Welcome one and all to your May 2023 Progress Update! This one looks to be pretty massive so let’s jump right in!
Big Announcement
I want to start out right away with a big announcement! This is the culmination of a project that I announced here before but, obviously, took some time to complete. In short, my books are now available to buy in EPUB format!
The first hurdle to overcome was terminating my KDP Select exclusivity contracts on all of my books. The contracts last for 90 days and then auto-renew if you have it set up that way. I had to simply turn off the auto-renew feature and wait it out.
The second hurdle was getting all of my books into EPUB format. Luckily, Kindle Create finally allowed you to export as EPUB which took a LOT of work out of it. If they didn’t do that, I would still be going through another program reformatting and hand-coding the books. The downside to publishing 25 books (and counting) is that retroactively making them available in different formats becomes a mountain of a task. Thankfully, this expedited that process!
Next, was finding a store. I thought about moving my site over to Squarespace because they have an eCommerce plan with a store integrated into their websites but I didn’t really like any of their designs. So, I searched for a third-party site with ebook sales in mind and found PayHip. I liked what they had to offer and decided to make that my store.
I started setting it up over the weekend and finished it last night!
You can either go to my storefront or you can go to the Buy Books link on my website and you will now see an EPUB option next to the Amazon link on books that are available!
Here’s the link: https://payhip.com/JJPiedra
The books that are available are From Ashe volumes 1-7, A.R. Dragonfly volumes 1-12, and both volumes of A.R. Dragonfly Origins. When My Girlfriend Was Delivered by 2-Day Shipping is released, that will be added to the storefront.
I felt it was important to offer EPUB to my readers because it is the most widely accepted ebook format. Without my exclusivity contract with Amazon, I can now offer ebook versions of all of my work on virtually every eReader platform out there! I know this has been a long time coming and I’m happy to announce that it is finally here!
Final Hope
The next update that I want to share is that Final Hope has been fully separated into web novel-sized chapters! In the end, we went from 21 printed chapters to 53 web novel chapters. The only thing I have left to do is shop around for a place to host them! I aim to do that very soon!
I also want to give them one more pass to ensure that the quality changes are where I would like them to be. Once all of that is said and done, I will make an announcement here on the site letting you know when the relaunch will happen and what the posting schedule will be.
In addition, Final Hope now has a new book cover!
My Girlfriend Was Delivered by 2-Day Shipping
I was waiting on writing this progress update because Alex was really close to finishing the cover image for Miko. Well, it came in late last night, and because of such, we now have the full cover designed for the book! So, without further adieux, here is the cover reveal!
Alex just has the four interior scenes to do and we will be ready to launch this book. I am not sure how long those will take but I am tentatively aiming for a June release. We’ll see how it goes!
As always, if it’s not a story spoiler, you can check out the artwork ahead of time by joining my Discord server: https://discord.gg/mmCnTYDUhC
Site Updates
I went through and made several site updates over the weekend! Those updates include:
- Added Final Hope back into the Book Series menu
- Final Hope now has character biography cards
- Added links to the Book Series meta-pages to their respective character/synopsis pages for easier navigation
- Final Hope, From Ashe, and MyGF Book Series pages now have new header images.
- New welcome graphic on the home page
- Final Hope returns under Buy Books as COMING SOON
- Bio cards were added for all of the MyGF characters
- New buttons for the Newsletter and Donate buttons on the side widget which fixes an error that made the newsletter button invisible
- Removal of the Media tab as it wasn’t exactly useful nor was it popular
Until Next Time
As you can see, April was a really busy month! Getting Final Hope broken up was a chore but now that’s it over, it just needs some quick editing and we’re good to go! Getting all of the characters and cover done for MyGF is a nice leap forward for that series, launching From Ashe Vol. 7 was also fun as well! So many things are moving along nicely and soon I will be able to start work on From Ashe Vol. 8!
The next update looks to be a bit thinner but perhaps I can find some ways to add some meat to it. Until then, look forward to Final Hope’s relaunch and the inevitable launch of MyGF!
Until next time,
Ja ne!
Joshua J. Piedra 