Jumping into a very large pond (and trying not to drown).

The Winds of Time is out now! I have published an entire series. It's a great feeling.

Right now, I'm waiting on the cover art for the box set. That shouldn't take too long.

Then I'll have to wrestle with formatting to get all the books together.

playground said:

Congrats! From reading your blog post it looks like you are shifting to Sunweaver? Plan to work on just that series out or are you going to juggle stories?

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Ideally, I'd like to edit the second book of Sunweaver and get it out by March. My next book after that will be the first book of another trilogy, The God War's Chosen. That's mostly so that I have another first-in-series out for next year's Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off. That will hopefully take another few months and come out during the summer.

Right now, I'm most of the way through drafting the final book of that trilogy. After that, I have no idea what I'm going to write.

I'm going to shoot to have the final book of the Sunweaver trilogy out by the end of next year.

CathleenT said:

Yay for you! I haven't finished a series yet, so you're definitely ahead of me there. I'm interested to see how the box set does, too.

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I've heard that box sets can work very well. These days, so many readers wait for an entire series before reading any of it. It's also nice that I can offer it at a discount and even do special promo on it to make it even more of a discount.

April Swanson said:

Congratulations on finishing a series! I'm sure it will appeal to a lot of readers who don't like to commit unless they know the story is complete. I wish I could write series, but my brain doesn't seem to like them. Good luck with the boxset and upcoming books

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Thanks! I'm still enjoying the process. I just have to remember to keep my expectations in check.

Here's my December sales update.

Empire of Chains: 0 sales, 700 KU pages read

The Shadowed Land: 1 sale, 2 KU pages read

The Gilded Empire: 1 sale

The Winds of Time: 0 sales

Sunweaver: 0 sales, 25 KU pages read

And now my sales numbers for all of 2018:

Empire of Chains: 32 sales, 15219 KU pages read, 537 giveaways

The Shadowed Land: 16 sales, 6506 KU pages read

The Gilded Empire: 11 sales, 0 KU pages read

Sunweaver: 11 sales, 5459 KU pages read

For comparison, here's how I did in 2017 (6 months)

Empire of Chains: 94 sales, 39023 KU pages read, 98 giveaways

The Shadowed Land: 5 sales, 1970 KU pages read


So there's definitely been a drop off on Empire of Chains. It's been helped a bit by having other books out there, though.

playground said:

Hmmm interesting. Plan to try anything different?

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Mostly, I'm going to try to get more books out there. I tweaked my AMS ads a bit, too.

January numbers update:

Empire of Chains: 5 sales, 177 KU pages read
The Shadowed Land: 9 KU pages read
The Gilded Empire: nothing
The Winds of Time: 1 sale

Sunweaver: 5 sales

So January was a pretty good month by my standards. Sunweaver did especially well, getting almost half the sales it had all of its first year.

I need to figure out what's going on with my Kindle Unlimited reads, though. They've pretty much fallen off a cliff. That seems to happen from time to time. Not sure why.

February numbers time!

Empire of Chains: 3 sales, 836 KU pages read
The Shadowed Land: 1 sale, 9 KU pages read
The Gilded Empire: 1 sale
The Winds of Time: 1 sale, 25 KU pages read
World in Chains: The Complete Series: 3 sales, 9262 KU pages read

Sunweaver: 1 sale, 138 KU pages read


So I'm super happy with my box set for World in Chains. February was my best month in ages.

playground said:

That's wicked! Any specific plans for over the summer whether it comes to writing or selling?

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Right now, I'm working on edits for Fireweaver, the second book in my Sunweaver series. I really want to get that out in the next couple of months because it's been over a year since I released the first book. I didn't intend for it to take that long, but it took me longer than I expected to finish the edits for all the World in Chains books.

After that, my next release will most likely be during the summer, and that will be the first book of a new trilogy, The God War's Chosen. I want to get it out before the next Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off starts so that I've got another shot at the competition.

Then I'm hoping to release the final book of Sunweaver during the fall, with the next two books of the new trilogy following after that.

I'm currently writing the first book of a new series. I'm not sure how long it will be just yet, but I'm having a lot of fun with it.

A lot of my plans depend on what I'm doing in regards to the day job. This is my final semester of my electrical engineering degree, so I'm hoping I'll find a job in the field. Obviously, that will reduce my time I can spend writing, but it could also be a blessing because I'll be making more money, which means I'll be able to do more advertising and pay for better editing on my books.

I'm doing my first big sale on my box set of the World in Chains series. It will be interesting to see how it does at $2.99 instead of $9.99.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NKCRN34/?tag=absowrit-20

CathleenT said:

May it do very well.

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Thanks. I've also been playing around with my keywords to see how that helps sales. I have KDP Rocket, and I've heard so many great things about it as an advertising tool. I'm still trying to work out how well it works for me.

playground said:

What key words are you playing with?

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Mostly, it's about getting very specific with what your story's about. Instead of putting in "adventure fantasy," you put in "adventure fantasy with magic and monsters." It may lower the total number of people searching for the keyword, but there's also less competition for the keyword, and you're more likely to get readers looking for something exactly like your book, which means a higher conversion rate.

As for AMS ads, the general advice I've seen is to find similar stories and use them in your AMS keywords (separate from normal keywords).

It appears that KU borrows show up in your AMS dashboard now, or at least it looks that way to me because I've got more orders than would be indicated by sales figures alone.

So I finished writing the first book in a new series yesterday. I like the book, but I don't know if I feel up to writing the rest of the series yet.

I actually am getting really excited about an idea for a series set in the same world as my World in Chains series, but hundreds of years in the past. It's my hope that readers would find this series, enjoy the world, and be more likely to check out World in Chains.

So I actually wrote a bit in the second book of one series and the first book of another today. I wonder if that approach might actually help my productivity. That way, if I get stuck in one story, I can turn to the other.