Third Anniversary

As of today, it’ll have been almost exactly three years since the release of Fated.  For the last two years, I’ve done a post on or around March 1st looking back in retrospect, and I think I’m going to make it a regular tradition.  So, it’s now been three years since the Alex Verus series was released – how are things going?

Obviously, from the point of view of you guys, the most significant news is the part involving new books.  As far as that goes, 2014-2015 was much like the previous year.  Between March 1st 2014 and March 1st 2015, I released Hidden, finished, edited, and copyedited Veiled, and got most of the way through the as-yet-untitled first draft of Alex Verus #7.  (Which is currently 75% complete, and coming along nicely.  It should be done by early April, if all goes according to plan.)  So one book released, one finished, and another nearly finished.  The main difference between this year and the last has been that I’ve stepped up my production speed slightly.  This time last year, I was only about 30% of the way through Veiled.

But that’s really all just progress reports.  The big question is always: are the books doing well?  And are they doing well enough that there’ll be more of them?

As far as that goes, the real news for the past year has been my sales reports.  I did a post on this last year analysing my sales numbers, and they were good – in fact, very good.  Since then I’ve had another royalty statement which has continued the trend.  If you’re curious about how the advance-and-royalty model works, you can find a post I wrote on it here, but the short version is that I’m now getting a steady amount of income from the back sales of Fated, Cursed, and Taken.  Since I also get paid for the contracts for the new Alex Verus books that I sell to my publishers, this effectively means I’m getting two income streams instead of one.  It’s not enough to make me rich, but it’s enough for me to live on and continue to write full-time.  More importantly from a reader’s perspective, it means that the publishers are making a profit.  Which means that they’re going to be keen on buying more Alex Verus books, which means that I can keep on writing them and selling them, which means that you guys can keep reading them.

This year’s also been the year where I’ve worked out a fairly definite plan for the long-term story arc of the series.  I know what’s going to happen in the rest of Book #7, and I also have pretty clear plans for what’ll happen in Books #8 and #9.  From that point on it gets vague, but I know who the final antagonists are going to be, and I know what the endgame is going to look like.  I’m still guessing around 12ish books for the whole series, though don’t quote me on that.

So, as the year timer ticks around once again, things look good!  The new books are going well, the old books are selling well, and the future of the series looks rosy.  Let’s hope it stays that way!