I'm going to take some time here and look ahead....
So, Trust should, really and for sure this time, come back from the copy editor May 1st. The plan is to input her corrections and give out advance review copies. I've set up a couple of reviews so far, but I should solicit more.
After that, I'll finish production: Lay out the large-print edition and convert the e-books. Hopefully that will mean that I don't have to revise and revise after release as I find more errors.
And then: Release!
I'm planning on eventually reaching a pricing structure where Trang is free, and all the other books in the series cost $4.99. But I want to thank my friends and the early supporters of the series, so Trust will be $2.99 for probably about a month after release (Early Bird Special!), and then will jump up to $4.99. I'll probably do that each time I release a book.
To maximize that promotion and gradually move Trang to free, I'm also going to do a Smashwords coupon for Trang that will make it free for the duration of Trust's Early Bird Special. And then it will go back up to $2.99, but I'll move it into Amazon's KDP Select program for three months. That will make it free to members of Amazon Prime and will give me five free promotion days in exchange for having it be available only on Amazon.
After that, I'm going to make Trang available everywhere. And it will probably be free--maybe 99 cents, but at this point I'm very skeptical of 99 cents because it didn't do anything for me before. I think it gives you that bargain-bin taint without making your book irresistibly cheap, so I'm feeling more like, "Go free or go home." I also could make the Google Book version of it completely accessible, and there's a Web site called Wattpad where people put their stuff up for free chapter-by-chapter, so I can put it up there, too. And I could have it here! I've got plenty of room.
Then we get into the knotty question of spending money. That's always a tricky question because, as they say, you often do have to spend money to make money, but if you spend a lot of money, you'll never make it back. Being a proud member of that most secret of secret societies, the Illuminati, I have some money to spare, but not an infinite amount.
I definitely want to explore some advertising: GoodReads and Project Wonderful seem worthwhile for my genre. There are a lot of new retail sites cropping up, some of which better serve the international market than Amazon and B&N and some of which appeal to genre readers. The issue is that a number of them require ISBN numbers, which would be another expense, albeit not a huge one. I also don't know if they allow free books--it would be weird to have every book in the series up except for Trang. So perhaps I should do this step before I start making Trang free.
Another question is audiobooks. They are expensive to produce (especially because I would absolutely have to hire voice talent--I mumble), but as a result, fewer people do them and it's easier to be discovered. Lindsay Buroker is a great enthusiast of podiobooks,which are actually given away as free podcasts (I don't know if you can compile them and sell the resulting audiobook), and clearly they have paid off for her. Also, it fits into this whole accessibility mania I have. But it cost her a thousand bucks, yoikes....