Business Post: 2024 In Review

Another year, another large number of words written. I'm going to try to structure this post to give readers an idea of what happened last year (from my point of view) as well as what might be coming. Lots of things that are happening, slowly; but let's start with the basics.

2017* (published and mostly written) | 334,589

2018* (published) | 445,260

2019* (published) | 403,611

2020* (published) | 429,371

2021 (actual written) | 667,555

2022 (actual written) | 719,439

2023 (actual written) | 687,845

2024 (actual written) | 776,240

That's quite a few words written, nearly a 100,000 (a full book!) more than 2023. It was one of the better years for words written, and there's a few reasons for that. I'll get into that below, but suffice to say; we got a lot of work done - even if it feels like we had fewer releases in some ways.

Again, this does NOT for the most part include words deleted while writing, edited words that are added or taken away (well, sometimes I manage to get edited words in), co-author works and most of the business posts that I have written or any of the writing updates or pretty much anything else.

Words Published

I could call it works published, but I thought I'd mention the various works that were published this year. I'm not going to differentiate between the co-author and my personal projects but attempt to actually place them in timeline.

Works Published:

• The Sundering Blade (A Thousand Li prequel featuring Master Cheng)

• Fool's Bond (SA: Kismet book 2)

• A Thousand Li: the Fourth Stage (book 10)

• Chaotic Aperitifs (Hidden Dishes volume 2)

• Magic Kingdom at War (volumes 1-8 released last year)

• Frigid Relations (a Power, Masks & Capes short story)

• Fool's Last Dance (SA: Kismet book 3) 

• Head of the Class (SA: Liberty book 1)

• A Thousand Li: the Fourth Fall (book 11)

• Climbing the Ranks book 2

That's not including the various omnibuses and collections we put together over the year, which are mostly for marketing purposes and to get new readers in to the various works. So, looking that over; that's a total of 7 novels, 9 novellas and 1 short story published last year.

A lot of work, and it's worth noting something like Climbing the Ranks is 170k words, Head of the Class is in the 150k range, both the ATL are over 110+ words each.

Now, not all of those words were written this year. In fact, because of the way I'm writing; some of this was written the year before or in the first half of 2024. For example, Magic Kingdom at War has been written over a period of 2 years; so even though there's over 250+ words written for the series, it's spread across a few years and held back for publishing now.

It reduces the amount of stress involved, but can also create problems (and we can talk about the rapid release and 'holding' issues in later works).

Conventions - Both Less & More

Funnily enough, in some ways I did more conventions last year (I think at last count I did like 7-9 convention like events) but also, it felt fewer than the year before. Part of that is because unlike in 2023, these conventions were spread out more.

In 2024, I started the year with a now defunct convention in Ireland (the Author Sustainability Con) that let me visit Dublin. Had a great time seeing Ireland and doing the convention, learnt a little here and there. It's a pity the convention went defunct, but understandable (it's a lot of work!).

Then, a few months later, the first Toronto Indie Author Con (www.torontoindieauthorcon.com) which is organised by Starlit Publishing (my publishing company) ran. We had over 120 there, with around 80 or so actual attendees (the rest were staff, speakers and volunteers). This year, we're hoping for more; and thus far, initial sales are going well. That took some time, though luckily I have good staff and great volunteers who help with most of the organising. 

After which, as is usual, things went quiet until the later half of the year. Then, things got busy.

- Glasgow Worldcon in mid-August

- Dragoncon in end August-early Sept

- Word on the Street (Toronto book festival) in mid-Sept

- World Fantasy Con in mid-October in Niagara Falls (USA)

- Can-Con (Ottawa) in early Nov

Now, normally I'd be doing either 20booksto50k Vegas too or NiNC during this Sept-Nov period; but this year, I chose to give both of them a skip since I did them both in 2023. 

However, because we had fewer events and this summer, we did not travel much at all; I managed to keep a rather consistent writing schedule. It could have been a little better (there was 17 days when I wrote 0 words and 56 days I wrote less than 1000). The most number of words written in a day? 5,480. There were only two such >5k word days in the entire year. For me, it's more about consistency than it is about large word counts.

And yes, if you can guess; some of those low word count days are convention days or travel days around conventions (though, I find travel days pretty good quite often because I am forced to do nothing but wait, so I can often sit and write).

Financials

Those who have read my previous year in review know I generally don't speak about financials. Part of that is because by the time I write these posts (end December, early January); a lot of financial numbers like earnings from audiobooks, payments from publishers, etc. haven't arrived.

Also, because I generally don't think it's anyone else's business.

However, I will say that overall; last year was a minor drop in income (around 9% from ebook sales) which was disappointing if not unexpected. The System Apocalypse concluded nearly 3 years ago now. As times goes on, older works see a drop in interest generally speaking, so this decrease is not unexpected at all. While co-author works continue to bring interest and income, it's not to the same extent. 

In addition, we've always been advertising heavy as a business, the intent always to draw in new readers. However, both Facebook and Amazon Advertising Services (AMS) have gotten more expensive to utilize and more competitive, with the ROI on using these services dropping. At the same time, we have not had any luck utilizing TikTok or any of the other advertising options (beyond newsletters); so that's been a little more of a struggle too.

Meanwhile, the 'big' new release; Magic Kingdom at War just has not sold as expected. It's barely caused a ripple, which is why we've mentioned that the series will be concluding after volume 12. There's not enough interest in it to continue writing into the world. It's disappointing but these things happen.

However, in good news? A Thousand Li continues to go gangbusters, with lots of interest from it and amazing sales. The Hidden Dishes series continues to trundle along quietly, doing decent sales for a novella and - most importantly - pushing our bookstore presence and wide distribution. Same with Climbing the Ranks. While not a gargantuan hit, the series sells and continues to sell on a VERY regular basis.

Most of all, the Kickstarter for the First Step did amazingly well, and our continued presence doing Kickstarters is introducing the work to a whole new subset of readers. Can't complain about any of that at all!

Reviving Interest & Covers

While we aren't doing as many translations as previous years (having caught up with the vast majority of translations, which actually is good because the upfront cost of translations are now in the past and we're just generating income from it!); we did have new expenses this year. Most of them to do with set-up for Kickstarters (new artwork, new formatting, samples, etc.) as well as new covers.

We're creating new covers for all the System Apocalypse series, because we've realised that while the original covers we have are iconic, they are no longer 'on trend'. We started the process with our amazing omnibus covers  and saw a decent uptake and increase in sales from them. No surprise, just look at them...

After that, we began recovering all the various other works, with Head of the Class the first to get a 'new' launch cover and with work like the System Apocalypse: Australia series getting brand new, amazing imagery.

This year, we'll be rolling out covers for the main series as well as each of the co-authored series to continue, with the goal of reviving sales of the series a little and interest. Almost always, recovers do benefit the series; though sometimes, it's flogging a dead horse (stares at Leveled Up Love).

Health & Other Personals

So one thing I did notice this year, as we got to the end of the year and I got ill (again!) during December, was that I was feeling a touch burnt out. Now, partly that's the number of words written; but also because of being sick and having a bunch of other business things happening (none of which I can discuss but is exciting, promise!). 

In fact, the end of the year was where everything sort of ran together, including some solutions to long-standing chronic pain issues. I'm not on a good path to recovery, some of which includes going out and doing more martial arts. I'm taking classes in judo and sword fighting and archery again (on and off) and slowly trying to shed some of the extra weight that has piled on due to inactivity. I'm actually feeling better than I have been in years.

We'll see how all this new activity and push for health affects the writing. I'm hoping it'll mean I can focus more and write more, but you never know, eh?

Looking forward to 2025

That handy little graphic showcases the most interesting releases in any month. Yeah, some of that will change (and some weren't even mentioned like Magic Kingdom 11 & 12), but it's a good idea of what we're planning on releasing. I'm working hard on the secret LitRPG isekai work right now, with the timelines on the book more compressed than we've had in years.

I expect we'll be releasing fewer books written by me this year, since works like Climbing the Ranks 3 and the new A Thousand Li spinoff are turning into giant books. CtR 3 is 180k or so, the new spinoff is likely in the 200k range and I expect when I finish writing CtR 4 that'll be in the 150-180k range too. 

The new isekai LitRPG likely is going to be less at around (only) 120k....

Seriously, I miss my short work. I am tempted to go back into writing 40-60k books. It'd be so much simpler...

Other projects that might crop-up:

• I got to write another Eternal Night work to finish up the storyline / events I started in the third novelette

• If I can get the brain power, I want to write 2-3 more shorts for A Thousand Li so that we can put together a proper short story collection for everyone to read / listen to

• I have a short story that is owed to a Dragoncon auction purchaser, that will be worked on once I finish my isekai project. These other projects are just eating my brain, I swear

• I still want to do more Power, Masks & Capes work; I have ideas - just need the time. I might handwrite them and chunk it out in short periods when I have the time and nothing better to do

• There's two other major projects I want to tackle (a romantasy and a scifi fantasy) that keep bubbling up. I'll probably not get to them this year, since we have like 4 major series on-going already.

Otherwise, there might be a few exciting announcements in the first half of next year, we hope. We'll see how that plays out, it's hard to say with some of these things.

And that's it. 2024 in review, all the things that happened, thoughts and all. Feel free to drop questions, or not. :P