To justify that, I’m going to focus on making each installment a complete novelette in its own right. Part II worked out pretty well as a self-contained story, but Parts III and IV need some work (as I’m sure you know–thanks for alpha reading!).

So yeah, it’s both a business-change and a mindset change. But I think it’s the best way to serve the readers and the story, since it puts more emphasis on making each installment a complete work. If that makes any sense.

Interesting about the $.99 hold-up. That’s good to know, too.

Honestly, though, the problems with Smashwords are less of an obstacle and more of a wake-up call that my original plans were a bit too limiting, from both a business perspective and in terms of the overall story. I’ve always been more of a novelist, but this series is the perfect opportunity to try to branch into some other shorter forms. Publishing this as a series of novelettes leaves things more open for expanding certain storylines that may resonate more with readers. But to really do that, I need to stop thinking of this as a novel in four parts and start thinking of it in terms of a series of shorter works.

Don’t worry, I can still do an “omnibus edition” later on if there’s sufficient interest, which for all intents and purposes will be exactly like the full-length novel I was planning to publish anyway. The story will remain more or less the same, except possibly for Parts III and IV, which I haven’t finished revising yet. For parts I and II, the only thing that’s changing really is the packaging and the price.

As for making the first part free, Amazon actually tends not to price match ebooks that are $.99–or so I hear. I had a couple of $.99 titles earlier last year that sat there for months, even though I got multiple friends to inform Amazon that it was free elsewhere. With titles priced higher, though, the Amazon bots tend to be a lot faster to price-match to free.

As for price staggering, you can drop the first novelette down to .99 on Amazon until you can make it free. Not much has to change, really. The only difference is that you won’t serialize them on certain platforms.