is key in this phase of my publishing journey. Currently I have to maintain the main book page you see above, plus the Payhip storefront page, plus the BookFunnel sales page, plus the BookVault international site. OOS exists here on Substack, too, but I don’t ever have to change anything except the index for the section, so that’s not too bad. Going extra-wide may work for some people, but I’m finding it to be just too much work. I’ve generated more interest in my books at a recent church event over the past three days than I have in several years of marketing and ads. Opportunities will present themselves, I just have to show up.