The short version: Through no decision of my own, there will be no more Tales of the Executioner stories published on Amazon. Those that are already there will either disappear or change to a $.99 price in the coming months. This also effects the Road to Darkness short story.
So get your Amazon copies now.
The long version: While Smashwords has always allowed an author to set their book price to free (as well as distributing that free book to other retailers, like Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and iBooks), Amazon hasn’t. AN author who publishes on Amazon has to set their work (even if it’s a 3,000 word story) to at least $0.99. After that, there have been two ways to get your story priced to free. 1) become exclusive to Amazon – so your story appears ONLY on Amazon and nowhere else – and get a week of free days you can set (aka your story gets to be free for a week total). 2) Play the price match game. This involves publishing it elsewhere (such as through Smashwords, and waiting a week so it shows up on other sites) and then contacting amazon with the links to show that it’s free in other places. You then (sometimes) get a quippy email telling you that it’s been price matched, but that they don’t *have* to do it. Or you get a message saying that they will not price match your story at this time. Ir they ignore you. Either way, as an author you have zero control over whether the story is free or not. That’s the reason my Vampire Morsels were never on Amazon individually.
Then MacMillion started Pronoun, a publisher/distributor that distributed books to Amazon and still let the author set the price to free to start with – no hoops to jump through, no email back and forths, just a free short story people could enjoy. Thanks to them, I was able to start publishing my Tales of the Executioners on Amazon.
Sadly, Pronoun has announced that they’re closing. No new books can be published through them, and all the books they’ve published will be removed from retailers in January. I have checked out some other publishers, but though they pay distribute to Amazon, it’s the same $.99 “maybe they will price match” thing. (If you know of any I missed, let me know) This leaves me with two options: 1) I can leave them unpublished and stick to just distributing to Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iBooks or 2) I can republish them again through KDP and either set them to $.99 or start the game of hoping they will price match.
Neither option is ideal, but the first is what I’ve done before, so it’s what I’ll go back to. Which means there will probably not be a new Tales of the Executioners story on Amazon until the collection is finished in 2018. Or until Amazon changes their polices or a new distributor comes along.
*sigh*
NOTE: this does not affect the novels, or future novels, ONLY Road to Darkness and the Tales of the Executioners shorts.
Good News: In good news, though, Fallon: Taste in Men will be coming to all other sales channels this month. As will, hopefully, Griselda’s story. This distribution mess has taken time away from writing and knocked the schedule back. But they are coming.
Amaranthine by Joleene Naylor 
edmondslance
/ November 9, 2017Reblogged this on Readsalot.
Barb
/ November 9, 2017You may try Draft2Digital… I haven’t checked it. since I don’t have freebies, but there are other people who talk about Pronoun’s demise in the comments… https://draft2digital.com/blog/draft2digital-now-distributes-to-amazon/
Joleene Naylor
/ November 9, 2017Yeah I did. It’s the same price match hoops, sadly. 😦
Juli D. Revezzo
/ November 9, 2017I was going to suggest checking Draft2Digital as I’m hoping to do this very thing, Jo! (but looking at that link Barb provided, it doesn’t look good “If you set the price to free, it will be submitted to Amazon for $.99” Oh come on,Amazon!), In the meantime, I see that Kobo has an option to set a book free. I’m now considering trying to see if it helps the price match go any faster.
Barb
/ November 10, 2017Go direct to Kobo and you can use their Promotions tab… might give you a few more sales in their stores! 🙂
Joleene Naylor
/ November 11, 2017I’ve always just done kobo through smashwords. Have you gotten enough from the promotions tab to be worth taking them all down and redoing them for kobo’s specs and reuploading?
Barb
/ November 10, 2017Oh, and see if you can find something here… https://selfpublishingadvice.org/replacing-pronoun/
I’d have joined only for Google Play, but after seeing that only 2% use Google Play, I’m not going to join anything only for GP… 😉
Joleene Naylor
/ November 11, 2017I actually have a GP account and have the books uploaded there, I just used pronoun for them because I was lazy, LOL! I make very few sales, but oh well, it;s fun to look myself up on the play app :p
Joleene Naylor
/ November 11, 2017and ty! checking it out now!
dawncolclasure
/ November 30, 2017And good luck in getting your new stories somewhere!
Joleene Naylor
/ November 30, 2017Thanks!