I find myself in a similar boat. Though I have a hard time reading books for entertainment. When I read, I study or get distracted by my own thoughts. Audio books have been fun. I've found that I typically want at least 10 hours for a credit, though prefer 20+. 1 credit for a Stormlight Archive book (46 hours or so), or 1 credit for a 7 hour book... hmm.
It's just fun to run the numbers and see what happens. Tonight, I'll search the stars for my answers. Then read the tea leaves in my cup... Ha, just kidding. I think as an author, you have to make the decision that works best for you and your story. I felt that my book was going to be too long, though it appears that's not the case. I could maintain course, knowing that my length is standard for my genre, or break things up a bit. My only worry is, if I split this book into two, I don't want to mess up the well planned endings I already have in place. A book should end well, not just stop at the designated word count. So how to make a new ending that's amazing and compels people to keep reading...
Okay, well, if you're really wanting to get into this. You need to look at books that are part of a series, see how long they are, and how long the readers had to wait between new releases. If you can swing a 147k word book on a consistent basis in that length of time go for it. Eventually, you'll love it when your KU page read checks start coming in.
I'm pretty convinced that I need the split. It's just how to do it with a complete and detailed plot already in place. Splitting the first book makes sense in many ways. Story pacing, time of events, it'll setup the second ending better, etc. Outside the book: more books, release more frequently, make more money, develop a standard length I can aim for with each series. Just need to figure out how I'm going to do it.
I ended up splitting office wars. I wrote 2 and a half days and decided it was too much to self edit and then turned each day into one book and added more details to bump them up to about 50k words each. I have a hard time sitting my ass down to edit, so if breaking it up in to smaller stories helps me make that happen, then I'm going to do that haha. My fantasy series I won't break up, because I have three books already mapped out. But I am totally going to break it up for editing purposes. I'll do the first half of the book and then when that's polished I'll do the second half. Anyway breaking it up was the push I needed to get me to publish that first book. The second was easier, and I have a feeling when I finish writing the third it'll be even easier still. However, I won't ever raise the price above the minimum for KDP, so 2.99. And I'll definitely keep it on KU, I actually made more money off of KU than from digital sales. If I put out a 120k word book I might go up to 4.99 or 5.99, but I'll never price it above popular authors, like Brandon Sanderson, who generally charge around 7.99 or 8.99. I think it is important to check to see what big name authors are trying to sell their books at and don't go near that price haha.
I think my process will be: plot, draft, expand/cut, and polish. Right now, I'm all over the place with this story and it has slowed me quite a bit. I'd love to just throw it on the back burner and use everything I've learned for my next series, though I've invested too much to do that. And, I need to learn to finish my projects. Have you guys heard of 20BooksTo50k? It's a Facebook group. Fantastic place for indie authors. The group is about working hard, publishing, and marketing to be successful. I'll price my books at $2.99/$3.99 and keep them on Kindle Unlimited. Then my focus is on writing and publishing. Techniques of the Selling Writer is a fantastic book. One big lesson is, you learn by doing. You won't learn to write complete novels unless you write complete novels. You can practice with beginnings or little word challenges all day, though unless you write complete novels, you won't learn to do that well. So, going to push through on this so I can finally move on. Congrats on Office Wars. I've heard a bunch about it. Keep up the good work!
Thanks @Larakel - She understood me haha. Sorry, I meant my story spanned 2.5 days when I decided to cut them off after each day. So book 1 (technically spans a week, but it only covers 1 game day) then book 2 is one day, etc. However, I can write non stop for days and days, it would not be surprising to write over 40k words in a weekend. The problem is the editing. Holy crap I hate doing it. From the reviews I can tell I am not horrible at it, but it still sucks. I think the part I hate is that after rereading the same chapter 10 times to catch all the errors, the story starts feeling flat and unoriginal. I know that is not the case, but I find myself rewriting parts and then stopping myself. I mean talk about willpower. Everytime I think about editing, I find some other project work on haha.
I tend to still write in script mode.... so 120k is right for me for any length. 3 acts, 30-60-30 ratio just the way I've been trained. I can and do write shorter works. Snippets or scenes of someone's life. My TSK shorts can run from 10k to 40k but, not sure I could do it for a main series.
I just start with It was a dark and stormy night and keep typing until I get to And they lived happily ever after. The End. No idea about percentages... or maybe I'm being a smart alec.
Another interesting thing to track would be which books hit the top 100 in Kindle Paid Sales Rank. That would allow people to see if there are any shared traits among those books.
