I think multiple things are clear at this point:
- Many people want to see Evermore continue in its original format
- Even many of those who support the dev’s choice to follow his own heart have little interest in actually reading the book
- When the books eventually start coming out, there will be very little goodwill from the existing audience, so he’ll need to build a new one from scratch.
I can see this last point being very problematic. A quick search on Amazon shows that “Evermore” is not an original title. And many of them are already fantasy and/or romance.
Starting over as a regular novel series just feels like setting up for failure.