Book Release
It’s happening! I just hit the publish button on The Archons for Amazon. The softcover version of the Tome is also in review on Amazon. The free version of The Tome of Revelations is already formatted and uploaded to this website for the free download/newsletter signup thingy. My author copy is out for delivery, so I’ll get a chance to see the paperback version of the Tome before anyone gets a real copy (I’ll order a real copy too, for my bookshelf).
Discount Price
To get things rolling, I set the price to 99 cents. It’ll remain at that price for a month or so, so take advantage of the special pricing and get your eBook copy now.
Cleanup Work
I still have to do a bunch of cleanup stuff that always follows the release of a book. I need to format a paperback version of The Archons and update the books page on this website (as well as the books in progress page). Then I have to finish filling out the government stuff for the copyright registration (at least I have that down to a process). As soon as the book publishes, I’ll have an ASIN that I can use with GoodReads. Since this book is wide, I’ll publish it to Draft2Digital.
What’s Next?
My head is still spinning over the fact that this book is finally a reality. I’m torn between working on book 2 of the Traveler series and book 2 of Escape from the Abyss (this series). I’ll probably spend the next week hashing out a story for each. One of the issues with having only book 1 of each series is that people are nervous about pulling the trigger and getting into a series that isn’t finished. If you’re one of those people, and you’re not sure if I’m committed to finishing what I’ve started (or that I may have bitten off more than I can chew), then you can review the two series that I’ve completed over the past two and a half years: Daphne Blazefire and MacKenzie Steele. The MacKenzie Steele series sold pretty well and that kept me going. Daphne had slow sales but I had made a commitment to do 5 books (minimum) and I did ’em. Plus the free book called “Daphne” and the short story called Neutron Star. Those were fun to write.
The Escape from the Abyss series is a lot more fun than any of my previous projects. The first one took a long time because of the Tome, which is now in the can. The second book I write will be a lot quicker. Probably take me about 3 months to complete. Will I finish the series? Oh yeah. I could adjust the number of books in the series which could range between 5 to 20 books. I’m still committed to 20 because I have specific stories that I worked out, but we’ll see what happens.
I bring this up because I read a blog posting by another author the other day where he mentioned two writers that dropped the ball and didn’t finish their very popular series. Here’s the article (it’s rather colorful but a great read). One of the writers is George R. R. Martin. I get it, he got a sweet HBO gig and now he’s drowning in money and can’t come up for air long enough to finish his work. The other author is Patrick Rothfuss… Oh boy. I didn’t know who he was so I went out to his Wiki and, wow, what a piece of work he is. Not sure what his problem is, but he did a charity in December 2021 to raise $333,333 to share one full chapter of Doors of Stone. The charity reached its goal quickly, and… he still hasn’t produced it. Seriously. Just shaking my head.
Anyway, so I was thinking about the problem of not finishing a series. In the case of George R. R. Martin, he has money. Hellooooo! Hire a ghostwriter. Also, what is he doing with his time, now that he doesn’t have to work full-time? I would get bored real fast and start writing another book, or hiring a top-notch ghostwriter and pumping that person full of notes and ideas for a story. I’m the kind of person that has hobbies because I can’t just sit in front of a TV and veg all day.
There is one problem that I can’t control and that’s if something bad happened and I’m just not around to finish the book series. It happens. Authors die and their books remain unfinished. That can also be solved with ghostwriters. In that instance, funding and instructions must be included in a will. If my series was that popular, I would put it in the will and keep all of my notes hyper-organized (they’re only somewhat organized at the moment), so my family can keep the series going to the conclusion.
The last thing I want to mention is that those guys are writing Fantasy, which consists of much larger books and maybe an endless series (did they plan the ending yet?). In my case, I have book 1 in the can and it was planned pretty carefully. The last book in the series is also planned. Not in detail, but there is a final book that I have notes on that wraps everything up in each of the two series that I have in progress. The only question is how many books will span between book 1 and the last book? For The Traveler series, I think I can stretch it to 10, but it might end up only 5 or 7. In the case of Escape from the Abyss, I have major plots to cover 20 books.
In Larry Correia’s post, he mentions that new authors are screwed if nobody buys their first book. I believe that, but it doesn’t really apply to me. I have a full-time, career that pays well. So I can sit on a few non-selling books for a few more years. That’s not the case for most people writing books, so don’t use me as an example. I’ll be keeping my eye on sales to see what happens after I publish the second and third books. I’ll give both series that much effort before I decide if they’re going to pan out or not. I’m also gauging the success by the star ratings. Desperate Action is a solid 3.7 with 11 ratings, so I have a good feeling about that series. I’m pretty confident The Archons will fall in the same range.
Using the ratings and comments of books gives me a rough idea of how well the books will do. Some of the negative ratings on the Daphne books are spot on. Fortunately, I’ve improved my writing skills since those books were written and it shows in Desperate Action. I’m certainly glad I put The Archons on hold last year and wrote the Daphne books. I had some of the rough draft of the first book done and ended up tossing it. I didn’t have the writing skills to pull off a story of this magnitude and I knew it.
OK, I’m getting off my soap box. I just checked the status of The Archons and it’s “Publishing.” That means it made it through review and will be on the Amazon site in the next hour or so.