I pull most of my personal reading off of kindle and observe authors who have pulled apart chapters from his/her books and has three or more titles for a single story line, where each volume is NOT self-contained.

This sort of thing gets an author more titles, but does the continuity get broken? If the books are at lower prices (for example, the first free, the rest 99 cents or so.) do you object to having to purchase the things?

Example: I've split my novel into six logical pieces. The whole thing is 93,000 words, but the parts range from 12,000 words to 27,000 words. I'm doing it so I have more titles out in the ether. Does it frustrate you to have to purchase all six volumes for a price that ends up being 4.95 (one free)?

Another Example: My anthology has eleven stories ranging is size from 1,000 words to 13,000 words. I intend on publishing the anthology as one volume, with a story from the anthology also available for free.

Right now, I'm leaning on serializing the novel and leaving the anthology intact. (admission: I don't buy 'singles' of short stories for my own personal reading.)

What is your opinion breaking apart books?

I know someone who is doing this, but she is rewriting each section completely so they are stand alone stories that carry on the whole story curve of the bigger works.

In the later ones, you will know something happened before, and something will happen later, but the story will be good in and of itself.

Even if you write it with the same characters in every story, if you write it as if you were writing different characters in the same universe, it will work even better. In that case, the world will become familiar and comfortable even if the stories are read out of sequence.

And beware of the anthology. It's not that it's a bad idea, but it seems that even for more extablished authors, anthologies are not great sellers. Maybe you can compile those into mini sets of three, or something.

I don't understand the strategy of breaking it up. You make a lower commission at $0.99 and I don't think you are really creating the illusion that you have published more stories.

Serial fiction may find its place in the market, but I think for new authors, the novel will continue to rule.

I personally would be more apt to take a chance on a novel for $2.99. You get double the royalties and will actually make more money than charging $0.99 x 5. It's a lose - lose (author and reader lose more money).

One thing I have noticed on my ereader is that anything priced $0.99 is subject to impulse buying.

I read a series that I liked, but each volume was 2.99 and there were six small parts. I spent nearly eighteen bucks to get a normal sized novel and I did feel ripped off.

Examples:

My YA (young YA, appropriate for kids aged 8-10 & up) novel Convergence on barnes and noble, amazon, and smashwords

Of note is the fact that smashwords permits you to download the ebook in whatever your preferred file format is, so you could purchase via smashwords a file that works well on kindle, then you just have to "sideload" the file onto your kindle (meaning: connect your kindle to your computer and copy the file over.) Same goes for nook, sony ereader, kobo, diesel, etc. But I do still choose to list my books individually on amazon and bn.com as a way to stake my claim to some digital shelf space on those channels.