Thanks To My Readers For A Great Year

With the end of 2013 fast approaching,  I wanted to take a few minutes to thank you, dear reader, for what’s been a really great year, reflect a little on a few things, and make a few pie in the sky prognostications for next year.

To start off, here’s my publishing scorecard for the year:

Forged In Flame
Reaping The Harvest
Special illustrated edition of First Contact
Chinese language edition of First Contact
Season Of The Harvest audiobook
Bitter Harvest audiobook

Now, I can’t really claim to have done all that much work for the audiobooks or the two editions of First Contact that were published, as other folks put in a lot of hours to make those a reality. But they went out the door with my name on them, so I guess I have to claim them!

I also have to confess that I’m a bit disappointed in myself, as I was hoping to have three novels out this year. And before you get worried about the quantity versus quality thing, let me just say that when I actually just sit my butt down and write consistently, as I have been since kicking Reaping The Harvest out the door and starting my latest (still secret) project, I can get a lot done. It all boils down to being disciplined and filtering out the many distractions that crop up while working from home. It’s a tough life, I know.

But that’s my first goal for 2014: getting three books out on the street by writing consistently.

My second goal is to get at least three audiobooks published. While I had a professional narrator do Season Of The Harvest and Reaping The Harvest, I’m afraid you’re probably going to be stuck with me doing the other books. I’m going to make a profit from the audiobooks in the long run, but with the sales at the level they are now, having the other books done professionally is pretty much out of the question. However, I know there’s a market for them, so I’ll keep kicking them out there. The next one I plan to release is The Journal of Avery Moore, mainly because it’s a novella that I can get through fairly fast, and also because I’m curious to see if there’s more of an audiobook fan base amongst horror fans. Regardless, as Mike Wazowski would say in the movie Monsters, Inc., “follow the sultry sound of my voice…”

How about sales? What’s the story with that? Well, dear reader, thanks to you and a ton of other people, I’m very happy to report that total Kindle book downloads will  top 300,000 copies this year, with over 80,000 of them paid sales. My emphasis on Kindle sales is only because Amazon produces stats that are really easy to compile, but since sales from all the other retailers and print copies came to about 20% of my royalties this year (which I believe is a record), I think we can safely add another 15,000 or so paid sales to the pile and a few tens of thousands more free copies.

That’s a whole lotta books! And I want to thank you for your support, because without your patronage I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing: writing to entertain you!

As for what you can look forward to in the coming year, you’ll be seeing more of the In Her Name series, along with some stories that are totally new that I hope you’ll enjoy. Hints? Spoilers? Projected release dates? No way! Well, maybe later…

Finally, if you don’t hear from me between now and then, I hope you have a great New Year!

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