Michael J. Sullivan's Blog, page 7

Update on the Free Novel Experiment

 So some of you may know that Robin has been doing an experiment on Royal Road.  She's basically posted two of the my novels for free in the hopes of finding new readers.  So far, it's working well.

It hit the "Rising Star" list (albeit near the bottom), and stayed there for several weeks.It's currently in the Top 100 for Best Rated books (#92 to be precise).It's just a bit behind one of the most popular books on the site (Dungeon Crawler Carl)!


















Not bad considering this site is mainly LitRPG and Progression Fantasy readers, and Riyria is neither of those.

Do you want to help?There are several ways to do this.Tell your friends that haven't read any Riyria books that they can read two of the novels for free from this link.

If you've already read the books - go out to the site and rank it, follow it, or favorite it.  A review is also always appreciated.

If you haven't read the books yet, do so from Royal Road - it won't cost you a dime, and more views means better chances of hitting the Rising Star list again where more people will see the books! 

Release Day +10 Esrahaddon

It's been 10 days since the release of Esrahaddon (in audiobook and ebook), and the reviews are coming in. I'm pleased that peole seem to be liking the book so much.  The audio version received more than 100 ratings and is running at a 4.8 average.  Out of the 42 books released on August 15th, only one has more ratings than Esrahaddon. Here are some of the things people are saying:

This is my longest single book so it's a great credit to lisening hours ratio (more than 29 and a half hours!) And as always, it's narrated by the exceptional Tim Gerard Reynolds. If you haven't gotten a copy yet, you can get yours here.

Release Day+1 - Esrahaddon!

Hey all, yesterday we launched Esrahaddon, the 19th book in the world of Elan. I should not this is ONLY for the ebook and audiobook versions. The printed books (both limited editions and regular hardcovers) are with the printer, and it will still be a few months before those are in our hand,

Even so, we ended up with just a tad over 15,000 books sold in pre-order (either through Amazon, Audible, our private store, or the Kickstarter. That's pretty good!  Long ago we learned that most mid-list books are lucky to sell 5,000 copies so we are way ahead of that.

We also hit a number of the bestseller lists on Amazon (37 total, and 7 of them where #1)

If you would like to pre-order a signed hardcover (regular or limited edition), you'll get it before the December 5th release date (basically as soon as we receive copies.

Thanks to the Kickstarter, nearly 4,000 people received the gamma version of Esrahaddon starting in May. If you are one of those people who have already read the book, please consider posting a review on Goodreads or Amazon. When it comes to a newly released title, no one wants to be the "guinea pig," and pick up a copy without hearing if others have liked it, so that would be a great help.

The free story experiment begins!

When I first started writing the Riyria Revelations, my plan was to post the stories on the Internet for free. You see, I didn't want to publish (that way just led to the dark side), and I had no clue how to self-publish (this was before the kindle, after all). At the time, there was no good place to do this so I think I had about three or five readers. Well, these days there's a great site for free stories, and it's called Royal Road. There are hundreds of thousands of readers out there, many reading early works by unknown authors, but Robin thought it might be a good place to help people discover Royce and Hadrian as well. She was right about using Kickstarters, so maybe she can pull this rabbit out of her hat, too.

Right now I have 50,000+ words posted and only 4 - 6 followers per title. That's not so good, but at this point there's no place to go but up.  Here's what's out there so far.

4 Riyria short stories (25,888 words)2 non-Riyria shorts (13,280 words)3 chapters of The Death of Dulgath (12,690 words and new chapters posting daily)The plan is to release my two indie standalone Royce and Hadrian novels (The Death of Dulgath and The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter) a chapter at a time - each day at 12:00 noon Eastern Time. When completed, that will be 215,000+ words.Already a fan? I need your help!

Perhaps you've already read these shorts and novels. And if so - great! I thank you for your support, and I hope you loved them. And if you did, would you care to help others find these stories? 

You see, Royal Road has hundreds of thousands of readers, but there are millions of words on the site, and it's almost impossible for those throngs to find a new title. The solution is the "Rising Stars" list where books that are gaining momentum (as evidenced by followers and favorites), get a spotlight shown on them. So, if you could go to the site (it's 100% free) and click follow and favorite, that would help a great deal. 

Haven't read the Riyria Chronicles?

Maybe you've only read the Riyria Revelations.  Or perhaps you've come to my writing through Legends of the First Empire or the Rise and Fall books. If that's the case, then there's an even better reason for you to visit Royal Road. Free stories!  The way this site works, is authors regularly publish chapters (usually as they write them), but because these books are already written and published, I'm going to post a chapter a day (that's what the Royal Road experts suggest you do in order to gain a following). 

By the time this experiment is over, I'll have posted two complete full-length novels (that's 215,000+ words). Below is a bit about each book, to see if you might be interested in taking a peek.

Three times they tried to kill her. Then a professional was hired.
So was Riyria.
When the last member of the oldest noble family in Avryn is targeted for assassination, Riyria is hired to foil the plot. Three years have passed since the war-weary mercenary and the cynical ex-assassin joined forces to start life as rogues-for-hire. Things have gone well enough until they're asked to help prevent a murder. Now they must venture into an ancient corner of the world to save a mysterious woman who knows more about Royce than is safe and cares less about herself than is sane.



A daughter vanishes. Two rogues are paid a fortune
to find her. It isn't enough.

When Gabriel Winter's daughter mysteriously disappears and is presumed dead, the wealthy whiskey baron seeks revenge. Having lived in Colnora during the infamous Year of Fear, he hires the one man he knows can deliver a bloody retribution - the notorious Duster. Riyria's job appears easy: discover what happened to the missing duchess and, if she lives, bring her home . . . if not, punish those responsible. But nothing is simple in the crowded, narrow, mist-filled streets of Rochelle where more than one ancient legend lurks.As always, I'm eternally gratefulI must say, that I feel a bit embarrassed to make this request. After all, you've already helped to make my dreams a reality, and now I am asking for more. But I truly think these books are a great deal of fun and I would like more people to read them. And since, they can do so without giving me a dime, I think it's might be worth asking for a helping hand.  I'll keep writing and hopefully others will keep reading.

Don't Miss the Orconomics Kickstarter!

Of all the indie books I've read and loved (and there have been many). The one that stand head and shoulders above the rest is Orconomics. Zachary isn't a fast writer, but he's an excellent one and his trilogy (The Dark Profit Saga), is finally done, and he's launching the final book with a Kickstarter for the full set. 

Why do I love it so much?  Well, it's so damn fun, and addictive, and original, and just plain wonderful.What's it about? Well, here's the back of the book marketing copy:

High comedy meets high fantasy in this award-winning, bestselling satire
Fight, kill, loot, get credit. Repeat until you're dead.

The adventuring industry drives the economy of Arth, where professional heroes are hired to risk their lives to slay fantastic creatures. After said slaying, the loot gets hauled back and divided among investors, banks, plunder funds, adventurers, and the Heroes' Guild. This works out well for everyone except the Shadowkin—orcs, goblins, kobolds and the like—who must apply to become Noncombatant Paper Carriers (or NPCs) to avoid being killed and looted by heroes.

When Gorm Ingerson, a disgraced and drunken Dwarven ex-hero with a checkered past, stands up for an undocumented Goblin, he is forced to accept a suicidal quest to save himself and his new friend from certain death. With one shot at redemption, Gorm must get his party of eccentric misfits to stop fighting each other long enough to recover a stolen treasure and stay one step ahead of the powerful organizations showing an unusual interest in their progress. Through a series of unfortunate choices and with the guiding hand of an insane goddess, Gorm inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will change his life—and the world—forever.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Oh and you don't have to take my word about how good of a book it is. Orconomics won the SPFBO (self-publishing Fantasy Blog Off), and it was the highest rated book (out of 1,200 entries) over the first four years of that competition). I think it's still tied for first place after 9 years of that competition started by Mark Lawrence.

I'm an enthusiastic backer of this project, and I hope you will be, too. It's currently just shy ($9,000) of becoming one of the six-figure elite, and never was there a project that deserved it more. So, what say you? Do you want to be part of something truly special? Then head over to the Kickstarter and back it. You can thank me later - it truly has my highest possible recommendation.

Author Interview - The Fantasy Review

I had a great interview with the folks over at The Fantasy Review.  There were a lot of great questions, but the one that is probably most interesting to people here is:

 "Are you working on any new books or other projects at the moment?"  

Please check it out. The Fantasy Review is a great resource for people reading in the genre.

Starting From Scratch

So, back in the day, once I returned to writing after a ten-year hiatus, I vowed not to publish because riding the query-go-round and receiving nothing but rejections was just too painful. My plan at that time was to just publish the books online for free, and hopefully, a few friends would read them.

That didn't go well. At the time, they were on a website that few people knew of, and I think I only had three or four people take a look.

These days, there are much better sites for making stories available for free, one of them is Royal Road. It's mainly a place for people to serialize their novels, but for now, I'm going to post some of my short stories out there. The hope is I get some "eyeballs" on it, and then I can post some of my novels in the hope that some new readers will discover my work.

As with most sites of this kind, discoverability is difficult, but I'm hoping that maybe more than three of four of you will read, rate, and comment on my stories, and if you do, others will start to find them. 

Royal Road is free, and there are many stories to be found there. (Mother of Learning - a serial novel that has been doing amazingly well, had a Kickstarter done by Wraitemarked Creative that I backed and I'm enjoying the story quite a bit.

So please go here, checkout my tale, and please comment or rate it so others might find my work.

Farilane Trailer

 It's been over a year since I posted this video, but it was buried in a larger post and so some people might not have seen it so I'm sharing again. If you haven't read Farilane (and you should since Esrhaddon is just a bit more than a month away),  this may get you to give it a try.

My eternal thanks to @RiyriaExplained, a massive fan on YouTube.

Fantasy Review's Six Fantasy Books That Will Make You Believe in the Power of Hope

I'm often asked by readers about other books that are like my own. In many ways, there aren't that many because I tend to see the world through rose-colored glasses, and much of fantasy prefers grim-dark spectacles. But I recently ran across a list from The Fantasy Review that focused on the more positive aspects of fantasy. So I thought I would take a moment and shine a spotlight on the books they picked. So here are their Six Fantasy Books That Will Make You Believe in the Power of Hope.

I hope you find this list helpful, and I have my fingers crossed that you'll find more books to love. Oh, and thanks again to Robin, who did all the hard work of putting the montage of covers together and compiling data from Goodreads for the following:.

Legends & Lattes | Travis Baldree | Tor | 92,501 ratings | 19,302 reviews
The Hose in the erulean Sea | T. J. Klune | Tor | 486,459 ratings |  80,996 reviews
Macgian's Apprentence   | Raymond E. Fiest | Bantam Spectra  | 92,472 ratings | 2,327 reviews
The Sword of Shannara Terry Brooks | Del Rey | 94,303 ratings | 4,662 reviews
Silver in the Wood | Emly Tesh | TorDotCom | 16,171 ratings | 3,126 reviews
Theft of Swords | Michael J. Sullivan  | Orbit |  64,926 ratings |  4,668 reviews

SAVE 80% - Age of War Audiobook

There's another great opportunity to save big on a Legends of the First Empire audiobook.  As part of the monthly deals, Age of War is just $6.99 (less than half a credit).  This was my first New York Times Bestseller, and it has a 4.8 / 5.0 rating on Audible with more than 11,900 ratings.  If you haven't picked it up yet, this would be an excellent opportunity to do so.  Get your copy here.