Note the biblically accurate angel, the historically accurate sword, and the Child Of The '80's accurate haircut! Volume 3 is coming out August 27, 2024. If you didn't know you could pre-order it on Amazon already, you can pre-order it on Amazon! Per Podium's policy, the book stubs a month in advance, so Vol. 3 will be stubbing next Tuesday, July 27, 2024. Which leads us to the comic incompetence, and a bit of truth in advertising.
See, what's on and Royal Road as Vol. 3, and what's going up on Amazon as Vol. 3 ain't the same.
Here is the thing. For Slumrat, the chapters are 2k words each (roughly, usually slightly over.) Depending on page size, a paperback book usually has between 250-300 words per page. Slumrat Rising Vol. 3 on and Royal Road has 150 chapters, or put another way, it would be a paperback more than a thousand pages long.
Keep that thought in mind as you read this next bit, because otherwise things don't make sense.
I fucked up when I sent in the manuscript for Vol 3, months ago. Basically, I was copying over from different docs, and only sent chapters 1-64 (After the giant flower research base got blown up and he reached the hot springs with the two ancient demons.) That works out to three-hundred-and-a-bit pages, a perfectly reasonable novel length. So my editor didn't question it. We didn't catch it until the first round of edits were sent over, and I wondered where the back half of the book was.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
We talked it out, and my editor was firmly of the view that Vol. 3 ought to be split into two books. Podium is starting to get their books into bookstores, and a thousand page paperback just ain't going to fly. I agreed that made sense, so... we are splitting the book. Vol. 3 is going to be chapters 1-64 of the current "Volume Three" on and RR, and that's what will be stubbed. This leads to a very, VERY EXTREMELY GODDAMN VERY MUCH ANNOYING THING.
I need to rename ALL THE GOD DAMN CHAPTERS IN VOL. 3, THE NEW VOL. 4 AND WHAT IS NOW VOL 5! And I have to do on both Royal Road and . Because Amazon's bots are going to be scraping the pages looking at the titles as well as the contents, and you know what? I don't think those bots are smart enough to figure out what's what. I don't want to bet my ability to use Kindle Unlimited (which requires exclusivity) on "I was too lazy to change the names." So now I have an extremely tedious, very annoying, project ahead of me.