Business Post - Adventures on Brad 7-9; On Holding Back Work
Added 2022-02-16 16:00:01 +0000 UTCSo recently, I released the final three books of the Adventures on Brad in 3 week, rapid release fashion. Later on, I'll do a bunch of posts showing sales, readthrough rates, etc. It's actually fascinating since I can see the difference when you've got stuff like my German translations and my English work to compare together.
But I want to give AoB 9 (A Royal Ending) time to sell a little more before I write anything about the success (or lack of it) of finishing a series and rapid release patterns and all that jazz.
For now, I wanted to talk about the process of writing and holding back work and the reasoning behind it.
Finishing Early
Book 7 finished quite early on in 2021, with the work ready to go relatively soon after the start of the year. By the time I had book 9 done, it was middle of the year I believe, which left a ton of time to get the book released.
However, one of the reasons I decided to hold off on releasing book 7 was because I wanted to test the rapid release strategy. Since I had tight deadlines throughout the year for the rest of my works, I was not certain I could finish book 9 in time to really settle for a mid-year release.
So I planned for the end of the year for everything. I'd also planned to have the audiobooks done at the same time, but due to some miscommunication, it got delayed.
The Advantages of Holding Back
However, writing and holding the books back did leave me with a few major benefits.
The first and biggest - I could get the translations done and ready so that we could simultaneously release English and German editions. That was rather cool to see happening and one of the things I loved seeing done.
Hopefully, in the future, I'll be able to do the same with things like A Thousand Li and the like, where I finish the book early and then simultaneous release into German. I probably won't do that for new series though, due to the cost and success factor being unknown.
It also meant we had a ton of time to get things like the paperback ready for the works and, if we had done this right, we could have gotten audiobooks ready too. Sadly, that didn't happen, but something I'm hoping will be true in the future for things like ATL.
Another major benefit though was the lack of worry about editing and proofing. I could, literally, send it off to the editor and not worry about when they got it done and when it got back to me. I had all the time in the world to edit and finish the work, since I was months ahead.
Disadvantages of Holding Books Back
As much of a benefit there is in production schedules, it can also mean things can slip your mind because you keep thinking you have a ton of time. In this case, the audiobooks which didn't get done for simultaneous release.
Boo!
On top of that, you also have the negative of opportunity cost of sales that could have been made on previous books if you released earlier. This, hopefully, is offset by the rapid release schedule and a higher readthrough rate, but I don't have the numbers yet to know if that's true.
Lastly, and this is more a problem on my end - but it also makes my release schedule super crowded. Between Nov - February, we have released (in English only!) 6 books. That's a lot of books and a lot of work in a short time frame doing promotions, which can mean that your audience is a little promotion weary.
At the same time, while I have a release on March 1, I have nothing now scheduled for April (well, a tiny release) and no new work in May. Because working with co-authors makes my release schedule a little hectic at times and unknown, it's hard to create a 'proper' schedule, meaning that sometimes, things get tossed aside or pushed back.
Or you just have a lot of work released all at once.
Final Thoughts
I do like having work held back to some extent just because it makes the production and writing schedule a little easier on me. While the promotional / marketing schedule gets messed up, that is easier to manage than multiple suppliers (narrators, editors, cover design).
It's why I'm probably going to start getting more work done ahead of time and released on Patreon first by a long, long shot and then only publicly 6 months or so later. However, I have to build up that backlog which is going to mean fewer releases in the short-term in 2022.
Comments
Heh. Unfortunately, that's a coding problem we don't have access to. The way wordpress is built, it doesn't really allow us to lock individual posts under a single 'lock' area. As I said, we'll go poking at the backend and TOS. That might have changed and it is a very low risk issue - but really, it is a risk which is why I've been careful about it thus far.
Tao Wong
2022-02-18 22:55:20 +0000 UTCWeel, that is a very concerning aspect I didn't know existed. But maybe I could suggest a compromise? The annoying part is not copy-pasting the password once, its that for each chapter you want to read you have to do it again and again. If I am 10 chapters behind, its 10 paswords, and it interrups the reading flow in a most annoynig way. If, once we acessed your site to read a chapter, with that chapter's password, we could freely read all other chapters, with no more passwords needed for that reading session, it would work just as fine, and your IP would be safely housed in your own site.
Andre A
2022-02-17 19:39:02 +0000 UTCThe main reason we switched over to the password paste method was due to certain aspects of Patreon's TOS that was concerning about copyright overreach. I've not checked their recent TOS to see if they improved it, but while it's unlikely they'd steal IP.... it always is a concern. And one that, while I might have fewe patrons means that my work that I publish might not be taken wily nily.
Tao Wong
2022-02-17 13:53:45 +0000 UTCI totally agree with these ideas. Life is hard enough, tight deadlines only make things harder. But please, please, consider releasing on Patreon directly, as the more followed authors there do (like Shirtaloon). It would make it much, much easier for readers to read your work. I think your books (SA and ATL specially) light-years better than most others, and I do believe you could have a much stronger Patreon crowd by not making readers copy-paste long passwords for EACH chapter. It's too much friction, who knows how many followers you could have otherwise on Patreon. And the longer the time difference between the Patreon release schedule and Amazon's, the more Patreon followers you tend to get.
Andre A
2022-02-17 03:43:51 +0000 UTC
