April/May Public Update

(FYI, this is largely the same as what I posted in the Patreon updates earlier this month about my income stuff, but expressed more... rationally. Although I've added a bit toward the end following the recent Archer post.)

It’s been a slow month, but I have a bit of news on the writing front. There’s also some fairly serious news in this update.

First, my next release(s) will be Heretic Spellblade 6 and 7. I’ll be writing this as a single large book and splitting it into two books, each roughly the size of the first books in the series, rather than the massive tomes from later in the series. This is due to reasons I’ll elaborate on later in this update, but the short version is that times are rough in the genre and I’m not sure I can afford to spend several months between massive books. The alternative is to just stop, so I’m trying this instead.

Demon’s Throne will come afterward, and potentially get the same treatment.

No solid audio news for now. I believe Neural Wraith 3 will be in the second half of the year and will update you once I have more news.

If you’ve somehow missed them, I released Neural Wraith 3 in ebook at the end of March and Heretic Spellblade 5 on audio in the middle of April. Check them out. I promise they’re great.

Now for the unplanned segment. I talked about this on Patreon, but noticed that it spread more widely and figure to give a more official statement in case people get confused.

There have been a few big authors recently talking about how awful their sales in harem have been, and some are even partially pulling out of Kindle Unlimited as a result. My own sales have been falling over the last year, but both Neural Wraith 2 and 3 have been pretty disastrous releases compared to what I expect. Sales dropped off hard after a couple of weeks and Amazon is barely recommending any of my books, which usually doesn’t happen until 2-3 months after a new book release. Amazon’s algorithm is basically telling me to release faster (as in, every 2 weeks) or to fuck off and write something entirely different. I won’t speculate in this post about why I think this is happening.

The end result is that I’m expecting a drop in my income of about 30%-40% this year, even after things worsened toward the end of 2022. So, yeah, it kind of sucks. Being a self-employed author is inherently insecure so I do keep a financial buffer and I’m not facing problems right now. But I also need to be realistic and accept this may actually get worse. If I wait until the waves are lapping at my chin, it’s already too late.

With all that said, I want to make it clear that I’m not leaving harem. My immediate plans are still to keep writing Spellblade, Demon’s Throne, and Neural Wraith. So long as the bottom doesn’t completely fall out of the genre, I hope to write new series eventually despite my frustrations. However, there’s a saying about not keeping all your eggs in one basket, and I will begin work on a non-harem series soon-ish as a result. It’ll be a fun challenge even if it falls flat on its face, and I love trying new things and testing my abilities.

I also don’t expect to leave Kindle Unlimited unless Amazon makes it far worse, so I have no current plans to start my own store. My problem is that Amazon is crippling my ability to reach readers, but I don’t think I can do a better job myself as I hate marketing. If you want to support me, the best ways are to recommend my stuff to people, leave reviews, and (only if you really want to and can afford to) support me on Patreon.

I really want to thank everyone here on Patreon. To be very blunt, if I didn’t have an established Patreon and everyone here supporting me, I’d be much more worried and probably take rash action. You give me much more breathing room to just keep writing good books. I’m not saying this to guilt anyone into sticking around, but to make it clear that this is an uncertain job and quality only happens if people and the community support it.

Also, I have no clue what will happen over the course of the year. This does seem to be a broader issue than I initially thought, although I'm still more cynical than some authors because I was already seeing falling sales while many others were doing better than ever. It's possible that this is a weird algorithmic thing that will fix itself. There's too much changing in KDP/KU right now for me to be confident predicting much. I still feel that it's wisest to plan for the worst, simply because I was already falling off before things went really bad and some of the fundamental issues are unlikely to change.

I'm hoping this is the last time I need to talk about this for a good while, although the problem will linger in the background. Hence why I'll try to find ways to share stuff here on Patreon, even if they're not necessarily early chapters. I hadn't planned to talk about this, but I was concerned that the discussion might have already shifted to "K.D. is leaving harem" based on my earlier posts when I'm mostly just very frustrated with the genre, and the fact the issue appears to be broader has me buckling in a little more (although there definitely appear to be authors less affected, or at least saying as much).