KU vs Wide: My Publishing plans for 2026 and 2027

On today's episode, we're going to be talking about some of the decisions I'm making and the status of Dangerous Whispers as we are getting closer to its release date and getting all of this wrapped up and getting the book out here in the next few weeks.I'm also going to be talking about some of the differences between my strategy for this book as a kind of mystery thriller with some horror flavor and my actual standalone horror novel that's coming out a little later next year.And welcome back to Killer Pros.We are kicking off Spooky season.Happy Halloween, everybody.I will have at least one more episode out before Halloween, but yeah, this is my favorite time of year.I am.I'm a horror nut.I love scary movies, love reading all of the, like, scary books and spooky books.This year for my Halloween reading list, I am focusing in on creature horror, which is my favorite to read.It's also my favorite to write.So just really soaking up the beginning of fall and the end of that heat wave.Oh my God, it was so bad.Speaking of which, you might notice a difference in today's sound.I am in my podcast studio instead of being in my sound booth, so I'm back on my old dynamic microphone, my Samsung Q2U sitting on the couch being super comfy and chill today.I will be back in the booth a little bit later.I had some electrical issues, so I've had to jump in, work in some wiring, and I'm getting that put back together today so that I can get back on track with these audiobooks.So yeah, the show must go on.So today we are getting closer to the release date for Dangerous Whispers.If you have been following me on on my YouTube channel for the live writing sprints, I've kind of alluded to this and talked about it a little bit.I've also talked about the changes that I was making, I think on the last episode where I changed the end of the book and when I did that, well, let's just say this mysteries have a lot of working pieces and I broke something that I didn't think was going to break.And in going back through and redoing the timeline and fixing all of these things, I made a huge mess.I just finished cleaning that up today, so I'll be going through the rest of these revisions and then it's off to line and copy.I had originally wanted to get the book out for a Halloween release, but I think I'm going to have to push that back about two weeks just to allot for the time.There's a lot of steps in publishing a book and that's part of what we're going to be talking about today on this episode.And there's some decisions that have to be made along the way.The focus today is going to be between going wide or going with ku, but I do want to talk a little bit about the overall process for getting the book together and getting it out.So I'm past the really big part of fixing changing the ending of the book and God, that was a nightmare.If you were writing a mystery, something that is heavily reliant on timelines and you decide I'm going to change the last 25% of the book.Just be ready for something major to go wrong at the start.For me, it was a timeline and a couple of tours that I had Ted doing.He owns a tour company.It's a murder mystery book and timing of when I had his partner Darcy get a key piece of information.So I had to rework quite a bit there and I think it ended up being about another 10,000 words of rewrites.But that is done, that is fixed and now the story progresses in a way that I really like and I'll be going back through and doing line and copy.I think I've got one more little thing to iron out toward the right at the 50% mark.But that's nothing compared to what I just fixed anyway.So yeah, that'll push that back to probably the middle of November.This is one of the reasons that I decided not to do a pre launch or like a pre order campaign or really do a whole lot of marketing around this book.And I wanted to keep the launch of Dangerous Whispers as uncomplicated, as simple as I could to learn the mechanics of getting these books out and seeing what all needs to go into it.Also, it is the first book in a series.I'll put more weight behind marketing this book once I have books two and three out.But yeah, I decided to go ahead and push the date back because once I finish this round of editing which I had planned on getting done about two weeks ago, it still has to go through the line and copy.Do the revisions for those go through formatting and final proof.I also need to buy ISBNS for this book.I've got a small cover revision that I'm doing that won't actually take very long.I'm changing out the imprint logo that I had originally put on that cover and then I'm also registering the copyright just in case there's any issues that come up with copyright claims.I know a lot of scammers right now are stealing different titles, they're stealing the interior of the book, wrapping it with a different title and cover, and some of them are going as far as to put copyright strikes against the original author, which can be a pain in the ass if you don't have an actual legitimate copyright registration with the U.S. copyright Office.It's I think 65 bucks.So I'm going to go ahead and knock that out.But that's basically like eight steps left in the process to get this book out.And once this book is out, I'll be able to take everything that I did here and apply that to my next release, which is called Rooted.I'll have a cover coming out for that that you guys can see.Make sure you follow me over@tannerrelledgebooks.com but I'll be able to dial that one in so that I can get everything together and do a proper pre order and a good launch campaign for that standalone.Because the marketing for a standalone is going to be a lot different than the marketing for a series.So yeah, that's everything that goes into it.Like independent publishing involves a lot more than just writing the manuscript.I have hands on every stage from the editing and format, cover design, the planning and decision making.And probably the biggest decision that I have just, I don't know, pined over during this process was the decision on distribution.Do I go wide with my books or do I go to ku?And some of you listening, you're very familiar with ku.Especially since we are focusing on horror and like darker crime fiction, there's kind of a built in community.Not even kind of.There is a very strong built in community in indie horror on ku.But there are some reasons that I'm looking at going wide and in this episode.I don't want it to sound like going to KU is the absolute right thing for everybody or going wide is the absolute right thing for everybody.Or hybrid.There's no one size fits all.It depends on your books, your readership and your your plan for your future in your author business.So there's not a, there's not a right answer here.That also means that there's not a wrong answer.So what I learned in taking so much time to decide do I want to set up to go wide or do I want to set up to go to ku?I really should have just picked one, went with it and saw what happens, which is actually what I'm doing.So why Would I want to go wide?My long term goal with my writing career is to be wide.At least have my backlist out wide so that I can reach the most readers and so that I have a more diversified business.I started this journey as a podcaster and one of the things that I love about podcasting is that it is decentralized.Apple goes away, I'm not affected because those listeners of podcasts are going to shuffle into the other podcasting apps.I actually recently got tired of the way that Apple was doing things, so I migrated over to PocketCast, which is an independent podcasting app and readers will do the same thing.No company is going to stay number one forever, even though I know, I know it seems like they might, which is why I think diversification as a long term goal is the right play.I also, I don't like the risk of relying too heavily on one company.Early in my career as a business owner, as a private investigator, I put way too much power and I put way too much.No, you know what?I put way too many of my eggs into one company's basket.And I was basically a subcontractor for this other company.If they decided they didn't like me anymore, suddenly I'm out of business and I can't eat.And I learned a very important lesson from that because eventually there were some changes legally with how things were done in the insurance investigation arena, and I ended up losing that client.It hurt my business.Now, I, by that time was able to build back in a different vertical that I was already in and building.So that did not put me out of business, but it did make for a very uncomfortable few months.That is not a situation that I want to find myself in with my author business.So I, I can't get past the risk of going exclusive to Amazon without a few caveats.And for the industry as a whole, I feel that consolidating that much of our IP and that much influence into one player damages the industry as a whole.It allows Amazon to do whatever they want to do, set prices, and basically run our businesses.And it puts us all, as indie authors into a position where another company can step in.This is another business outside of your business can step in and say you don't have a business anymore.And I don't like that.I hate that, as a matter of fact, which is one of the reasons that I really want to go wide.So after all that, why is Kindle Unlimited so difficult to ignore currently?Like I said, this is gonna.This is different from Genre to genre.Looking at indie horror, currently the largest concentration of readers who are reading books, enjoying them, reviewing them, commenting, sharing, and doing all of the organic growth for you, I think the last Indie Horror Brawl, all of the titles were actually inside of ku.It is the fastest way to get a return on your writing, especially in horror and litrpg is another one.Romance is another one.These three genres are heavily read inside of KU by readers who are ferocious.They go book and I'm one of them.I go book after book and I'll read, I don't know, two.And I'm probably on the low end of readers inside of ku.Two books a week.Those page reads add up and I'm not going to get into the specifics of how much it is per page read, or the $61 million that was paid out in July, or I think the seven hundred and something million dollars that's in the KU funds distributed annually to authors who have had page reads.If you want a breakdown like that, there's a really, really good episode of the novel Marketing podcast from Thomas Umstead Jr. Hope I'm saying his name right where he really breaks down the numbers with going wide and going to ku.But there's a lot of money there, There's a lot of influence that's already consolidated there, and ignoring that audience, especially when I'm just launching, I feel would be a mistake.So what am I going to do?I don't want to have all of my eggs in one basket, but I also know that I need to tap that market for ku.I have decided to go with a hybrid approach and there's there's a like a few dozen ways that you can bounce in and out of ku.Recently it has become easier because KU now allows your books to be in libraries and on platforms like Hoopla and Libby, just as long as they're not for sale on online retailers.So if you're listening and your horror novels are in ku, please get those over to Hoopla and I'm going to talk about why here in a couple of minutes.So my print books are going wide.I have decided to go with draft to digital for distribution.Yes, I know it's going to cost me an extra 10% of my sales, but having everything there under one easy to use dashboard is worth it to me.I also know that there is a drawback to using Draft 2 digital because they are limited on the print sizes, the actual book sizes of what they have laid out.But they use Ingram Distribution, which is what I want access to they have different promotions and things that they run through their partners.Like almost said Findaway Voice.Actually, I think Findaway Voices might be a partner with them, but I'm not sure about that one, so check it.But I do know that they do a lot of stuff with written word media, which is something that I want to tap.Also, I want my books in their system because I'm putting my ebooks in their system for library distribution.Draft 2 digital probably has the best library distribution out there.It's the simplest to use.And that way my ebooks can stay in KU for at least three to six months.And I can also steer people toward hey, go to Hoopla, talk to your library, make sure they put it on their catalog.And what I really like about this is that I don't have to steer everyone toward ku.The people who are already in that ecosystem will be able to find my book, but the people who aren't in KU who are like, man, I really wish I could read that as an ebook.You can go to Hoopla or Libby or whoever your library uses.You can get that ebook epub and pop it onto your Kindle or your favorite reading device and you can read it that way at no additional cost.But I get a royalty off that.It's not huge, but it is better than what I would be making off of the page reads for ku.It also allows me to go ahead and plant those seeds of sending my readers different places to interact with my books.Other than Amazon and Kuwait, they're like 85% of the market, but they are losing market share, especially outside of the United States.And having my books in KU again, I cannot ignore that.But I do want to capture those people who do not want to support companies like Amazon for honestly, pretty obvious, obvious reasons with what's going on here in the US and if something happens and I'm shut down, my readers are already trained to go to Hoopla or maybe find me on another system.Now why am I not going ahead and putting my ebooks out wide and using systems like Kobo or Nook or any of the other book streaming services?It's the reader experience.So I tried Kobo.I downloaded their reading app.I did a two week free trial and tried to find books to read in there.Finding horror books and finding the type of books that I like to read and that I like to write.It's just honestly a pain in the ass on their system.If the user experience and the reader experience was better on those other platforms, I would go ahead for the at least the initial launch and to see how it goes.Launch this book fully wide and ignore ku.And if it didn't do well, I would take it off of distribution everywhere except for talking about ebooks everywhere except for libraries and I would just put it into ku.Like I said, now it's, it's fairly simple.You just have to time everything right to make sure it's out of shops and you can go back and forth from KU to wide.As it stands, I thought it would be a better reader experience.I would have a better shot at getting more eyeballs on my books and getting more reader feedback.See if people actually like what I'm writing and see if they'll share it out to friends.If I was in KU and supporting libraries, if Amazon had not allowed access to libraries with ebooks, I would be going wide.I do want to say that because I think it's so important for us to continue to support and provide IP and books and stories to libraries.In this age of people being able to download an AI writer app and have it create content for them to read or go on to KU or go onto one of the streaming services and just download books, I. I want to keep libraries alive.I love working with them.And so yay, I get to be in KU and libraries anyway.That's why I'm starting and I say starting in KU because I do not plan to keep my books in KU forever.So Dangerous Whispers is dropping here in the next few weeks.I say next few weeks, the next month or so and it will be exclusive to ku.It is not necessarily a horror and fits into crime fiction, so it does have an audience wide and could do well wide.I'm going to give it through book three, see if it finds its audience inside of KU with some marketing if it doesn't or if it does well.And then I notice I have a 90 day enrollment period that is flat or I don't see any growth or it's just not worth it anymore to keep it in there.I'm going to take that book out and put it out wide and give it six months to a year wide to build an audience there.And I plan on doing that with all of my books.So rooted is is my standalone horror novel that's coming out next year.That one is also starting in ku.I plan on evaluating where it's sitting in KU when I hit the six month mark and then deciding whether I want to take it out and try it wide or if I want to keep it in until I see page reads really drop or plateau on that book and then take it out of KU and put it wide.Or I might wait until I have another standalone or two out to see if they kind of feed each other again.The goal is for me to be wide with my entire backlist and use KU eventually as a way to ramp and get that audience captured in that first three to six months before just taking the book wide, period.But we'll see how that goes.That'll be something that I talk about down the road.That is something that I'm still spitballing.But as of right now, my ebook will be in KU and libraries.My print book will be wide through Draft two digital, and that's my plan there.And I'm in a unique position with audio to do a couple of different things.So I'm set up as a podcaster, as an audiobook narrator.I have a full production set up where I can make my properties, my stories into full cast soundscaped audio dramas.I can put those out as podcasts.I can have the audiobooks out on the retailers.I am not going exclusive to Audible there.I don't need to.I don't need to go through ACX with my audiobooks again because I'm a voice actor.Kristen is also a voice actor.We're going to be duetting Dangerous Whispers together.And I know a lot of voice actors, so I'm able to just reach out, hire them directly, pay for pay per finished hour, or pay them per project, depending on how we're doing it, if it's an audiobook or if it's an audio drama.There's different pay scales for that.But I'm able to put those things out and produce them on my own.I can also, if I wanted to, and I don't like doing these because I actually don't like listening to this type of book.There's a dual narration, which is what Kristen and I are doing for Dangerous Whispers.And then there's Duet, and that's where everybody's acting out their character.Like you have a male narrator doing all of the male parts and narrating male chapters, and a female narrator doing all of the female parts and narrating the female chapters.I say all of that to say this is an individual personal choice when we talk about distribution.And this isn't just KU or wide.When we're talking about distribution.You have to look at your skill sets, what you're comfortable with, what you're comfortable learning to make the decision.With Dangerous Whispers, this is the first one, I want to keep it as simple as possible to keep from breaking Things started with the mystery, which is not the simplest story to write, but I want the business side to stay simple.KU Draft 2 digital super simple.And it sets me up to learn this and specifically learn Amazon before I have to go out and learn all of the other platforms.When I take it wide with the audio.I've been podcasting for a long time.I know how to get the distribution done there.I have been studying podcast editing and editing podcasts for myself and others for some time now.So I know how to put that together and get my stories into a format where I can put them out as a podcast, whether it's a podcast with ads and then I'm selling the premium book ad free experience, maybe a higher sound quality as the audiobook that you can buy on Audible and the other platforms.And then for the podcast I can set up a membership where I have certain things or certain story elements behind a paywall and I can put ads on the podcast version of the quote, audiobook or audio drama, end quote.And so I have these multiple ways to take the stories and the books that I've written and monetize them through audio.And that's where I'm going to be putting a lot of focus on getting these stories into audio and also into launching an audio first horror anthology podcast.That was a lot of words to describe that.I'm going to be featuring some of my short stories that are narrated.Currently we'll have two voice actors to narrate those.I would like to grow it in season two into a full cast endeavor similar to what you would find on like the Higher End.Just amazing production quality shows like no Sleep and yeah, that's what I'm working on.Audio, horror and getting my books out.That was a lot there at the end.I hope it made sense.But I have a skill set here in audio that allows me to do things that honestly not a lot of other people are going to have the time to do on top of their books.It also allows me to do things for you guys on the audio side.So as part of my business, my author business, which is print and audio, I am starting to do podcast editing and sound editing, podcast sound design and stuff for podcast shows.So if you're an author and you're looking to market yourself, connect with readers, and you're starting a podcast and you are wanting to know, oh, how do I do that?Is there somebody that can do the editing and stuff for me?Reach out.I'm building a portfolio right now.If you're like, you know what?I do want to do my own audiobooks.Maybe you have a theater background.Maybe you just have the drive to learn it and you want to learn how to do your own audiobooks.I'm putting together something for that.Reach out if you have questions.If you guys want to know anything about production or turning your current intellectual property, which are your stories, into different formats for audio and doing all that crap yourself, reach out.I'd love to answer questions and I don't know, I might put together a resource for that if there's enough interest in it.So I have rambled on long enough.Know your strengths, work on your weaknesses, and make the best plan that works for you and your story.Most of you guys are like me and you're in indie horror writers or you're doing like the darker side of crime fiction.So take what I've said today, weigh it against what you're already thinking.Check out the show that actually has the numbers on all this.That's going to be novel marketing with Thomas Upstead Jr. And I'll link to that down in the show notes.Reach out if you guys have any questions.I am about to finish putting my sound booth back together so that I can get in and finish recording this audiobook.So, yeah, reach out.Head over to killerpros.com you can drop me a voicemail there.You can also reach out through the contact form.Let me know if you guys want some help with audio.If you want to talk about audio and if you want more resources geared toward turning your stories into a listener experience, I'd love to help you out with that.Also, you can find my books updates on Dangerous Whispers and rooted over@tannerruutledgebooks.com make sure you sign up for the newsletter.I'm in the process of consolidating things together because I've kind of got a few brands that have started to kind of drift apart and I really want to tie it back in.Sign up for the newsletter there and you'll be kept in the loop for all the books.Different things that I'm doing here as well as possibly, I don't know, a paid newsletter.I've been looking at Substack.I've been looking at a few things.All right, I'm starting to ramble.I will see you guys on the next episode of Killer Pros.Until then, I'll enjoy the process.