I ignore holidays, and release on my schedule.

Next one for me, with one last Saturday, is aimed for December 23. I've done that before without any problems, but this year has seen everything change, so it might be different.

All the same, I'm on fire writing at the moment, so while I was releasing at 35 days for a while, it's now down to around 28.

I don't run ads. Things are not real good these days, but I'm not that desperate yet.

I hope sales improve. At least the writing is going well. I forget if you have a large newsletter list to encourage sales--although, as always, YMMV. Not the sure thing that pre-orders supposedly are, but you can ask your newsletter peeps to rate the books if they read them in KU, and that could help visibility.

I ignore holidays, and release on my schedule.

Next one for me, with one last Saturday, is aimed for December 23. I've done that before without any problems, but this year has seen everything change, so it might be different.

All the same, I'm on fire writing at the moment, so while I was releasing at 35 days for a while, it's now down to around 28.

I don't run ads. Things are not real good these days, but I'm not that desperate yet.

You can feel the market by how easy it is to move up ranks. In the Amazon market, the US seems the highest saturated, UK comes second, then Australia and, probably, last is Canada. This means that competition is more fierce in the US Amazon market, but it also means that more readers are available to buy your book there.

In Kobo, it's flipped. Canada is their largest market and the US is the most scant.

I don't have a great feel for Apple's market. I'm betting it's similar to Amazon. B&N is US. GooglPlay is GooglePlay. (I've given up advertising with Googleplay. For some reason, I  can get lots of clicks for googleplay books with ads without any sales).

I wouldn't turn away from the Amazon Canadian market. The disadvantage is there's less readers, but it's also easier to keep a book hovering on bestseller lists. And sometimes ads work better in smaller markets because of less competition.

Any given book of mine is priced the same everywhere, except the non-U.S. ones are rounded off a bit to compensate for strange outcomes of straight currency conversion.

Keep in mind I don't advertise. I'm fortunate to have a very good word-of-mouth fan base that has kept sales of my backlist to 4 figures a month (barely) for several years although I haven't published anything.

Historical Western Romance
US sales are 10 times UK.
UK sales are 12 times Canadian.
Canadian and Australian sales are about the same.

my son himself used to speculate about the education system and thought a network of smaller schools closer to home might work better than the fewer, larger schools we have here. Of course then you get into the argument about economies of scale, ranges of subjects offered etc, though I suppose with online learning these might not loom so large.

Ah, yes, practical constraints often limit what the best approach would be.

My former school district was relatively small (four K-8 schools and one high school). The 6-8 parts were fundamentally separate middle schools existing on the same campuses as elementary schools. In the very old days, when the district had loads of cash, it could make four small middle schools work with complete programs. As money became more scarce, it became harder and harder to do that. A few years back, the district created one middle school because it just couldn't offer complete programs any more. There was some discussion of making the middle schools magnets for different subject areas, but that proved to be too complicated to set up. (And kids that age often changed their mind about what they wanted to focus on, a potentially even bigger problem.)

I've seen the same problem when large schools suffer declining enrollment. The smaller the student population, the more tendency there is to lose programs because not enough of the remaining students are interested, and the more difficult it is to schedule students. (Classes that used to be offered every period no longer are, and more classes are offered only once, forcing a lot of tough choices.)

With regard to online classes, they are a good supplement, but I've yet to see an online program that provides everything in-person schooling can. The personal touch really makes a difference, especially for struggling students.