February Update (Patreon)

It's that time again guys. Time to give you guys an update of what's going on.

January productivity: 80k words written total. 50k SKB3 (+Edits, for 235k total), 27k BS7 (27k total, more if I decide to keep a scene), and 3k SKB4.

It's one of my most productive months yet! I'm proud that I got so much done, even with needing editing and working on a cover, and even with a break, spending an entire week reading bonded summoner 1-6 to get me in the right mindset for writing it. I wrote 0 words for more than a week I think.

It felt great to go through the books and enjoy them, as it'd been a long time since I thought about our characters and my plans.

Another side note, is that Bonded Summoner Omnibus is going to be for sale soon, releasing February 20th. The audiobook will be 48 hours for only a single credit, which if you sign up to audible, you can get for only $0.99. And, it'll be the same for the ebook. If you have kindle unlimited, the omnibus release is a wonderful time for you to give it a good reread (it directly earns me money, even if you read the books individually). For those that are subscribed for free on Patreon here, $0.99 is a promotional price and may not stay that way!

Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Bonded-Summoner-Omnibus-Fantasy-LitRPG-ebook/dp/B0DVWFPTP1/

Audio: https://www.audible.com/pd/Bonded-Summoner-Omnibus-Books-1-3-Audiobook/B0DVZTTSP5

Once I got a good lead on the Bonded Summoner chapter releases, I'll feel like I can focus on getting Soul Knight Book 4 moving forward more. Swapping between the two books I can probably be quite productive. And my plan is to make sure these next books are more...reasonably sized, allowing me to release a little more rapidly. I really want move towards a 2 month maximum release cycle, and the only way I can accomplish that is if I make the books a little smaller.

Soul Knight Book 2 Audio came out last month at the end of it, and it's done very well with tons of ratings already. I can tell people are eating it up, and that's a wonderful thing.

Soul Knight 3...it worries me, to be honest. It did well enough, but all this time I had been thinking that Soul Knight had outperformed bonded summoner on release, but the sequels...I don't know. After so long, not that many people have continued on to Book 2. To be under 50% ratings and sales, no less, after this long doesn't look good. Book 3 also had fewer preorders, whereas Bonded Summoner always grew. I thought that once I had 3 books, people would hop onto the bandwagon and start reading the series, since now it has the prerequisite number of books - I know SO many folks that say things along the lines of, "I won't touch a series until it has at least three books". Well, now I got three books. Why aren't people reading it? Book 1 barely got any movement in this release.

And that's not all. I've lost about 20% of my (paying) patrons over the past 4 months, and I'm not really sure why. All the surveys that have been filled out say the usual thing--financial situation changed, and many of the folks giving a message that 'they'll be back' and this kind of thing. Even one saying they're taking part in nofap november and so they gotta get out (that one was from october). But I have to wonder, are people liking my books/writing less? Or is this some weird attrition thing where I'm just not finding enough new patrons to make up for the usual loss? I can't know, though I am leaning this way.

It worries me a little, but not a super lot. I do think that new series is the biggest opportunity to grow my fanbase, and it has certainly been a while since I added a new one. A big hit might help all my series longevity, but I do wanna get my current ones closer to striking distance to finish them off before I devote time to a new series. Because I do want to finish them for you guys. I know it sucks to have such an epic series incomplete. At the same time, I also don't want to rush them, giving them a satisfying ending instead.

Anyway, that's my ranting/whining for this month. I'm excited to keep writing Bonded Summoner and Soul Knight, so stay tuned for the usual M/W/F release schedule, so see you guys soon and thanks for supporting me as always!