Day 38 – I Almost Killed The Hunger Series

During my rant against Facebook, I mentioned that my writing career took a huge hit a few years ago. When Facebook changed their policies, it destroyed my ability to reach my readers. The timing of that coincided with the start of a brand new series.

Until that point, I’d written Echoes, West of Hell, The Gate, and The Dark.

My sales grew with each book, but didn’t amount to a whole hell of a lot. That first year of publishing brought me a gross of $1800. That’s gross, not net. I had editing and cover expenses in there. And I purchased a laptop to write on. If I made any profit, it was slim. Especially when you consider how much work it took to release that many books in a short amount of time.

But then I released The Dark.

For some reason, that novel took off about a week after release. It pulled The Gate along with it. That big push convinced me that I could turn this writing thing into a career. My author page likes on Facebook jumped exponentially. I knew that whatever I released after that would sell much better than anything before it.

So I got cracking on a new idea I had that became Devoured.

In the middle of writing that book, Facebook neutered my reach. At the time, I didn’t know much that would crush me. I kept plugging  along on the book, developing a three-novel story arc in the process. The plan was to release the trio of books over six months, then laugh my way to the bank.

Yeah. That didn’t happen.

When Devoured hit the digital shelves it sold a whopping 16 copies the first day.

I was floored.

My biggest release yet, The Dark, had come out just a few months earlier. It had sold like gangbusters, at least to my standards. My career was taking off like a rocket. So what happened? None of my readers knew it had released. I didn’t know anything about Facebook advertising, no one did at that time, and I didn’t have a mailing list. I’d dropped a book onto Amazon and no one knew about it.

Sales were so dismal, worse than anything I’d released previously (including West of Hell, which I still can’t give away), that I knew I couldn’t waste the next six months finishing the trilogy. I didn’t want to leave the few people who’d read the book hanging though. While Devoured didn’t end in a cliffhanger, there were unresolved storylines that needed wrapped up.

I condensed the second and third books into one, Consumed. After releasing that, I moved on.

Except the damnedest thing happened – Consumed triggered some kind of algorithm on Amazon. Their system pushed the book. A lot. Sales took off. Because they were pimping Consumed on my behalf, Devoured was pulled out of book hell along with it. Both books were selling at a solid rate.

All of a sudden, I had a viable book series.

A book series that I’d just prematurely wrapped up. I didn’t have a storyline to continue for book 3. On top of that, I’d started a rewrite of Echoes, which I eventually released as Ash. That tanked when it released too, but that’s a story for another time. What fun!

Obviously, I came up with a story later that became Ravaged. The fifth and sixth books in the series will come out over the next few months. But I almost killed the entire thing because Facebook bent me over a barrel and bombed my book release. To be fair, I was the idiot who solely relied on a giant corporation to reach my readers.

So what did I take away from this? Facebook sucks. Books can find new life well after release. Don’t give up on a series until you’ve exhausted all your options. It’s hard to know when to abandon a writing project. Start a goddamn newsletter!

Today, I edited 2 more chapters in Decayed. Story ideas are percolating for book the untitled book 6. Can’t wait to start writing it next week.

See ya tomorrow.

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