NOTE: This is about novellas, short stories and other ebooks that do not sell. It is not about the Zombie novellas as a genre!
OK, lets say your novella or short story sold a few copies then went into rapid decline like This One did. Now, two years on, instead of giving you that small but consistent income you were hoping for, it has dropped to a sales rank so high it resembles the number of dollars you were dreaming of making when you started writing.
What should you do?
Most folk (myself included to date) leave it up on Amazon. But is this a good idea? You may get an odd sale. Even the odd flurry of sales. But really, it is highly unlikely this little ebook will ever get resuscitated.
Its a goner. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Snuffed it. Gone to that great hard drive in the sky where nothing ever gets downloaded from.
You can try breathing life back into it with KDP freebies and whatever else springs to mind. But the crucial thing that seems to govern the life of almost all ebooks, is simply its age. As it gets older it gets less saleable. In the first few months of its existence it is fresh and new. It gets discovered by people looking for the fresh and the new.
Then as time goes on it gets discovered less and less. Its decreasing saleability due to its age meshes with its decreasing discovery. Then its rapidly down-hill from then on. It slides into the twilight zone to join the other couple of million Zombie novellas clogging up Amazons hard drives.
So What’s one to do with Zombie Novellas?
In my opinion, when it ceases to be able to sell more than at least few copies a month it ceases to have worth. You (me!) would be better taking it down and reworking and republishing it. Or if it really is a goner, just taking it down.
Inevitably there will be ebooks that defy this. But most will not.
I also think it is worth getting rid of poor selling ebooks off your authorship. They are poorly selling for possibly good reasons. You can damage your reputation by having a dog among the diamonds.
Well, that is just my opinion.
Kind regards
Chalkie