Ok, so a couple of things. First, good news! Looking at my sales from the first of this year to now, I have already sold more books/made more money than I did all last year! That seems like a nice marker of progress, especially since most of these sales weren’t from any sort of campaign but from me posting about my books and people hitting the links. Those sales mean more to me than any others because they are probably from people who would belong to my core audience and weren’t seeking deals/freebies (not that I would turn down those sales, either). I now have ten books out in a variety of genres, and the sales have been spread pretty evenly over all the offerings, though Blade of Shadows, Wings of Light is still my bestselling book by far. These numbers aren’t super impressive to an outside observer, but I’ve grown from year to year, so that trend is headed in the right direction. And for someone who doesn’t have thousands to spend on marketing every month, any positive growth is welcome.
This is also happening as my core strategy is changing. Up until this year, I was exclusive to amazon, because about a one-third of my eBook income came from kindle unlimited page reads. Last year, those page reads fell off a cliff, and that led me to question what I was doing. Despite the loss of income, I realized that I really didn’t want to be making things to be placed in someone else’s walled garden, so I cancelled the automatic re-enrollment of my books in KU and started the process of taking them wide.
No, let’s not get it twisted. The vast majority of my sales still come from amazon. I’ve only sold a handful of books from wide retailers. But even so, this strategy fits my goals much better than remaining exclusive to amazon. I like the fact that I’m on all the major retailers and am available to libraries. I was already wide with paperbacks through ingram, so my books could be ordered through any bookstore and were also available online through Barnes and Noble and Bookshop.org. Putting eBooks at all the major retailers turned out to be much less of a pain than I’d feared. I go direct to the big five, and do the rest through Draft2Digital, but in the future will probably simplify things for myself by just doing direct through amazon and everyone else through D2D. Readers probably won’t even notice the difference.
I also figured out the things I really wanted to be writing. I am not the kind of writer who can focus on one series at a time and only move on when that is done. Both I, and my muse, have adhd. I currently have two series started, one series that is completed, and in the next two years will start two more series that I’m really excited about. As fast as I write, I can finish at least two books in a year, so each series will receive a volume update every other year. I think that’s an acceptable pace, especially compared with traditional publishers. This is not the advice that anyone who wants to make a lot of money in indie publishing would give you, but it’s the way I want to do it, so it’s the way I’m doing it. Sorry not sorry. This publishing schedule starts next year. This year I’ve already released three books and will release another standalone, the Queer romantasy ‘The Lion and the Sparrow,’ later this year. Probably in November. Next year the next volume in The Ascension Apocalypse (my best-selling series) will drop with ‘Valley of Storms,’ and I will continue with the Circle and the Shadow, with ‘The Radiant Tomb’ later that year. The other two series are a queer space opera superhero series, and a new series I’m really excited about that is basically Queer SteamPunk Robin Hood. I’m super excited about all this work and I think people are really going to like them. I apparently missed the memo that you’re supposed to find one underserved niche genre and just pump out content in that genre (actually, I did get that memo and I set it on fire). This schedule has enough variety to keep me entertained, but they will all be hopeful, character-focused, emotionally rich stories, which is kind of where my brand sits. I joke that the vibe is ‘What if Brandon Sanderson and Sarah J Maas had a gay baby’ and I’m only kind of kidding.
So, one more book this year. Two a year from now on. In between books, I will continue to write short stories and every so often bundle them into a collection to go with ‘Ghosts of Exile and Other Stories,’ which you can still get free if you subscribe to my newsletter (or for $3.99 at all the retailers).
I’m extremely excited about all these plans. I have created, and continue to create, a body of work that I’m really proud of. Thank you for being on this journey with me and I hope you enjoy everything that is coming out in the future.