I have decided that moving forward I'm not going to make any free public offerings. I noticed that Alby has a plugin for wordpress that allows a work to be free if a certain amount is met, or a paywall to be applied. For me, giving the state of Amazon and the publishing industry and the basic interest I'm seeing for my kind of work, this is going to be the way.

I actually rather like the idea of the readership being limited to more of a "family". I never especially liked mass distribution, since it always feels like it somehow cheapens the work. The eternal problem is that your family might not have enough resources to make you able to write in a manner that supports yourself, and so it is more something done because it can be done around other things that the world values. (At least in my case) The folks who write for a living have a broader appeal, and in this world, I am not sure that's a good thing, but maybe I'm just out of step with the times. Wouldn't be the first time I've done that either.

Anyway, my experiment says the indy press is best done through vanity press (Print on demand) and a small audience that is interested enough to want to see what you have written. That's not really the alternative press I was hoping for, but it is the alternative press that is. (at least in my case)! The ISBN is not especially worth the effort, and the cancel culture shadow banning doubly makes that so. Good luck to you other writers out there and may your experiments align more with a world that supports indie artists!