A Tactical Retreat Is Not Defeat

TL;DR version: To make life easier for myself, and to get more visibility on all my books (but one in particular), I'm simplifying things in my author business. The one that is most likely to affect you is that my ebooks are going back into Kindle Unlimited for a while, though I doubt they'll stay there forever.

If you want to find out why, keep reading...

Backwards doesn't usually feel like the right step to me.

Perhaps because our family was posh enough for a motto, it’d be "Onwards only, never look back", but probably mostly because I'm too stubborn to quit when I should, and don't like admitting I made a mistake.

Considering how long I spend editing books to remove mistakes (and also apologising for walking into inanimate objects) this seems a little strange to admit, but it's true.

However lately, I've been spreading myself too thin, adding more and more to the mix but getting nothing back, running in ever smaller circles as I clutch at straws, spin all the plates, juggle things I'd forgotten I'd even signed up for, and throw even more metaphors and similes around like confetti.

I've been desperately trying to make it all work, but enough is enough.

And I recently read a book about quantum manifestation for authors, called Write Your Reality by Carissa Andrews. The mix of mind-bending scientific principles and woo-woo stuff won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I found the concepts really interesting, even if some of it went over my head.

Towards the end of the book, the author discussed (hypothetically) burning everything down in whatever tricky situation you're struggling with to see what diamonds were left.

And I thought - if I burnt down my author business, what would be left?

Answer: my books.

Which means everything else is optional.

My website? Optional.

Selling wide? Optional.

Selling direct? Optional!

Selling exclusively on Amazon, chasing a trad deal, or quitting altogether? All optional.

It's quite freeing, really.

So, with those twelve beautiful, book-shaped diamonds in my hand, I've been working out what I want to do next.

However, in my typical fashion, I immediately added more to the mix.

Pinterest!

A month-long Instagram series!

Publishing on all the platforms I haven't published on before!

TikTok!

Redo my newsletter read magnet!

Weekly newsletters!

And you know what? Adding more has never worked before. It ain't gonna work now, either.

So, I tried again.

Except this time, I thought about what I want to achieve, and how that's best going to happen.

And what I want to achieve is this:

A successful career as an author.

That's it.

You know, enough money to live on quite comfortably, and some fans who are excited about the next release, and so on. I don't need superstardom and billions of pounds, but I do want to feel like I'm creating something of value, sharing it with people who love it, and getting compensated enough that I can do more of it and have a bit of fun living this one precious life of mine.

So, I've been taking a hard look at what needs to be done to get there.

There's a lot, but it's nothing I can't handle.

One of the things I know needs doing, though, and quite urgently, is to get more attention for The Problem With Dead People, which is the first book in the nine-book Lucas Rathbone Mysteries series.

As book one of the series, this should have the most reviews etc, but since I published a new edition last year and lost all my reviews, it currently has about of quarter of the ratings the second book in the series has.

Which looks a bit weird, and may be putting people off buying it.

And I could probably possibly maybe get the reviews from the old edition transferred to the new one, but I don't want that. I made so many changes to the new edition that, other than following the same basic storyline with the same set of characters, it's essentially a new book. It's disingenuious to have those old reviews applied to it.

Actually, it doesn't even follow the basic storyline, as in the earlier edition, there were five mini mysteries (something that was mentioned in several reviews), and in the current edition, there's only three mysteries, all of which are more strongly linked than before.

There are reasons for the various choices I made, and I won't bore you with all of them, but essentially, I wanted to make the book more cohesive and add more depth to the remaining mysteries and the characters, whilst keeping it to an expected length for a mystery book.

Just know that whatever word count was removed got returned with interest in terms of quality.

And it's a good book! It's really good, in fact, and I'm British, so self-praise doesn't come naturally to me. Any kind of big-headedness is generally crushed out of us before we reach secondary school, so for me to say I'm rather pleased with something I've done is quite unusual.

However, it still doesn't have enough reviews, and I've been pricing it at a regular ebook price (rather than a bargain ebook price) because you know what? I like money, and I like getting paid for providing someone with several hours of entertainment.

So perhaps I'm not entirely surprised people aren't leaping at the chance to hand over their hard-earned cash on a book with a handful of ratings by an author they've never read before.

There's also another, less obvious issue, though: It's not in Kindle Unlimited, and I don't think it ever was, meaning there's always been a barrier to some people considering it.

I can't blame anyone for not wanting to buy ebooks outright when they already pay for a subscription though, but it does mean there's been fewer people even considering adding it to their TBR.

And of course, I can't prove or disprove that this has reduced the number of reviews, but from when my books were in KU before, I know plenty of people were reading them, and it's reasonable to assume that at least occasionally, one of those readers would leave a review.

Now, with better covers and improved story, even more people should be reading TPWDP, and therefore, the number of reviews would be higher if everyone who might read it would at least consider it - but of course, it's never been in KU, so I have no idea if that logic plays out, because a sizable chunk of readers don't give it a second look.

In short, I fear pulling my books from KU right before publishing a new edition tanked that new edition's chances of getting seen, read, and loved, and I have a lot of work to do to drag it out of the pit.

I want more visibility on all my books, of course, but specifically this one. It's the first book in a series, the entry point to the world, and people are just passing it by, possibly because the low numer of ratings look odd.

I can't let that continue. It's irresponsible as a business owner, which I am as an indie author, and anything to help improve that situation needs to be done ASAP.

So, you may be wondering: why aren't The Problem With Dead People and all my other books already back in KU?

Well... This is when things get slightly embarressing.

If you've been with me for a while, you may know that I flounced out of KU sometime in 2025, I think, when I found four of my books on a list of pirated books used by Facebook to train its ai slop machine, and swore never to return.

That wasn't the only swearing going on either, believe me.

And to be honest, I don't exactly love the idea of going back to Amazon exclusivity. But as the title of this blog post says, it's a TACTICAL retreat, not a retreat made in fear, desperation, or laziness.

It serves a purpose, and when it no longer serves that purpose, or if something happens to force my hand, I'll reevaluate and change how I do things.