The question of discoverability and another consideration of publication...

Thousands of books are published on Amazon on a monthly basis. That's a lot of books to compete against, but the more specific your genre or niche is, the better your chances of being found by your target audience.

I'm not worried about my genre, it's one of the hottest on the romance market right now. So pfft.

As I've mentioned multiples times in the last few weeks, Book one is done and with an independent copy/content editor. (I should get it back today or this weekend. WHOOP!) Book two is 5K to 7K form being done and I'm working faithfully every day to get words on the page. Based on my words-per-day goal, the book should be finished in two weeks. (HA. We'll see.) Book three is in percolating/planning/plotting stages.

BUT

I have two other books--one almost complete and one actually complete--that I could tweak for inclusion in the continuity/series that the first three belong to. That's five books done and published within the next year. That's the goal anyway.

BUT (yes another one)

Book one will not be ready to go live until October at the soonest (because: cover). Book two's publication day target is January or February (it takes place over Valentine's day). Book three's target is late spring.

Of the two extra books, the ending of one also takes place at Valentine's Day and the other was written to take place in the fall, but could be easily tweaked to take place in spring.

SO

The question becomes publish them as they're ready and in conjunction with the time of year they happen OR save them all up and publish them at once or within a very short time frame (like a week)...?

Why publish them all at once? Well, because it used to be that the more books you had in Amazon's system, the better the algorithms would work for you. You know those "you might also enjoy" titles that pop up? Well, if you have more than one book, your other books will probably be listed first. If people liked your work, they're hopefully going to want to buy whatever else you've written. There are other factors too, that's just an example.

I have a friend who published that way and was earning four to six figures a month in pretty short order. She writes in another popular genre. My goal has never been money, but I'm certainly not going to say no. :)

I just don't know if that system works anymore though. Amazon tweaks their algorithms on a regular basis. But thinking logically and bearing in mind the above scenario. Pubbing them all at once seems like a smarter plan from that example alone, right?

Well, it's not something I have to decide until I have a cover in hand in October. I decided to hire out. I want good looking covers. Ones that definitely don't look like they could even remotely be homemade.

Any opinions on which way to publish?