I should have posted this earlier, but it's been a busy month yadda yadda.
A few weeks ago I received an email that eXcessica would be closing its doors and unpublishing all its books at the end of November. First up, there's nothing controversial about this. Excessica was started as a sort of writer's collective right before Amazon's Kindle blew the doors off self-publishing. This was back when alternative book sites required "publishers" to have at least three authors in their stable and Selena Kitt wanted to both start her own career as an author and recognised there was a lot of untapped talent on Literotica that could be brought along for the ride. I feel honoured and grateful to be one of those writers and have nothing but praise for Selena and her hardworking crew for having me along.
All good things must come to an end, and in an era where it's trivially easy for a writer to upload their work to Amazon and other places, there is no longer the need for writer's-collectives-cum-publishers. It's time for us to make our own way, and I fully understand the decision.
What does it mean for M.E. Hydra books on Amazon and elsewhere?
As far as I know, the ones put out through eXcessica will be unpublished at the end of the month, so if you want to grab the old versions, you might want to do it pretty sharpish. The books affected are Succubus Summoning 101 and 201, and the A Succubus for collections (6 of them). The Sandwiched by novellas were fully self-published by me and won't be affected (I really should get back to finishing that series off!)
The books won't be gone for good. As soon as I've sorted out the logistics of rights transfers and the rest, I'll be reuploading them under my own author account. For Succubus Summoning 101 and 201, that will probably be right away as I'm happy with the current covers for those. They'll just need some tweaks to the copyright page and the removal of the old logo and should be good to go.
As for the A Succubus for collections, I might use this as an opportunity to tweak these and rebrand the series as a whole.
As part of the rebranding I definitely want to redo the covers and number them as a series.
The other thing I might do is rejig the contents and running orders. Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed links between characters and events, and realised these are all taking place in a shared universe.
This was not always the case. Early on, I wrote them as standalone short stories, which means there are some that don't quite fit within that shared universe - the superhero parodies, that one science fiction story, some of the "Succubus vs." stories.
While I haven't put any books out for a while, I have continued to write stories. Some have been Patreon-exclusives, others have been posted on Literotica. I probably have enough for a new collection and some left over. I'm thinking of replacing some of the older stories in the older collections, and then rebranding the collections as part of a much larger ongoing story in the same universe.
What do people think about that?
Go with the rebrand, or preserve the collections with their original line-ups?
Either way, expect the Succubus Summoning series to be reuploaded fairly quickly, and I'll likely follow with the new A Succubus for editions over the first half of 2022. Maybe, if everything falls into place, a brand new 7th collection to follow the updated editions.
As for covers, I'm still checking on whether it's allowed, but the WOMBO dream app has thrown up a few pictures I wouldn't feel too bad about sticking on a book cover.
A Succubus for Halloween? |
A Succubus for Freedom? |
A Succubus for Remembrance? |
What do you think?