Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 168

ebook sales percentages 2018

I was curious to see which series of mine sold the best in 2018.

I gotta say, it would have been much harder to figure this out without Trackerbox, which is an excellent software program. So, of my total ebook sales for 2018, here’s how it divides out by series:

Sevenfold Sword: 31.6%

Frostborn: 26.94%

Cloak Games: 11.59%

Ghosts (The Ghosts/Ghost Exile/Ghost Night): 11.31%

Silent Order: 6.92%

Demonsouled: 4.73%

Computer Beginners Guides: 3.17%

Cloak & Ghost: 1.34%

Third Soul: 1%

The Tower of Endless Worlds: 0.0062%

Malison: 0.0019%

Thanks for reading, everyone! I have to say I have the fortunate problem of feeling like I’m behind on all my unfinished series because of the demand for them.

-JM

ebook sales 2018

As I wrap up my record-keeping for 2018, I broke down which platforms sold the best for me in the last year:

Amazon: 63.92%

Google Play: 14.58%

Kobo: 8.55%

Apple: 7.27%

Barnes & Noble: 5.1%

Audiobooks: 0.0043%

I gotta say, this makes me very glad I spent a weekend towards the end of 2014 figuring out how to use Google Play!

This is also why I only have a few books in Kindle Unlimited. If Amazon was closer to, say, 85% of my total sales, it would make more sense, but not at 64%. (And that’s lower than it has been in past years.)

People have been saying that Barnes & Noble is going to go under for years, but my sales on it have been pretty consistent since 2016 or so.

I get good results using Kobo’s internal promotions system.

Audiobooks might have been only 0.0043%, but that’s still 16 times more than I made from audiobooks in 2017. Audio takes a while to scale up, and I had just gotten started with them towards the end of 2018. I made more from my self-published audiobooks in January 2019 than I did in the entirety of 2018. Hope to see more growth there in 2019!

Thanks for reading, everyone! In a few days I’ll post which series of mine sold the best in 2018.

-JM

 

Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday: SILENT ORDER: IRON HAND

It’s time for Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday! This week we have an excerpt from my first science fiction novel, SILENT ORDER: IRON HAND.

The SILENT ORDER series was mostly inspired by classic PC games from the 90s – Wing Commander, Privateer, Master of Orion, and so forth. I am also willing to admit that I watched Star Wars Episodes VII and VIII and thought I could do a better job of writing a science fiction story without spending $500 million in the process.

SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN book description

Editing is underway for SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN, so let’s have the book description!

The quest of the Seven Swords nears its end, and dark powers rise to seize the world.

Ridmark Arban has learned the terrible secret at the heart of the Seven Swords. Now he need only escape Urd Maelwyn, the grim city ruled by the dark elven tyrant known as the Confessor.

But few who enter Urd Maelwyn ever leave alive.

And the Maledicti priests will kill to protect the secret of the Seven Swords…

-JM

what will CLOAK OF DRAGONS be about?

Grace asks:

“Speaking of Cloak of Dragons, any clues as to what it’s about?”

That’s a good time to ask, because I just finished Chapter 2 of 20 of CLOAK OF DRAGONS. After I finish editing SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN, it will be full speed ahead on CLOAK OF DRAGONS. If all goes well, Nadia’s next adventure will be out towards the end of April.

Here’s the official book description for CLOAK OF DRAGONS!

My name is Nadia, and I’m an errand girl.

Except my boss is the High Queen of the Elves.

And my errands for her involve spying on people. Or stealing things. Or hunting down monsters. Or, on occasion, killing people.

But this time she wants me to solve a murder.

And unless I find the killer, I’m going to be his next target…because dragons never forgive a murder.

-JM

SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN rough draft finished!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN is finished!

99,100 words in 24 days.

Next up is SHIELD KNIGHT: APPRENTICE, a short story from the POV of Antenora and Gavin that my newsletter subscribers will get for free when GUARDIAN comes out towards the end of March.  Meanwhile, here is the cover image for SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN!

As ever, the SEVENFOLD SWORD cover images are done by the excellent Clarissa Yeo.

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-JM

how to write a really, really long series

I’ve recently passed my 94th published book, and SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN will be my 95th.  I’ve come to realize something. There’s a lot of advice for new and new-ish writers, but much less advice for experienced ones. Which makes sense. There are more people who want to be writers, or who have just started writing, than who have been writing for a while.

So today, I thought I would share my thoughts on a problem that only veteran writers face – how to write a really, really long series without it going stale. I’ve had some experience in this area – I’ve written twenty-five books with Ridmark as the main character, twenty-two with Caina, twelve with Nadia Moran, ten with Mazael Cravenlock, and nine with Jack March.

I gotta say, it’s worthwhile. It’s fun to develop characters and a world over a long period of time, though you do need to work on new things from time to time to refresh your brain. Commercially, it works well. People seem to prefer really long series. I haven’t written anything new in DEMONSOULED since 2016, but I still sell at least one DEMONSOULED book around the world every day, and usually quite a few more than one. And it’s not just me saying that – JD Robb just published her 48th (!) book in the IN DEATH series of futuristic police procedurals. There are 26 Jack Reacher books, and a lot of people really, really like Jack Reacher.

So, here’s how I write a really long series.

First, whenever possible, make sure each book in the series has a self-contained plot. People mostly hate cliffhangers. There’s a time and a place for cliffhangers, but they’re like garlic – best used sparingly. Usually, it’s best to use cliffhangers near the end of a big series, when people can tell there’s a big, big climatic book coming up. In other words, cliffhangers are like writing a check against your readers’ goodwill – you had better have the funds on hand to pay it later on!

Second, when working with the main characters over a long series, it’s important not to betray the character’s main premises. By “main premises”, I mean the foundational aspects of the character. Like, how Nadia is paranoid, a little ruthless, and obsessed with saving her brother, but has moral lines she won’t cross, or how Caina hates slavers and strongly dislikes sorcerers. One of the biggest ways to tick off readers is to make a drastic change in the foundational aspect of a character as a means of generating a plot. To use another example, it would be like retconning Captain America so he was a HYDRA agent all along. That’s just lazy storytelling. It would be like if Nadia decides to murder her brother for personal advancement, or if Caina decides the Magisterium was right all along and joins them to help re-institute slavery in the Empire. That would annoy long-time readers of the series, since that would be a betrayal of the characters.

Third, while you shouldn’t betray the main premises of the characters, they should evolve and change. The trick to keeping a character over a long series is to have them evolve, albeit slowly. Ridmark in SEVENFOLD SWORD is much more emotionally balanced than he is in FROSTBORN. That is a change to the character, but it happened over the course of several books and the readers could see that it didn’t happen easily. Caina changes over the course of twenty-two books as well, as does Nadia. Caina goes from being anonymous and absolutely hating sorcerers to becoming famous and strongly disliking sorcerers with a few exceptions. Nadia probably changes the most over the course of her series – she goes from caring only about her brother to worrying about the weight of the responsibility her power gives her. When starting a long series, it’s good to build in some emotional conflicts and personal failings to give the characters something to overcome later.

Fourth, while letting each book have its own individual plot and villain, it’s good to plan long story arcs over the multiple books. That lets you work out things over the long-term, and hopefully prevents problems down the road.

Fifth, one of the big problems in long SF/F series is the characters becoming overpowered. Like, the protagonist becomes so powerful he can defeat all challenges with a wave of his magic staff. For example, Nadia is much more powerful in the twelfth book of her series than she is in the first.

The key to overcoming this problem is to remember that power comes in different forms, and all power has limitations. Think of a physically dominant athlete who gets accused of a crime – his athletic abilities will be useless when dealing with police and lawyers.

Not every form of power is equally applicable in every situation. There’s social power, physical power, financial power, political power, and in fantasy novels, magical power, and one kind of power might be totally useless in a particular kind of conflict. Like, your hero might be able to kill a man with his little finger, but that’s not going to do him much good in a battle with a wizard…or, more prosaically, if he gets sued and doesn’t want to become an outlaw. (Or if he’s libeled in the press or framed for a crime he didn’t commit.) De-powering characters always seems like a cheap trick, so you can instead put your characters into situations where their power won’t help much. Like, a rich man who gets shipwrecked, or a charming woman who has to physically fight for her life, or a warrior who has to fight a battle of the wits.

As for the limitations of power, I hate to use this example, but political power is probably the best illustration of that principle. (Please don’t cite any specific examples in the comments.) People are always disappointed in politicians, because politicians can’t live up to their promises. But the reason politicians can’t live up to their promises is because their power has severe limits, and every politician has well-organized enemies working to thwart him. In the US, an individual Congressman can’t get much done without the help of many other Congresspeople. The President is powerful, but he’s limited in what he can do without Congress on his side. Congress is theoretically the most powerful part of the government, but only if a majority of Congress agrees to act, which almost never happens. In Westminster-style parliaments, the Prime Minister’s grip on power is even more precarious. If enough MPs vote No Confidence, that’s that. And all the Cabinet secretaries think they would make a better Prime Minister, so they’re just waiting for a chance to stab the Prime Minister in the back and take over.

Even in countries unfortunate enough to have absolute dictatorships, the dictator’s power has limits. If the dictator doesn’t keep the generals or the clerics or the Secret Police or the Politburo or whatever happy, the dictator will “unexpectedly” commit suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head six or seven times. Then someone else gets to be dictator!

So if your main character becomes powerful, always remember that power in all its forms has limitations, and you can write the challenges and conflicts your character faces around the limitations of power.

Sixth, don’t be afraid to improvise. Sometimes halfway through a series you’ll have a good idea, and if you can work it into the series outline, do so! In FROSTBORN, Mara and the Anathgrimm really weren’t in the original outline, but they strengthened the series. For that matter, in SEVENFOLD SWORD, I improvised the character of Selene because I wanted another villain with personality in SEVENFOLD SWORD: SHADOW, and many people have written to say that Selene is their favorite new character in SEVENFOLD SWORD.

Seventh, don’t repeat challenges for the characters. By that I mean you don’t want to have the characters facing the same internal problems and the same kind of external foes over and over again. In fiction, a character to fails to learn from his or her trials quickly becomes exasperating. It’s all right for a villain, but it becomes annoying in a protagonist. For that matter, the characters need to face new kinds of antagonists. If the bad guy is a power-mad evil baron in the first book, it would be annoying to have the villain be a power-mad evil baron in the second book.

Finally, it’s good to take a break every so often. I don’t usually write books in the same series back to back, which allows my brain to refresh a bit. After I write a SEVENFOLD SWORD book, I switch to GHOSTS or CLOAK GAMES or another series for the next book. The last couple of months I wrote two SEVENFOLD SWORD and two MALISON books back to back because I got so far behind in 2018, so I’m looking forward to starting on CLOAK OF DRAGONS, since writing a Nadia book is a very different experience than writing a SEVENFOLD SWORD one.

-JM

Draft2Digital and Google Play

Fellow self-publishers! Draft2Digital is now offering distribution to the Google Play store.


 


For the last couple of years it’s been hard to get into the GP store. I got into it back in early 2014 when it was more open, but Google stopped accepting new publishers due to problems with scammers. For a while now, it’s only been possible to get into the GP store with a few third-party distributors, but I think Draft2Digital is the easiest to use of all the third-party distributors.


 


Google Play is my second-strongest market after Amazon. In January 14.7% of my book sales came from GP, so if you’re a self-publisher I think it’s worthwhile to try the GP store.


-JM

Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday: DEMONSOULED

It’s time for Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday! This week we have an excerpt from my very first published novel from lo these many years ago, DEMONSOULED.

Back when I wrote DEMONSOULED there was no Kindle, no Facebook, no smartphones, no iPads, no Google Play, and my laptop computer looked like an unabridged dictionary and sounded like an air compressor.

You can get the ebook version for free at free at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

###

“A pity we couldn’t stop,” said Gerald. “I would have liked to make prayers at the monastery.”

“There’s a chapel at Castle Cravenlock,” said Mazael. “You can make your prayers there.”

“True,” said Gerald. “But it’s been so long since I’ve been at a proper church for a proper prayer.”

Mazael shrugged. “The gods are eternal. I’m sure they’ll wait two days for your prayer.”

Gerald made a sound that was a curious mixture of a laugh and a sigh. “You never did care much for the gods, did you?”

Mazael laughed. “You’ve known me for—what—ten years now, and you’ve just realized it? I thought I trained you to be more perceptive.”

“You know what I mean,” said Gerald.

Mazael shrugged. “So what? If the gods exist, then they either ignore us, which is fine, or they take interest in the lives of men, in which case they are obviously cruel.”

“That’s impious,” said Gerald. “A knight is sworn to be pious.”

Mazael laughed. “Actually, my father tapped me on the shoulder with his sword and shoved me out the door. You remember, Rachel? After Lord Richard defeated him, my father wanted no one to interfere with Mitor the Mushroom’s inheritance. He gave me a sword, a horse, knighthood, and told me to leave and never return.”

Rachel frowned. “Our father was a good man.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” said Mazael. “Generous and kind, but weak and none too bright. Gerald, did you know that Lord Adalon had twice the men Lord Richard did? My father could have sat in Swordgrim and waited for Lord Richard’s army to starve. Winter was coming. Instead, he marched out to meet Lord Richard in battle. He didn’t want to seem a coward, you see. As Rachel said, Lord Adalon was a good man, but he was no commander. Lord Richard tore his army to shreds, killed my two older brothers, and took Lord Adalon captive. Now, what sort of gods allow a weak man like my father to lead his land to ruin?”

“Evil comes from men, and good from the gods,” said Gerald.

“And now it might happen again,” said Mazael. “Instead of Lord Richard Mandragon rising against Lord Adalon Cravenlock, Mitor will rise against Lord Richard. Unless I talk some sense into the fool, Lord Richard will crush the Cravenlocks once again.” Mazael smirked. “Like father, like son.”

They rode in silence for a moment.

-JM

roof rake?

I mentioned a “roof rake” in a blog post the other day, and a reader from a warmer region of the world asked what that was.

It’s basically a big aluminium pole with a horizontal shovel blade on the end. In snowy climates (such as where I live), it is used to remove snow from the roof a house.

If you have too much snow on your roof, it can cause structural damage. However, it’s much more common for conductive heat from the house (along with the sun) to cause the snow on the roof to melt and refreeze. Having good insulation in the roof can mitigate this problem, but it is still a concern. The melting and refreezing can cause ice dams along the gutters, which in turn can leak into the interior of the house.

And THAT gets expensive! Much more expensive than a roof rake. So while roof raking isn’t an enjoyable chore, it is much less expensive than the alternative.

You can see an example of a roof rake here.

-JM