Today I just got yet another short story accepted for publication, the third one in as many months.
This has come after a productive day at work and I am wondering that I might refocus my writing for a while. As proud as I am of Industry & Intrigue, the sales have been dissapointingly low.
My first two books did far, far better in their early months, getting into the hundreds while Industry & Intrigue seems to have had only a few purchases and then petered off into nothingness.
I'm somewhat baffled by this, I out a much greater deal of work into this book and far more editing, beta reading, professional artwork and yet it's sales are miniscule in comparison to the very ameteur books I put out at the start of 2013.
The only explanations I can figure on is it comes down to genre and markets. My first two books were alternate history a genre that only has a handful of 'big-name' authors and thus the readers are more willing to accept self-published work, not to mention that there is a huge online alternate history community that has been around for many years and likely found it easy to make the jump to ebooks.
Industry & Intrigue however, is competing in the fantasy genre. This puts it up against any number of big-name authors, the larger amount of books available, and also they fact that fantasy is a more traditional genre and many of those readers may not have yet made the jump to ebooks, staying with the print. Not that there's anything wrong with that, print books will always have a place. (I only recently caved to the e-reader tide and ordered my Kindle this week).
So for the foreseable future I will focus on more short stories and the few alternate history novels I have planned. I would love to get back to The Saga of Industrial Fantasy, I have so many cool story lines planned for it, but with near to no-one reading it, it feels a little pointless at the moment.
This has come after a productive day at work and I am wondering that I might refocus my writing for a while. As proud as I am of Industry & Intrigue, the sales have been dissapointingly low.
My first two books did far, far better in their early months, getting into the hundreds while Industry & Intrigue seems to have had only a few purchases and then petered off into nothingness.
I'm somewhat baffled by this, I out a much greater deal of work into this book and far more editing, beta reading, professional artwork and yet it's sales are miniscule in comparison to the very ameteur books I put out at the start of 2013.
The only explanations I can figure on is it comes down to genre and markets. My first two books were alternate history a genre that only has a handful of 'big-name' authors and thus the readers are more willing to accept self-published work, not to mention that there is a huge online alternate history community that has been around for many years and likely found it easy to make the jump to ebooks.
Industry & Intrigue however, is competing in the fantasy genre. This puts it up against any number of big-name authors, the larger amount of books available, and also they fact that fantasy is a more traditional genre and many of those readers may not have yet made the jump to ebooks, staying with the print. Not that there's anything wrong with that, print books will always have a place. (I only recently caved to the e-reader tide and ordered my Kindle this week).
So for the foreseable future I will focus on more short stories and the few alternate history novels I have planned. I would love to get back to The Saga of Industrial Fantasy, I have so many cool story lines planned for it, but with near to no-one reading it, it feels a little pointless at the moment.