Rereleasing under a pen name

cmhbob

Did...did I do that?
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One of my books is a Christian/inspirational romantic suspense thing that I wrote several years ago. It's a good story for the genre, although it hasn't performed well at all, because the cover sucks for the genre. Since then, I've deconverted, so I'm probably not going to write in that genre again (but never say never, because I had a plot bunny attack a few weeks ago), so I don't necessarily want it attached to me, but I don't want to get rid of it either, because I think with the right cover, it'll do pretty well. I know I need to change the cover, but then I started thinking about putting it under a pen name at teh same time.

The basic plan is that I'll depublish it shortly and leave it down while I'm getting the new cover done, then do a relaunch effort. I may go ahead and take this one narrow, too.

Has anyone here ever done this? I don't expect it to be that difficult, but with Amazon, one never knows. The main thing I'm wondering about is keeping the handful of reviews I've got for it. I don't care about having the pen name connected to my real name.
 

frimble3

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Well, if you're using a new pen-name, I can hardly think you could keep using reviews that include your old pen-name.
Personally, I'd be more worried about the response from readers who see a new cover, and a new name, and expect a new story. If they make the connection to the original name, I would think they'd be pretty ticked off at you for selling them the same story twice.
 

LJD

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I've never done this myself, but from what I've heard about people doing similar things, you'll likely need to contact Amazon and make sure you know your book's current ASIN. Record that before you unpublish it. (Or you may be able to find the old ASIN on Goodreads if you forget.)