I can't tell if you're asking for advice or not. Would you like to hear my opinion on the matter?
Sure.
Okay, cool. Just wanted to make sure you were soliciting advice and not just venting.
I agree with Eric about the time frame. Eight weeks ain't enough. Not even close. You have to give it at least six months, and preferably a year. My trilogy was on Apple for seven months before my traction there mysteriously developed. That traction lasted about eighteen months before disappearing last fall just as suddenly as it appeared. (I blame Apple TV for this.)
Have you run any newsletter promotions? If not, then turn your click ads off and use that money for newsletters instead. Promote your free first-in-series books. And make
Time is an Illusion permafree. It's the first of a five-book series, which means lots of sell-through potential, but that potential is going to waste as long as that book's at $1.99. Make it permafree, and then schedule a Freebooksy or something to promote it. Your career isn't at the point yet where you can charge whatever you want. You have to build a fan base first, or at least get a little momentum going, and that means getting as many copies of your work in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and the best way to do that is with free stuff.
As far as book covers go, I think the ones for your Carina series are awesome. Don't ever change them.
The books for your Aydin Trammel series are short. They're novellas, not novels, and that's going to make them a harder sell. Strongly consider combining them into novel-length works. Also, the covers for these books need improvement. The imagery's not so bad, but the typography is hurting you.
Your
Biomass book should be permafree. Again, you're missing out on sell-through by keeping it at $1.99.
Your
Max and the Time Dream books are novelettes. They should be 99 cents at the most. Consider making the first one permafree even though you won't really be able to promote it do to its length. Alternatively, consider putting this series back in KU.
In general, go ahead and eliminate the $1.99 price point as an option completely. It's a dead zone, the worst of both worlds (low royalty bracket but not cheap enough to make up for it on increased volume).
When you make a book permafree and start promoting that free book in earnest, most of the downloads you get will be from Amazon. You might not think that would help you elsewhere, but it will. Some of those Amazon readers will leave reviews on Goodreads or some place, and that will have a trickle-down effect to the other retailers, because Apple readers sometimes use Goodreads too, right? The more social proof you can get, the better, and momentum has a way of snowballing in ways you didn't anticipate.
For a guide to free book promotions,
go here. Nick has done the hard work and wasted some money so that you don't have to. He's one of the unsung heroes in indie publishing, in my opinion, just for that web page alone.
If I can mangle a few metaphors, Amazon is the shiny, get rich quick tech IPO with no guarantee of future successes, while "wide" is the boring, blue chip, dividend fund you build over time.
I think that's an excellent way to put it. Wide gives you a trickle of income that allows you to gradually scale up your promotional efforts instead of going into debt on a KU moonshot.
Well, R.C., that's all I've got at the moment. I hope I've helped. I know some of what's in this post is of the "tough love" variety, but I really do just want to see you succeed. Make those first-in-series books free, promote them via newsletters, and then see what happens.
Best of luck, and keep us in the loop about your results.