Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 13

Coupon of the Week, 4/14/25

Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week!

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, Book #5 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store:

BARBARIAN50

The coupon code is valid through May 2, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we’ve got you covered!

-JM

Fourteen Years of Self-Publishing – A Timeline

As I mentioned earlier, April 2025 marks my fourteenth year of self-publishing. I didn’t have anything profound to say, other than gratitude for everyone who has read one of my books.

But! I thought it might be interesting to look back at the last fourteen years and pick out a few of the highlights for each year.

2011: Started self-publishing. Published DEMONSOULED and CHILD OF THE GHOSTS. Wrote SOUL OF SERPENTS, the first book I ever intended specifically to self-publishing and not to try and place with a traditional publisher. Made DEMONSOULED permafree, which worked really well.

2012: Wrote SOUL OF SORCERY, which was the first book of mine to get on an Amazon bestseller list. Wrote THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE, which still sells to this day. Wrote GHOST IN THE STORM, which was the first Caina book I ever intended specifically for self-publishing and not in hopes of finding a traditional publisher.

2013: Finished the first DEMONSOULED series with SOUL OF SWORDS, and started writing FROSTBORN.

2014: Finished THE GHOSTS with GHOST IN THE SURGE, and started GHOST EXILE with GHOST IN THE COWL.

2015: Started the CLOAK GAMES series with the very first Nadia book, CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP. The contrast between what I originally envisioned for the series and what it became is amusing – I joked that I wanted an urban fantasy series about a bad person very slowly and reluctantly becoming a good one, but what I actually ended up with was an urban fantasy/science fiction series about Catwoman evolving into Gandalf. Also, I didn’t plan for nearly as many science fiction elements as ended up in the series.

2016: FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE hit the USA Today bestseller list, back when that still existed. Finished the GHOST EXILE series with GHOST IN THE WINDS.

2017: The first five FROSTBORN audiobooks come out from Tantor, with FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT being my first-ever audiobook. 2017 was also my highest sales year so far. I finish the FROSTBORN series, and start writing SEVENFOLD SWORD. Started the GHOST NIGHT series with GHOST IN THE RING. Like CLOAK GAMES, GHOST NIGHT evolved significantly while I was writing it. I originally thought the series would be set entirely in Ulkaar, but by the third book I was bored with the idea, and so we started going all over the Empire instead. I also published the first five books of the SILENT ORDER science fiction series.

2018: The SEVENFOLD SWORD audiobooks start coming out from Podium. I start doing my own audiobooks with FROSTBORN: THE DARK WARDEN and CHILD OF THE GHOSTS. I finish the CLOAK GAMES series with CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL, and decide to continue Nadia’s story with the CLOAK MAGE series.

2019: I finished the SEVENFOLD SWORD series, and started on DRAGONTIARNA. DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS was my 100th novel. I start the CLOAK MAGE series with CLOAK OF DRAGONS and CLOAK OF WOLVES.

2020: Covid! Ugh. I wrote the entire WRAITHSHARD series in 2020 and also took Photoshop classes, which was helpful for both cover design and ad images.

2021: Finished the DRAGONTIARNA series with DRAGONTIARNA: WARDEN. Started on the DRAGONSKULL series with DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE. Finished the GHOST NIGHT series with GHOST IN THE SUN.

2022: Continued DRAGONSKULL, SILENT ORDER, and CLOAK MAGE.

2023: Finished DRAGONSKULL and the SILENT ORDER series. Started GHOST ARMOR and THE SHIELD WAR. Attempted to write a LitRPG, which became STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE. Started the HALF-ELVEN THIEF series.

2024: Continued GHOST ARMOR, THE SHIELD WAR, STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE, CLOAK MAGE, and HALF-ELVEN THIEF. Wrote GHOST IN THE VEILS, which was my 150th novel.

2025: Decided I had too many unfinished series, so I wanted to focus on finishing THE SHIELD WAR, GHOST ARMOR, and STEALTH & SPELLS.

Dang, but it’s been a busy fourteen years!

As always, thanks for reading! Hopefully it shouldn’t be too much longer before SHIELD OF BATTLE.

-JM

Fourteen Years Of Self-Publishing

So, as of April 2025, I’ve been self-publishing for fourteen years.

Fourteen years! That’s almost a decade and a half at this point. In fact it will be a decade and a half at this point next year. Fourteen years is pretty much the longest continuous time I’ve ever done anything.

That is a lot of books and audiobooks over the last fourteen years.

I don’t think I have anything profound to say about it (nothing like “Fourteen Lessons Learned In Fourteen Years Of Self-Publishing!”), save for gratitude. There have been ups and downs, but I’m very grateful for everyone who has read and enjoyed one of my books over the last fourteen years.

-JM

sign up for my newsletter and get a free short story

If you sign up for my new-release newsletter, you’ll get a free copy of the short story RAVEN’S HUNT when SHIELD OF BATTLE comes out later this month.

I’m also doing a little bit of the worldbuilding for my next epic fantasy series in this short story. I’ll start on the next series once THE SHIELD WAR is done later this year. All I’ll say about the new series so far is that it will be set in the realm of Owyllain, which we haven’t visited since SEVENFOLD SWORD finished back in 2019.

-JM

Cover image for SHIELD OF BATTLE

I am far enough along to share the cover image for SHIELD OF BATTLE, which you can see below.

Been making good progress on editing. It’s either going to come out right before or shortly after Easter, with the second possibility being more likely at the moment.

-JM

Question of the Week: New TV Show

It’s time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics.

This week’s question: what is the best TV show you started watching in 2025, if any? No wrong answers, obviously.

For myself, I think it would be WOLF HALL: THE MIRROR & THE LIGHT about the downfall of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII. I will have more to say about that later in my Winter/Spring 2025 Movie Roundup post in a few weeks.

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 246: Professional Development For Writers

In this week’s episode, we take a look at professional development for writers, and examine both the benefits and the pitfalls.

We also take a look at my advertising results for March 2025.

You can listen to the show with transcript at the official Pulp Writer Show site, and you can also listen to it at Spotify, Apple Podcasts , Amazon Music, and Libsyn.

-JM

Coupon of the Week, 4/7/25

Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week!

This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs, Book #4 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store:

ORCCURSE50

The coupon code is valid through April 25, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we’ve got you covered!

-JM

SHIELD OF BATTLE rough draft done!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of SHIELD OF BATTLE is done!

102,800 words in 22 days.

Next up is a currently untitled short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free in ebook form when SHIELD OF BATTLE comes out.

We should be on track to have the book come out in April.

Watch this site for the cover and the table of contents in coming days!

-JM

Ad results March 2025

It’s April, so let’s see how my ads did for the last month.

I changed things up a fair bit for ads in March 2025.

Because the economy is so bad and not likely to improve for several years (I saw someone arguing that all the policy decisions from COVID will have a 15 year economic hangover, which I think might be on point), I though it might be prudent to move some older series into Kindle Unlimited, so I did that with the DEMONSOULED books and with CLOAK GAMES (though not with CLOAK MAGE, which will remain wide as new books come out). I might do it with SILENT ORDER as well, but I haven’t decided. My thinking is that as people are looking to economize, subscription services will probably offer better value that direct ebook sales.

So, let’s see how we did!

For Facebook ads, I did CLOAK GAMES/MAGE and THE GHOSTS.

CLOAK GAMES/MAGE: $4.14 back for every $1 spent, with 10% of the profit coming from the audiobooks.

THE GHOSTS: $8.73 for every $1 spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks.

Obviously, that might be inflated because of GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY, which did well. (Thanks, everyone!) Without GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY, the GHOSTS would have done $3.68 for every $1 spent, with 15% of the profit coming from audiobooks. So still pretty good.

For Amazon ads, I mostly focused on HALF-ELVEN THIEF. Remember that for an Amazon ad to be successful, it needs to get a sale or a complete KU read for every 6-8 clicks.

HALF-ELVEN THIEF: $3.41 for every $1 spent, with a sale or complete KU read for every 0.84 clicks.

That’s a really good result.

I gave up on advertising STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE: CREATION. I’ve realized I fundamentally misunderstood what readers in the LitRPG genre actually want. I’m still going to finish the series this summer with the final book (I’m 75,000 words into the final book), but I don’t think I’m going to advertise the series any more.

For DEMONSOULED, I did a combined Facebook/Amazon Ads campaign. For a combined campaign like that, it’s best to just track the return.

DEMONSOULED: $2.53 for every $1 spent.

So pretty close to February.

I also did some Bookbub ad campaigns for THE GHOSTS and SEVENFOLD SWORD on Apple.

THE GHOSTS: $9.24 back for every $1.

SEVENFOLD SWORD: $6.76 back for every $1.

So some very good results there!

Finally, I’ve begun experimenting with Bookbub ads for Google Play. I tried out SEVENFOLD SWORD first:

SEVENFOLD SWORD: $3.86 back for every $1.

So a promising beginning there. I might try more experiments Bookbub ads and Google Play in future months.

A good month all in all. Thanks for reading, everyone! Hopefully I will have some more new books soon.

-JM