Release schedule

[Wordmaker]

This topic came up in another thread.

I suggested that writing/releasing one book a year is an acceptable release schedule, and Deposed King added that this would be true only if you were with a traditional publisher, writing as a part-time job, or just trying to see if you're any good.

There aren't many online sources that present the merits and flaws of different release schedule options, so I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread discussing it. I think any writer, no matter how experienced, can benefit from finding out what other writers and readers prefer when it comes to how often new books in a series (or separate series' by the same author) should come out.

[The Deposed King]

This topic came up in another thread.

I suggested that writing/releasing one book a year is an acceptable release schedule, and Deposed King added that this would be true only if you were with a traditional publisher, writing as a part-time job, or just trying to see if you're any good.

There aren't many online sources that present the merits and flaws of different release schedule options, so I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread discussing it. I think any writer, no matter how experienced, can benefit from finding out what other writers and readers prefer when it comes to how often new books in a series (or separate series' by the same author) should come out.

My experience as an Amazon indie guy.  Is that my first book took 2.5 months to start taking off.  First two weeks I sold 2-4 and after that I was in the dead zone of 1 sale a day, give or take.  July I started doubling my sales every week.  By august I was smoking hot and by september I was in the sharp decline.  (top sales for who was 50 per day at the peak)

Gambit came out in september and took off like a light.  But by november sales had slacked into single digits.  By december I was doing 4 or less.  Jan-april I wasat 1.5 per day for Who and 2 per day for Gamit with it clearly slowing even further.  (top sales per day was high 60's per at the peak)

Lady (a novella came out april 15th) and it started out maybe peak of 20's and been drifting 4-8 ever since. Also got online and spread the word about book three and then lady

Tribulation came out (april 23) and everything picked up.  But most of my sales came in a 6 week period.  Peak of 120+ and held steady at 80-100 for weeks.  Took less than a week before sales were up over 60 per day and then it jumped

By the time Tribulation dropped down to about 40 sales per day Admiral's Trial came out Jun 2nd promptly shot right up almost as high as Tribulation.  Its now July 10 and as of last week Tribulation has fallen to about teens to 20 per day and is holding and Trial which was in the forties last week is now down to teens to twenties sales wise.

While who and gambit were doing high single digits to low teens ever since two weeks after Trib and since Trial came back out held steady at that until the new covers.  Where who jumped to low twenties to high teens with Gambit about 2/3rds to 3/4th's of Who.  As of now Who is back down to low teens and Gambit a couple less at high single digits.

You're sales fall off with time and I don't just mean your peak sales.  You get a reader base and it floods in.  I got 1500 sales per month easy on Tribulation and for Trial the same.  But after that first 1500 things for me slowed down on the peaks as everyone who was waiting purchased.  But being high on the amazon charts for space opera, adventure, space fleets, whatever got me lots of looks on Trib and Trial and old readers picked it up as soon as they heard, this linked into the 'also bought' sales for who, gambit and lady and after about 2-3 weeks started linking them in.  And bumped up their sales.

But when you fall off the charts, your back list falls off too and you slowly spiral down.  I took six months off between publishing Gambit and publishing Tribulation.  I fell down to low single digits after 3 months.  That's not enough to live on.  I was bringing home maybe 150-300 bucks a month off the two.

So to my mind if you've got a big backlist of 20-30 books you can live off of 1-2 sales per day and write a new book every six months or whatever.  1.5 sales per day x 20 books is 30 sales per day (at take home of 2 bucks off a 2.99 book) and you've got 60 dollars per day before taxes. 60 bucks per day time 30 days in a month = 1800 take home before taxes.  Now if you're selling 30 books at 1.5 per day x $2.00/book x 30 days = $2700.00 per month before taxes.  Now you can flog the dog at 30 book backlist and 'probably' make a life writing one book a year it wouldn't even have to be in any of the same series for buy through interest like I have on my Admiral Books.

But if you hit back in every 3-4 months on a series like I have, you not only get the about 3-6k of one time 'spike' sales that you get from all your former readers 'buying through' but you keep your backlist of 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 books, as you get going, fresh and up there in the mid single digits.  If you could keep say 5 sales per day on each back list book instead of 1.5.  4 of your back listed books would = 20 sales per day without missing a beat if you kept it all fresh.  And to me that's the same as flogging the dog with a back list of 12 or 13 book backlist.

Now I'm not the worst author out there.  But I'm certainly not the best.  I have trouble breaking the amazon 1000k ranking but I see guys out there doing 200-600k amazon rank easy.  They've got to be selling 2-4 times what I do on my spikes easy.  Turning my 6k six week spike sales into 12-24k easy.  Some I'm sure who get down into the 200 amazon ranking with books at 3.99 or better possibly even more.

So if you're the next david weber or jim buther or the guy who wrote poorman's fight.  Maybe you can afford to parlay your home run into a 1 book a year success.  But if you're just a stable house guy or a writer like me, I still think you can still win, its just a numbers game.

So I guess I've just added another catagory to Wordmaker's list of ways to be a successful 1 book a year guy.  But I would point out David weber writes two books a year, Jim butcher 1.5?

Anyways I'm eager for everyone else's thoughts.



The Deposed King

[Wordmaker]

Those are some compelling stats, I've got to admit. I wish I could make the move to writing full-time, but it's just too risky at the moment.

My eventual goal is to have 4 books coming out each year. Though I would probably try to stack those so each release is for a different series, or at least keep a minimum of 6 months between titles in a single series.

One thing which can be a factor (and certainly has been for my series) is anticipation. People like to look forward to new releases, and if you can wrangle that anticipation, you can build a good following. Releasing so much of one series in such a short space of time isn't necessarily the most reliable way of doing that.

Imagine if Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema had waited until the Lord of the Rings movies had all been finished, then released them all the same time, or within a month of each other? Would they have had the same cultural and financial impact? Or was part of their success dependent on the anticipation and momentum that build up between the movies?

When you're writing alongside a day job or other time-soaking responsibilities, you might be much better off delaying releases. If I'd held off, waited until all my books were written, and released on a 4-month schedule, my trilogy would be over already and I'd have to have a whole new series ready to go, which I wouldn't have time to complete in order to stick to that schedule.

With a yearly release schedule, and marketing tools such as regular blog & social media updates, I can keep myself steadily in the minds of my readers and give word of mouth time to spread. And roughly 6 months of the year I can keep my followers focused on a single book.

I do make less money from this method, but I am building up a regular readership over time, and means I don't have a sudden burst of releases followed by a year or more of getting the next series ready.

There's also the fact that, had it not been for the time needed to wait and see how one book does before putting effort into another, my series would be markedly different than it is now. It was my submissions editor who, before offering me a contract on my second book, asked me to do a re-write and combine ideas for my second book with my third. This led to me changing the series plan from 6 books to a trilogy, and helped me get to the core of the story faster. In hindsight, I think the series as a whole would have been much weaker if I hadn't had that advice. And because it took me three years to get from starting Locked Within to its release, if I'd worked on a faster schedule, I would have missed that advice and opportunity to improve the series.

[Anei]

I think that Deposed King has some good points, as an indie author I imagine that it would be hard to gain traction if there was too much time between releases in a series. On the other hand, established authors often produce more than one book a year, for instance Janet Evanovich and James Patterson both seem to drop books every two to three months. Then again, they're co-writing a lot (btw, anyone have any opinion of those situations? co-writing with a big name? If there's already a thread, tell me.), so those release dates are much easier to hit. But, at the same time, a lot of that work seems kind of insubstantial. There's a used book store that I like to go to nearby, and they've constantly got entire bookcases full of hardcover copies of the last several releases from each of these authors (and more, of course), but very few from authors like Jim Butcher, and I can almost never find any Douglas Adams. I that more indicative of over-saturation, or just the nature of their readers?

I guess, imo, it comes down to what it is you're looking for. If it's a question of whether or not you can afford to support yourself, the more the better if you can keep the quality of your writing up. But if it's a question of the satisfaction of building a career, or just the "love of the game", as it were, I guess it should take however long it takes to write what you and your work want.

[Wordmaker]

That's interesting about the used bookstore.

I think one of my biggest fears about having such a fast release schedule would be quality control. And worse, the fear that potential readers might assume my books were poor quality based on such a release schedule.

[slrogers]

I think I remember Steven King having said that if it takes more than 5 years, you're just lollygagging.
Brandon Sanderson sais that it takes him about a year to put out his epic fantacies, but suggests a shorter timeframe for shorter books.

Personally for me, only being able to write part time, and still having so much to learn, it seems like yearly is still ambitious.

But I agree with Anei that probably for each person it will be different. Some might like putting in a lot of study in advance, kind of like a Dan Brown. And some might just want to be done with the book and move on to the next idea as quick as possible, like an Issac Asiomv (when you have so many ideas for books, you might never get them out if you take too long). Or there might be a whole list of other factors that might drive shorter or longer limelines.

[Wordmaker]

I believe that, at the moment with my current writing schedule, I could complete two books a year with little difficulty. I aim to increase that to four a year, but that will absolutely require a combination of self-publishing and traditional publishing.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I'm not sure I can see a way of combining a full-time day job with the essentials of the rest of my life (eating, sleeping, and enough downtime of various sorts to stay sane) that would support writing more than one novel a year on an ongoing basis; for a year or two just maybe, if I was fairly sure of nothing on the scale of a change of dayjob hitting in that timespan.

[slrogers]

I believe that, at the moment with my current writing schedule, I could complete two books a year with little difficulty. I aim to increase that to four a year, but that will absolutely require a combination of self-publishing and traditional publishing.

Awesome. I would love to be able to spend that much time writing.