Well, here we are again! Another book released, another blog post talking about it. We’re closing in on a month since the release of Volume 3, so I figured now would be a good time to talk about the reception to the book, lessons learned, and future plans. So, where should we start? How about…
The INSANE reception Volume 3 got! Even now, after checking the numbers and reviews multiple times per day since release (probably not the most healthy habit, admittedly), I still have a hard time believing the amount of reviews and kind words everybody has left. As of this very afternoon, Volume 3 has now surpassed Volume 2 for number of total reviews (136 for V3, 133 for V2). That’s crazy to me!
I think I’ve been operating under a false assumption until now in regards to how one gathers readers on Amazon. To me, it always made sense that your first book would be your most popular in terms of raw numbers, and then each successive volume would have less and less support as the series went on (due to people forgetting about it or deciding it wasn’t for them). But that assumption was based on the idea that my first book had sort of reached its peak audience, and had stopped gathering followers. Not, so apparently!
In the time between Volume 2’s release and Volume 3’s release, I had gained a bunch of new followers, and my preorder campaign sold about twice as many books this time around (in less time, too!). At this point, sales have slowed down a little bit for Volume 3, but Volume 1 is actually selling better than it has in months! I’m glad to see people are discovering the series for the first time, and it’s perfect timing; there’s more content for them than ever before! I’m attributing it to a couple things; obviously, the release of Volume 3 has increased interest in the series as a whole, but with Volume 1 being in Prime Reading and being a Kindle book deal for a month, I’m sure that caught a lot of people’s attentions as well! I hope I can continue to offer deals like this for all the books in the series in the future.
Now, where do we go from here? The next official release you’ll see from me will be on September 28th of this year when the audiobook for Volume 3 comes out! I’m pleased to say that the same narrator from the first two volumes, Alex Knox, will be returning once again. I can’t wait to hear it for myself, and for all of you audio-only consumers to get Volume 3!
Beyond that, Volume 4 is always expanding, but I get the feeling it’ll be a while before it’s finished. My massive increase in word count for Volume 3 seems to be my current style, and Volume 4 will be at least that long, if not longer. I passed 68,000 words today in the rough draft, which coincided with the start of Chapter 9. I’m getting the feeling that we’re right around 33% of the way through the narrative for this next book, so a target of 200K words seems reasonable for now. As always, I’m letting things come naturally as I write, so my end goal might shift drastically by the time I actually reach it. My self-imposed release schedule says I should get the book released sometime in February 2022, but that will definitely be adjusted as time goes on. As always, those updates will always show up right here on my website, so stay tuned!
Between now and then, I’m hoping to get a few more art pieces commissioned that I’ll be able to share with all of you! There’s one final piece I wanted to get done before the release of Volume 3 (which coincides with an exciting action set piece from said volume), but it wasn’t in the cards to get it finished in time. When it’s done, I’ll definitely post it here! I’m going to be reorganizing the entire art page on my website at some point in the near future, both to look a bit neater and to give me the option to hide any sort of spoilers. For those of you who read Volume 3, you’ll know that the additional insert artwork would be pretty big spoilers if you saw them without context, and I don’t want to spoil anything for new readers! Website formatting is certainly not my forte (as you can probably tell by looking at all of these lovely black and white pages), but I’ll figure it out!
I think that’s enough rambling for one post. I’d like to give a final, massive thank you to everyone who has supported the series so far. I was extremely proud of Volume 3, and have loved to see all the feedback on it. Based on the ratings I’ve seen, most people seem to be enjoying it, which is great! I’ll do my best to keep up that quality in Volume 4 and beyond. Until that point, though, stay safe out there, and as always, thanks for reading!
~Adam
