The age-old question: 'book' or 'part'?

It's been my plan to write shorter works that can be consumed more easily (and released more frequently), but I also want to tell epic-level stories that won't fit in the 40K word structure I've settled on. What to do?

I came to the conclusion that not every story could be self-contained. Take Lost Time, it's comprised of five serialized parts. Each has a character arc but none of them are stand-alone by any stretch of the imagination. But I have other stories planned that might span only one or two releases. Like a Finsbury Gage standalone mystery (spoilers).

I needed a way to indicate to readers whether they were getting a complete, one-and-done story, or stories that were part of a larger whole. I had originally thought I'd call every release a 'book' but quickly realised that didn't make sense.

Instead I decided on this deliniation:

• Anything primarily self-contained is a 'book.'

• Anything that's part of a larger whole is, wait for it, a 'part.'

Which means I had to have my covers edited. But those are the dangers of the high-flying world of self-publishing.