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Writing

2021 in Writing

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So wrote up my year of reading here. This post is about my business as a novelist. You can read about my conferences here.

Every year, since I began tracking number, I set a revenue goal for my writing business. Since I have only really been ‘business-ing’ this for 3 years the goal had always been a bit randomly generated. A number I’d like to see based on the last year and where I felt I needed to be.

The TL;DR; for this year is that I hit that number 3 weeks ago. I set a small stretch goal just to update my tracking data and even though I’m writing this the week of Christmas, I’m certain I’ll make that number as well. (Future me: I reached it the week of Christmas)

Ok, so. Charts and numbers ahoy!!

Year tracking of book revenue

My 2019 numbers are mostly filled in post year. I didn’t really start tracking until mid-2019 and only really dialed in my GoogleSheet fu in 2020. Plus in 2019 I didn’t track my expenses as well, so in reality, my actual profit was closer to $13,000. One of my goals this year beyond hitting my goal of $36,000 was to get there with less spend. Below 50% was my goal. NAILED IT.

The big thing that this year reinforced was the power of making the first book in a series free. Yes, you give away a shit ton of books, a high percentage of which will never get read or will be read years later. 2019 you can see I tried that strategy (In a less organized fashion) while 2020 I moved to trying to run ads against full price first in series. 2021 I went back to permafree. The results certainly seem to speak for themselves.

I do find it interesting and heartening that while my free units have fluctuated, my sold units haven’t that much. Later books in the Space Rogues series are $4 vs. $3 which I think helps. Also I’ve sold a lot more omnibus’ which are $8 and $10.

Widely Wide

I put a significant amount of effort into strengthening my wide position.

Sales by platform
Sales by platform

Amazon is still my biggest store, coming in roughly 60% of my sales any given month. I don’t run AMS ads and don’t do any paid newsletters that are amazon only. They really are just huge. My goal is still to get Amazon consistently under 50%.

Amazon will always be a factor (unless we’re lucky and something changes) so while I want less eggs in that basket, I’m ok with that market growing so long as the others do too. I read exclusively on a Kobo reader (and you should too). Next to the paid newsletters I’ve put as much energy and money as I can into both Kobo and Barnes and Noble internal promotions. Apple too when I can, but they’re…. Apple, so ¯\_(?)_/¯.

New Markets

This year I finally made the effort to upload my books to Smashwords. They’re a distributor like Draft2Digital but also have their own store. I didn’t expect much, but my motto right now is to put my books into any marketplace I can. You can’t even see their portion of the bar charts above, Smashwords made enough for a nice meal or two, so that’s something. Smashwords is now part of my upload process, so we’ll see if their piece of the pie increases in size.

Paper or Pixel?

Paperback vs. Ebook sales
Paperback vs. Ebook sales

This matches my experience to be sure. I don’t buy paper books anymore unless there’s a specific reason. The first release of a fellow self-publisher, a signed copy of something, etc. Otherwise, I am 100% bullish on ebooks.

Having moved several times in my life, I just don’t want 15 boxes of books, weighing hundreds of pounds each. Or having to secret 5 books in every box to distribute the weight. I’ve done both.

Living in a 100+-year-old home that doesn’t have a whole lot of closest/shelf space, as much as I love the look of a bookshelf, having one isn’t practical. My home office is barely big enough for me, LOL.

Plus of course, since I read mostly genre fiction, and when I read on paper is was almost always mass-market paperbacks which are decidedly less visually appealing on a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf (IMO).

This chart doesn’t include Ingram Spark because I don’t track sales there. Their system is so antiquated it’s a monthly email with a PDF and spreadsheet. Plus with their shitty unlimited return policy, I just don’t bother. If I did track them the paperback pie slice might… might creep up to 2%.

Actual Writing

So, in the realm of actual writing, what did 2021 look like? Well, I released the first three books of the Grand Human Empire series. I also released two Space Rogues stories. I finished the first draft of Space Rogues 10: Rogue Enterprises. That’ll come out early spring ’22. I’ve also begun writing the first book in the next part of the Space Rogues universe. Rogue Enterprises book 1.

My goal for next year is the same as this one. Get 3 or more books out. 5 might be a stretch but we’ll see. I really want to get most of Rogue Enterprises 1 done before the end of the year. so we’ll see. There’s a notion that 20 books at a reasonable price that each sell a unit a day, brings in around $50k in revenue. Based on my data I don’t think I’ll have to wait until I have 20 out, but either way that won’t be long.

I’ve too long neglected Expedition Inc. so getting the second book in that series out, is a priority.

One thing this year really opened my eyes to is the value of multiple series and (I hope) entries into series. Space Rogues to date, has more or less needed you to start at the beginning. You could jump in anywhere and just not know the characters as well. Space Rogues 10 sort of ‘ends’ that first story line of the team. Rogue Enterprises 1 opens a new door for people to enter the universe. They won’t need all the back story to enjoy it, but if they like it, I hope they’ll go back and read the first 10 books.

The other plus of multiples series is I can leverage paid newsletters better by spreading the exposure across series. There was a pretty noticeable drop off from efforts in January compared to those in November. More series allows me to let one rest while I promote another.

Seeing Other (or Any) People

So, coming out of 2020, I was able to get some in-person events back on the calendar. This year was light, I had a table and did two panels at MileHiCon, I participated in the CAL Christmas CO-Op. I backed out of the 20books vegas author day because, well schlepping all my booth stuff plus books didn’t sound fun. For a while, they were pushing that everyone who came in got 2 months of Kindle Unlimited which I don’t approve of. Lastly, I just didn’t want to spend a day barking at other authors while they barked at me, LOL.

Going into 2021 I’ve got a few things already set up. I’ll be at COSine ’22 in Colorado Springs in January. I THINK I have a table at StarFest Denver, guess I’ll find out eventually. I got into LTUE but had to decline as we’ll be busy that weekend. I’ll do the CAL Co-Op again because it’s pretty fun. This year was a bust income-wise, but the previous year went well. I had a spot in Denver ComicCon 2020 and of course, womp womp. When the company that took over ramped up efforts for this year, I must have missed the email because I never got notice to apply for their smaller event in 2021. While I was bummed and frankly annoyed, I was also at peace with it. We had plans I’d have had to miss, and well I just wasn’t sure it would be worth it to me.

Speaking of worth. Moving forward, I think I’ll likely reduce my in-person stuff. I initially thought I wanted to increase it, but the reality is that while it’s fun to sell books in person, it’s not the best use of time. There are two aspects to in-person stuff. Hand-selling at a booth and speaking on panels.

Hand-Selling. I’m likely to focus on this when I do in-person stuff. For one thing, I want to get better at it, but for another, I think it’s the best use of my time. The potential to sell to someone who might become a super-fan is there, but so is just the opportunity to sell to a genre fan. A sale’s a sale.

Speaking. More and more I realize this isn’t that valuable. So far at least it’s been at genre events where the bulk of the attendees aren’t writers, and so a panel on writing doesn’t fill the room or serve much purpose. We’ll see how COSine ’22 goes. I’m on four panels that are less business and more craft, so that might change my mind. We’ll see. The downside is if I have a table, I have to leave it with a sign that says ‘come back later’.

At the end of the day, I don’t want my writer persona to be “Speaks at events”. I want to be “Writes awesome books” Some authors like the latter or at least let the latter be more of their identity than actually producing work. That’s not me.

So….

So that’s it. 2021 was a very solid year for my writing. The income is mostly stable and I’m looking at 2022 with an eye towards higher revenue and income and allowing writing to contribute more to the household. 360|Conferences struggles, it’s a high cost, low margin thing (when you’re not O’Reilly or an Event Apart) so writing can help make that a bit less stressful for Nicole and I.

I’m excited for 2022, despite the Pandemic looking like it’ll be with us a good part of the year (Thanks conservatives and ‘free thinkers’ you just keep shitting in the pool and smiling).

Audiobook Update!

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Audio is a big deal. Or so I’m told.

I admit I’ve never been an audiobook reader.

I’ll also admit, I’m not one of those snobs that look down on audiobook readers. If you’re consuming books, you’re fuckin’ awesome. Keep doing it.

So, that said. If you didn’t know, you’ve been able to get ‘The Adventures of Wil Calder‘ for a while now anywhere you can get audio, including direct from me. Same with ‘Big Ship, Lots of Guns‘.

And now… ‘The Behemoth Job‘ is available as well!

AND!

‘Stay Warm, Don’t Die‘ should be out before year’s end.

The Behemoth Job is working its way through the myriad pipes and mazes of the audio storefronts. The audio link on the book detail pages will update as more stores come online.

If you’re an audiobook reader, I’d love your help in spreading the word. I’ve let audio languish a bit, mostly as a result of lack of backlist. Now that that is changing, I want to promote my audiobooks. Help a brother out, check ’em out, tell your Scifi loving friends, etc.

Las Vegas

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Last week I went to 20booksto50k in Las Vegas. My first-ever writing conference. It was fun. I learned a lot.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas isn’t messing around. I saw several folks forcefully handed masks when walking into casinos. I did see a fair number skate by or do the ol’ mask under the nose thing (Talk about next-level asshole), but overall Vegas isn’t taking chances.

I can’t blame them, I’m sure 2020 was devastating. Even now we saw lots, I mean LOTS of empty retail spots and almost as many “we’re short-staffed, sorry.” signs.

That said, Vegas is already back to bro clouds and woo girls. Nights are crowded and loud, days are chill outside those doing walks and crawls of shame. Each morning walk to the nearest Starbucks, we saw the vomit and spilled drinks of the night before being hosed off as the city reset.

Neon

Nicole went with me as a little mini-vacation since we haven’t done much leisure-ing in 2021. We hit up the neon museum, which is 100% worth it. It’s just outside the strip central, a short Lyft ride away. Go at night, seriously. It was a blast. So much amazing and interesting Vegas history.

20booksto50k

The reason for the trip. So the gist is that when the (facebook) group started it was around the idea that if you wrote 20 books, and each made like $7/day/365, you’d make $50k/year. While the group is strictly the business of writing the conference tackles both business and craft.

Craft

I have to say the craft talks were actually the weakest. I suspect some of that is simply the pool of talent the organizer uses. While the presenting authors are indeed quite successful, many found success early on Amazon and have successfully ridden that wave (Almost exclusively via Kindle Unlimited). That’s not a knock at all, but also I don’t think some of them have as firm a grasp on their genre’s as they might think, based on their talks.

Again, not a knock on anyone’s skills or anything, just an oversight I think in the organizing. There are a lot of folks who’ve started more recently, that could have probably presented more interesting and timely information. One talk about writing a long series was really just a “My writing journey story” Which was ok, but not what was advertised and as Space Rogues 10 is almost finished, continuing a long series was front of mind for me.

My name tag from the panel I sat on
My brush with fame (Another post)

Craft is tricky, which is why the group doesn’t deal with it. One session, in particular, was about writing space opera, a topic near and dear as that’s what I write.

The panelists, to a person, were writers of military Scifi, and a lone Hard Scifi author, all of whom simply drop their stuff in space opera because as a category on amazon it helps their sales.

The entire panel was each of these authors, explaining how they justified their stuff being space opera. I’ll grant that ‘space opera’ as a category is pretty nebulous, but military scifi isn’t space opera. The fact that two of my characters are ex-military, doesn’t make my stuff military scifi.

Such a missed opportunity. There weren’t many like this, but there were a non-zero number and each one just reinforced my decisions (Decisions and reasons why, below).

Business

The business talks were far less hit or miss. I took many, many pages of notes around how to improve my newsletters (Something I plan to work on for the conferences as well), direct sales, in-person sales, and more. This week I’ll be trying to sort all my notes into actionable to-do list stuff.

There were a few business ones that were nearly “Be in KU, end of session” but by and large the business talks were by authors who take this business seriously.

Cool Kids Club

20books is very much a cool kids club. This isn’t wholly bad, but definitely leads to blind spots. Several sessions were essentially the speaker or panelists talking about themselves or filling time with barely formed ideas and as I said above, “Be in KU” type things that showed a lack of any truly deep understanding.

The reason I say it’s not wholly bad is that it the conference is Craig’s and he can do what he likes. It’s centered around the community that has formed around the group, and that’s the garden from which he picks talent.

As someone involved in community, it bummed me out. There was very much a cool kids and everyone else vibe. The everyone else’s spent the week scrabbling for attention and fawning over the ‘celebrities’. Something that always rubs me the wrong way.

Decisions

So, will I go back? No. Craig goes to great lengths to make sure the conference is accessible. Sessions are live-streamed on Facebook and made available on youtube later. While the sessions can be hit or miss, I’m not looking for ‘my tribe’ or new friends really (new friends are great but I have lots of ‘online only friends’ already).

I’m in this to make a living and learn from those doing better than me, and that can be accomplished with the livestreams/recordings. I’ll post about my opportunity to be on a panel and why that might be the only reason I’d entertain going back to Vegas, in the next post.

MileHiCon

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My first in-person event of 2021 is finally in the books!

MileHiCon 53 was two weeks ago. I had a spot in author alley and was on a panel and did a reading.

It was awesome to be back with people.

Tables.

I look at tables as advertising, as such, making back my investment, while nice, and certainly a goal, isn’t the main goal.

I sold some books, that was nice. I handed out and likely moves some when not there, my ‘take-one’ cards. They lead to a page here on the site (that needs to be updated) where folks can find out more about my writing. Likewise, though less direct, stickers flew off the table. I look at all that as potential value.

I was next to an awesome gal, Tricia, and next to her, Kendra, who I’d met at a Bookbar event in… 2019 I think.

Where our tables were, we had a front-row seat to tea dueling which is both weird and entertaining as hell, win!

All in all, I hope to have a table at MileHiCon 54. It’s a fun event, with some awesome content, and attendees.

My First Reading.

Technically my second, but the first was for an online con early in the pandemic and I think it was just me and the host. I digress. This was… interesting. I’ve noticed with MilHiCon panels and such (at least the ones I’m on) the moderators don’t seem to actually pay attention beyond where they need to be and when. So for the reading, none of us heard from the moderator beforehand. We had no idea what we were doing other than the title of the reading “Galaxy Spanning SF” Ok, check I write that. Two out of four of us, didn’t even write SF. The moderator, not knowing he was the moderator, just said, let’s read a piece then have a chat.

Overall it was fun, but I don’t do well without structure on things I’m participating in. I’m not fast on my feet in these settings and so ready my part and then the more forceful, like to be heard, voices carried the rest of the event. I did get a few places to chime in and answer the odd question, but yeah, a little prep would have been nice.

Panels.

This was my second MileHiCon panel and the second on self-publishing. This one had the title of “Ebook or Paper, which to choose when self-publishing”

The panelsts all agreed, “Both” and then we left. Well we didn’t leave, but then the panel turned into an interactive Q&A on self-publishing. It was ok. Again the moderator did zero prepwork, and in those cases, the people who like to talk, took the stage. I got a few bits in here and there, but really just sat there nodding.

I don’t really know why these panels happen. I don’t get the impression that MHC attracts a ton of new or aspiring writers. Considering our panel was the second to last of the event, and had 10 people in it, that seems supported. in 2019 the panel I was on, was at 7pm on Saturday, again about 10 attendees.

Take Aways.

I enjoyed MHC. As I said, I plan to apply to be back. I’ll probably skip doing panels. I don’t know that they do much for me other than cause stress I don’t need. Maybe I’ll think up a topic and offer it as moderator since I know what I like in a moderator. We’ll see, that’s a lot of work.

I didn’t plan far enough ahead but by next year I’ll have updated merch that reflects more than just Space Rogues.

On Flying too Close to the Sun

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It was bound to happen, really. I got ahead of myself.

I got in the habit of picking a date at semi-random to include in the backmatter for a book, as the release date for the next book. Then I’d set up the pre-orders everywhere so that when book X when live, there was a link in the back for book X+1 so readers could place their pre-order right there, easy peasy.

It worked so I kept doing it.

Well, it worked until it didn’t. This is the story of when it didn’t.

‘Big Ship, Lots of Trouble‘ was given a release date of August 26, 2021. I picked that date…. Sometime early 2021 or maybe late 2020, I can’t recall.

I set about writing the book. It wasn’t as fast a process as in the past.

This release ran into a few things that caused problems. Things I could have accounted for had I been more on the ball.

  1. I took longer than planned to get a first draft done, and longer still to get revisions completed. No real reason other than dragging my feet.
  2. Because I took so long to get the revised draft ready for my editor, she couldn’t get the manuscript back to me until august 20th. 6 days before release. That in and of itself wouldn’t be an issue. I’ve worked with tight timelines and can hunker down and review all edits in a matter of a few days. Except I also…
  3. Picked a stupid date. 8/26 is the day after my biggest conference of the year. This year it was hybrid so I was juggling in-person things and online things. It was a rush right up until it started, to get butts in virtual and real seats. Had #1 not delayed #2, I could have put the book to bed before the conference started and been fine. EXCEPT, I didn’t squared. There was simply no way to get the manuscript and review changes while starting the all day in-person work of the conference.

So, I punted. Thankfully Amazon eased their pre-order push penalties during the pandemic.

Sadly, that wasn’t the worst part. This being the first time I’ve had to push a pre-order, I screwed it up. I made a list of every place I needed to update. I thought I’d checked them all off (I had, but still screwed it up). It turned out that I messed up Google and Kobo. Somehow I had them checked off, but didn’t save or something. They both released the book on 8/26. Both Google and Kobo require a file for pre-orders, which means authors use a placeholder. Something that basically says, “You got this by accident, please let the store know so we can fix it.” Had it been a store with asset-less pre-order I’d have been nagged about adding a file and likely caught my mistake. Since technically Kobo and Google had a file, they released it. Annoying, but really not their fault.

Amazon has a pretty robust (surprisingly) setup for this where I could beg them to push an update, which includes the file and an email saying that the reader got the new file.

Google and Kobo, not so much. I finally got replies from both that users would get new files, but no idea if they’re notified, etc. Kobo took about two weeks, slowly going back and forth over email, with a bit of prodding on my end. I actually didn’t know google had released until I got a support email. From that point on they were quite fast in making things right.

In the meantime, the first review on Kobo was from a nice person, mad about the placeholder, who left 1 star. Something tells me they won’t update their review… :(

Lesson learned. The final file for ‘Big Ship, Lots of Trouble‘ does not have a link to a pre-order. I’ll update the file when I have a pre-order for subsequent buyers, but right now, no.

I suppose it was inevitable. Screw ups happen, and juggling Rogue Publishing and 360|Conferences sometimes overlaps in annoying ways.

To my readers, I promise I’ll do better and apologize for the hiccups.

WIP Thursday (Bet you thought I forgot)

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I sorta did, if I’m being honest!

I was hustling to get ‘Side Hustle Tango’ out the door because I cut the timing really close with my editor, oops!

Plus I was finishing ‘Big Ship, Lots of Trouble‘ and have started ‘Ghosts of the Past’ Plus my conference company is ramping up as conference season comes upon us.

‘Ghosts of the Past’ is proving to be quite fun. I’m really enjoying digging into Jax and Naomi’s lives.

The door that lead to the hallway beyond slid open and Rudy rolled in. The navigation droid has a steaming cup in one hand, the other folded against the cylindrical torso. He offered Jax the cup, “Here.”
“Thanks.” He took the cup. The interior door slip open and the tall British guy rushed out. He hurried through the waiting room, a single sob escaping his lips before he was out the hatch and into the hallway beyond.
“That might be a new record.” Jax said as the outer door slid closed.
Rudy’s optic sensor followed the man then turned to Jax, “She’s still making them cry?”

This book opens shortly after ‘Side Hustle Tango‘

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