Originally Posted by
George at C-Springs
I'm going to differ with everyone just a little bit. Vision is one thing, but running a successful business endeavor is another. You absolutely must create what you want to create, but must keep in mind the business aspect of it all, especially because you are a small business with a very limited customer base. Take a look at your sales and see how they progressed for the different editions. Was EOTD a complete sellout in XX amount of days versus Firestarter in XX amount of days? Was the initial sellout due to the novelty of the item? How many return customers did you have? How many did you lose? For those who bought EOTD but not have Firestarter, were you able to ascertain the reason? (Title, Style, Cost, Value, Personal Finances, etc.) Would your customer base be willing and able to go $1.2K - $1.5K for a rebound? If the answer to that is no, would they be willing to skip one volume and then continue on later, or having broken the sequence would they just say forget it for other volumes? That would affect long term sales, which are necessary to keeping the business and vision going.
So ... you need a happy medium. UNLESS ... you do something a little different, like presell and only create the actual number of books that are ordered, like CD does for some of their limited editions. This would limit your risk. Or do an "Out of Series" publication, so if the owner of letter T or Z or whatever can't do the $1.5K, he/she could skip it, not miss out, and still be on board for the rest of the normal lettered series. Instead of letters, you could always do something else like numbers or be really different and do a small Remarque of a character or something from the story (it would be cool to say instead of "I have letter X", rather "I have The Man in Black".
That's my 5 cents! Whatever you do, it will be welcomed and coveted.