Expiration Date?

[Ezekiel Azazel]

I just went back and re-read Scott's book on the 10 Steps, and had some medicine to taste this morning. Truth be told, my debut novel was rated 4/4 a few months ago on OBC. It was after that where I made a fatal error-I wrote another book instead of marketing the first. I was way too excited and jumped the gun wanting to get more of the story out, and released book 2 of the 3 part series. In my blind Mommy bias, I gave birth to a book where the reviewer was lost and confused-In short, book 2 needs to be pulled until I can get people to read/buy the 1st. My question-My first book has been idly sitting on the shelf with about 5 reviews since September, and sinking in the charts. Would it be best to hit reset, pull BOTH books and polish/re-release? Readers see my release date for book 1 six months ago with few reviews. Is the date of release/review ratio a factor in a purchase decision?

My strategy right now is this-Pull book 1, polish and re-release on a KDP freebie giveaway to gain interest. Every cent made from that release thereafter the promotion should be (and would be) invested in marketing its follow ups. Good idea? Thoughts/suggestions? Please advise me in any way, no matter how mundane or silly you may think your idea sounds. I don't want to keep doing the same thing with the same results-The definition of insanity. Thanks in advance, Ezekiel

[Scott]

What do you mean by polish book 1?

I suspect that a freebie release with the first in a series is often a good idea.

[Ezekiel Azazel]

My first book got great reviews, but a few readers pointed out that they were confused by the hyperlinks in it. With every single number mentioned, I embedded scripture which prophesy the story/series. It's not imperative to read them so I took the hyperlinks out. Nothing was changed in the story, and I actually added the bonus art from my novel to the eBook version.
I'm going to do another freebie promo on my first book in the next few days to see what goes next.

[Lincoln]

What do you mean by polish book 1?

I suspect that a freebie release with the first in a series is often a good idea.

Definitely making book 1 free in a series can do wonders in bringing in readers, though the strategy isn't quite what it used to be with the sheer number of free books out there. Now it takes more work and money to make this strategy work.

[lisalynn]

The idea of a series is to pull readers into buying your other books. They can't do that if book two and three are not yet available. There's nothing wrong with releasing books in short succession or even all at once. But each one has to be completely polished. If there is work yet to be done on book one, perhaps it wasn't really ready for release, either. If you pull book one from Amazon, you'll lose the five reviews you do have. Maybe that's not an issue for you, but reviews are so hard to come by that I wouldn't want to give up even one.

[Lizzie Mustard]

I would try to make each book in the series self-contained. i.e. Write them so as it's not essential to have read book 1 before book 2, (although that may help the reader understand a character's backstory.) As far as reviews go, perhaps you could ask friends and family to add honest reviews to Amazon once Books 2 and 3 are published?