50,000 Page Views

The technology on which I started writing my first book

I started writing this blog a little over three years ago as a way to document my experience in publishing a novel. Since then the publishing industry has changed dramatically in many unexpected ways, and so has this blog.



Originally I wrote a lot about how to set up your own publishing company in order to utilize the new Print On Demand model to produce print editions via Ingram's Lightning Source division, which enabled independent author-publishers to distribute to the two primary online retailers, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. At the time Amazon had only just released the first Kindle device, and while ebooks began to sell, print was still the only way to go. POD appeared to be the saving grace for independents, allowing them to produce professional quality books with little up front cost, and get them onto Amazon. As yet there were few tools available on Amazon to tweak your product page or understand your sales, and less on other sites, meaning that to a great degree self-pubbed authors were flying blind. There was no Smashwords, Barnes & Noble had yet to begin its PubIt program, and the iPad was just a dream in Apple's eye.



In October of 2008 The Saga of Beowulf was released via my fledgling publishing company Fantasy Castle Books, and that's when this blog began in earnest. But there was marketing to do if my novel was ever to be read, and so I spent a year discussing (and experimenting with) how to get your book in front of readers and reviewers, do blog tours and online interviews, and promote your work to the world at large. I built a website and starting adding content. I made promo videos, bookmarks, reference materials and a press kit. I posted sample chapters and audio excerpts, as well as my full screenplay on which the book was based. My book received two awards and sold steadily, if not dramatically. Facebook was only just taking over the reins of social network dominance from MySpace, and Twitter was as yet all but unknown to most. Smart phones had only recently come into their own.



Two years ago I started work on my next project, which was to be an original story I would post here on this blog as each writing session was done, which would allow for ongoing reader feedback during the writing process. But that took a sudden left turn when I was introduced to 3D digital art and decided to add full color illustrations to the new book. I had initially intended to add a lot of pen and ink art to that first book, but the sheer size and scope of the story ultimately prevented it: at 640 pages there just wasn't any room for pictures. But with this next project I would conceive it as a visual project from the start. And so I set off on another journey, learning 3D rendering with DAZ and Poser, and the book turned into something altogether more complex than I had planned. And thus another year went by.



Meanwhile, ebooks began to take over the market with a vengeance, altering the landscape of the publishing industry in near apocalyptic ways, with the shifting sands absorbing Borders and giving rise to the tablet market. Amazon has since become the go-to destination for independent authors, who now see ebooks as their savior, and the Kindle its figurehead via Kindle Direct Publishing. During the past year or so this blog has become a source for news and statistics on the digital "revolution," and my posts increasingly given to analyzing and evaluating the rapidly shifting terrain of both independent and traditional publishing. My particular focus has been on ways of reproducing illustrated books and graphic novels in the new e-media that has quickly flourished, since it was now certain that my new illustrated graphic novel project, The Ring Saga, would need to find a home on these new devices.



During the course of the past year I have posted - as I had originally planned to do - the pages of my latest work as they have progressed, both here and on my publisher website, with copious notes and additional images detailing my creative process. Since its inception this new project has consumed virtually every waking moment of my life that was not allotted to my day job, which still pays the vast majority of my bills. Surprisingly, just as this blog's readership has continued to climb, the sales of my first book have steadily increased as well, to the point where it brings in more income now than when I was heavily promoting it two to three years ago. This is almost entirely due to the increase in ebook sales, which now make up roughly 90% of my revenue.



It took over two years for this blog to hit 10,000 page views, which occurred December 29th last year. It's taken just under one year to add another 40,000 to that figure to quintuple my daily readership. I can only hope that means that what I write inspires and informs other authors, stimulates readers of epic and historical fantasy fiction, and instills an independent spirit into the creative writers and artists of tomorrow. Where this blog will go in the next three years is just as unknown as it was three years ago, but wherever that is, it's bound to be an adventure.



So thanks for reading, and stay tuned.





The technology on which I work now