2023 Anniversary Update

November marks the anniversary of both my first book published on Amazon, and my first actually successful book (Heretic Spellblade). So it’s nice to make a post about it. Last year I did a Q&A, but I’ll just talk this time. There’ll also be a separate Messenger update with more details and topics.

If you do have any questions you want answered, pop them in a comment.

Difficulties

2023 has been a rough year. It makes 2022 look very bright, but the reality is that I was facing a downturn over the course of that year and it merely struck this year. Things are stabilizing again due to your support here on Patreon, among other things, but it still leaves me very uncertain. If I’m experiencing falling readership on Amazon, how long before that stings me on Audible or Patreon?

I’ve said multiple times that I’m going to jump genres, but always stop myself. The reasons are many: I have a bunch of existing series commitments; harem is comfort food for me to write and I have tons of ideas; breaking into a new genre is difficult, because while I have a fanbase, it can still backfire (e.g. launching a progfantasy book that gets classified as harem due to the initial readers).

Recently, the two main reasons I’ve held off are Patreon and a desire to actually finish series first. I’m stretched quite thin right now and I’m feeling it. It’s important that I avoid burnout or associating series with negative feelings that make me unwilling to revisit them. While I’ve received a massive amount of support this year, I’m aware that it’s not for nothing. Books need to be written.

That’s especially the case because Patreon’s been the main thing that’s revitalized my interest in harem and given me the freedom to just write what I want.

One of the unfortunate truths is that I hit a low point during my break following Neural Wraith 3. I started Mob Sorcery as a way to keep myself actually writing, especially as I was looking over ideas for litrpg or progfantasy stories and spinning my wheels. There was plenty of negativity (that I saw, anyway, noting that it’s easy to focus on negatives), particularly as everyone and their mother wanted to come up with some explanation for why NW3 tanked while avoiding genre-specific issues. There was one night where one particular person got under my skin enough that I nearly stopped writing Mob and was extremely close to just starting a non-harem story. If I hadn’t already sent out the first batch of Mob chapters to a few alpha readers, that probably would have happened. 2023 would be very different.

Ultimately, things haven’t so much as bounced back as I’ve tried to change my mentality. My prediction back in April that I’d see a 30%-40% drop in sales if I changed nothing has turned out mostly true. Right now, if I wasn’t planning to release Spellblade 7 in December, it’d be a 30%+ drop. The flipside is that it’s been a much better year for audio and Patreon, so the drop has been partially offset.

But audio and Patreon are far stabler, so I’ve forced myself to pay less attention to actual book figures. It’s difficult, though. My income used to be entirely based on ebook releases, and while it’s still very important, I don’t feel my life should revolve around maximizing each release. I want to write what I enjoy, and I feel the more consistent release of chapters recently reflects how I should write.

That’s a lot of words to say that it’s been a shit year, but not as shit as it could be, and I’m somewhat more optimistic about the stability of my income, regardless of falls. There’s plenty of uncertainty, however. So I am committing to starting a non-harem series next year, even if I still need to focus on reducing the number of ongoing series and it might not be published right away (there’s no way I can juggle five series, given I’m struggling with four).

The other big thing I’m doing is reducing the attention I pay to complaints, and social media in general. It’s both healthier and easier. Especially as I want to write my specific brand of books, rather than be pushed to a more generic style. That doesn’t mean I’m ignoring feedback, though (especially here).

The Future

Moving on from the moping, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll write and how long each series should be. It’s occupied a lot of my thoughts lately.

I already talked a lot about this in the update about Spellblade’s length. There are pros and cons to any decision regarding length.

So far, I’ve elected to extend each series as they’ve done well enough, and I often have a bunch of ideas that I can easily include. Spellblade was always conceived as a big fantasy series that could be extended, but I chose to focus on the epic fantasy side of things, making it a very big story. Demon’s Throne was about trying rectify the mistakes I made in the original version, particularly regarding the Malus League. Neural Wraith gave me an opportunity to write something episodic and fun.

Each of those decisions have bumped into problems. Spellblade’s sheer size and complexity makes it increasingly difficult to be compact, and everything takes longer than expected. I’ve felt that I’m focused on the individual books of Demon’s Throne, rather than the overarching story, and that I kept fixing mistakes in the previous book with the sequel. And Neural Wraith saw a huge number of readers bail after the first book did surprisingly well.

Neural Wraith is probably the biggest warning I’ve received. I had a tight plan for three books, with the possibility of continuing the story from there. Instead, I chose to write something episodic. I don’t think that really affected readership as much as some people theorize. Rather, my mistake was adding more books that prevented a satisfactory ending from being written. I added a bunch of new stuff in NW3 that mean I need to do two to three more books to avoid a rushed ending (and nothing hurts more than a rushed ending).

That warning is why I’ve been uncertain about Mob Sorcery. It’s the worst Book 1 release I’ve had, excluding Emperor (which I feel I need to unilaterally exclude from comparisons, because it’s just on a different plane of existence to every other series). While it bounced back a bit after I voiced my unhappiness, there’s no guarantee that Book 2 won’t experience the same falloff that Neural Wraith saw.

On the other hand, Mob remains an extremely popular series here and I love writing it and the setting. If I’m shifting to a Patreon-centric approach, I feel it’s dumb to ditch a series because Amazon gets mad at me. At the same time, I don’t want to blindly repeat the same mistake I did with Neural Wraith.

As for finishing series, I’m avoiding rushing any. That idea was firmly on my mind in the middle of the year and after Mob started to tank. But my current thinking is to focus on ensuring each series ends satisfactorily. Hence why Spellblade is getting a Book 8, and my plans for Demon’s Throne will remain at 6 books.

The end result is this extremely rough idea for books in the next 12 months:

· Spellblade 7, Dec

· Mob 2, Jan (this is close to finished now, but I want chapters for Book 3 ready before I publish Book 2 to ensure this series remains Patreon-first)

· Demon’s Throne 4, March

· Neural Wraith 4, second half 2024

· Spellblade 8, late 2024

· Mob 3 and 4, sometime in 2024

Of course, I also suspect that the release dates will change. I’m taking a proper holiday with two friends in April, so that means Demon’s Throne 4 needs to be done in advance or else I’ll push it back to May. I also want to stick to my plan of writing two books at once to speed things up. I’ll try to squeeze in Mob chapters between each of them, but it’s much smoother to write a couple books in each series, than bounce between them.

So this means I might have Demon’s Throne 5 and Neural Wraith 5 also written. But I don’t know how that will impact my schedule otherwise. Hence why I’m not willing to predict much beyond Demon’s Throne 4. I expect my plans after that book will change drastically, as always. It would be nice to actually get ahead on books, though, other than the Mob chapters.

Enjoying Life

To bring things back to a pleasant topic, I’ll mention that despite my constant worries and concerns as an author, this has been a better year in other ways. I moved out of my old place, which I actively disliked living in. I’m eating better and have a better work-life balance. I’ve minimized the number of times I’ve had to do extremely harsh writing sprints (Spellblade 6 had one, but was less crazy than the one I did for Spellblade 5).

I’m also proud of the books I’ve written in the past two years. While at the time I publish each book I usually hate it, my thoughts on rereading my books are far more positive. Sure, there’s plenty to improve. But when I reread anything from Demon’s Throne 2 onward, I enjoy it, whereas I have significant misgivings over the earlier books.

It's easy to focus on the numbers and forget why I’m writing. I enjoy being an author far more than my old office job, something that is easy to forget now it’s been three years. Being able to write what I want is a genuine dream come true, and the concessions I make are decreasing with each book (or maybe I’m just acclimating to some – then again, I’m including characters that I would have avoided years ago). Sometimes it helps to remind myself of that. Although, yeah, it helps to pay the bills.

There’s always a balance when turning a hobby into work. I wrote a couple million words online before I published Spellblade and became a full-time author. I’ve even been able to revisit and improve one of those stories. Hell, I’ve managed to write two ideas that I wasn’t sure I ever would (Mob Sorcery and Neural Wraith). A common saying online is that turning a hobby into a career is a great way to fall out of love with the hobby. And maybe that would have happened if I’d made different decisions about what sort of books I write.

Three years is the longest I ever remained in one position in my professional career. And in that job, I well and truly wanted out by then. Despite my frustrations with certain things (especially the overall harem genre), I still enjoy writing my books. So I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. The things I write might change, subtly or significantly, but I still have plenty of ideas and feel my writing ability continues to improve.

Hopefully, all of this means that next year’s anniversary is a much more positive one. Thanks to everyone reading this for your support and I’ll do my best to keep writing stories that you love, want to read and reread, and to share with others (well, those that are understanding of the content). I might even have a finished series then.

Again, if you have any questions you want to ask me, pop them in a comment. There’ll be a Messenger post later this month that covers a number of topics in-depth, including my thoughts on each book I’ve released.