Summer 2020 Report

Warning: most of this post involves "inside baseball" commentary on publishing and indie publishing. And none of it deals with politics or plagues or current events.

As we enter the last quarter of 2020 (may this year soon be on our rearview mirror), I figured I'd share on the state of things at Casa del Geek:

My sixteenth novel came ou June 25th and has been a success, with better sales and KU borrows than I've had for a book since August 2017, when the fifth book of the Warp Marine series came out. I'm having a lot of fun writing in the LitRPG genre, and people seem to be enjoying it.

The sequel (and my seventeenth novel) is finished and will be released on August 5th; I put it in preorder, resulting already in nearly half the sales of the first book so far. The third book is in development and availble on preorder as well, with a release date of September 21st:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08F4G7HWC

There is a chance I might have twenty novels written and released by the end of the year, or by early 2021 at the latest. Besides sequels to The Eternal Journey, I'm working on a spinoff series and, for later in 2021, a mil-sf series in a new setting.

In 2013, I decided to go indie rather than throwing myself on the mercy of the slush pile readers at literary agencies (since most publishers no longer accept unagented submissions). In the ensuing six years and change, I've released sixteen novels, and three short story collections. If I'd gone the other route, I would be (at best) on my third or fourth release, and my income would be unlikely total more than a fifth of what I've earned so far.

If you're willing to do the work, indie is the way to go.

As always, I am incredibly grateful to all my readers, old and new, who made this possible.