Hello everyone! We are almost exactly one month post release for Restart Again: Volume 5, so it seems like as good a time as any to hop into blog mode and give you all an update on how things went, how things are going, and how things might go in the future! I’m very much a creature of habit, and the fact that I wrote a very similar post to this when Volume 4 came out is sort of guiding me in terms of the content and formatting you’ll find below, but things are actually quite different now than they were back in the olden days of 2022. How different, you may ask? Let’s talk about it!
THE PUBLISHING PROCESS
My experience publishing Volume 5 has been vastly different from Volume 4 on multiple fronts. To start, I’m happy to say that many of the problems I previously encountered with Amazon’s digital publishing system were nowhere to be seen this time around! I think that might have something to do with my endeavor to align all of my metadata a few years ago (you can find that in-depth and entirely boring discussion in my Volume 4 reflections post if you are so inclined!). The eBook and paperback versions all properly link to one another, the “Read Sample” function actually works for Kindle versions, emails went out to my Amazon author page followers as they were supposed to, and I was even able to schedule the release of the paperback for a specific time and date to make sure that the release lined up for both products, which was quite a nice surprise! The one thing I’m still slightly nervous about on Amazon’s end is the page count; When Volume 4 released, the eBook version displayed a higher page count than the paperback, and I attributed that to the email I later received saying that my KDP page views had been “manipulated” and as such they were “taking back a bunch of the money I earned”. Volume 5 is similarly displaying a high page count on the Kindle side of things (722 versus the physical count of 531), but I have yet to see any emails about my profits being cut, so I suppose we’ll wait and see on that front!
Another aspect of the publishing process that has changed in the past two years is the Amazon category feature. Previously, it was a bit of a mystery how your specific categories got assigned; you entered up to 7 keywords for your title, and then Amazon would just look at who was buying it, what their similar purchases were, and how that related to your keywords, and then they’d just randomly assign you some categories to trend in. The secret life hack back in those days was that you could directly email Amazon’s support team and ask them to specifically add your book to whatever categories you wanted, and you could trend in up to 10 at one time. Nowadays, you’re able to select them yourself during the publishing process, which is a huge step up! This came with the caveat of having to set an age range for your titles, which now places all of my books in the “Teen & Young Adult” categories, and let me tell you: That’s some stiff competition! I never managed to steal the #1 New Release slot for my genre this time around (I was stuck at #2 for 2 weeks straight!) but I did manage to capture a few notable milestones. Volume 5 was momentarily trending as a bestseller right next to “Eragon” by Christopher Paolini, who is one of my biggest modern influences as a writer, which was quite an exciting achievement. Volume 5 has since fallen to #10 in the New Releases, and is currently sitting right next to “The Reckoning of Roku”, one of the extended universe Avatar: The Last Airbender novels, which is quite a compliment as well!
All of that fantastic trending information is entirely thanks to you, the readers! The fact that I was able to disappear for basically 2 whole years and return to such excellent readership is no small feat, and I’m so grateful that you all stuck with me! Volume 5 is currently sitting at 31 reviews on Amazon, with an average rating of 4.3, which falls comfortably in the middle of my expected range for the previous entries in the series. As is basically tradition at this point, I received a 1-Star review as my first rating; I’m not sure what I’ve done to create such a dedicated following from my detractors, but at least it shows people are willing to stick around! Fortunately, I’ve received many kind words since then, both in Amazon reviews and on other forums like Royal Road and Twitter. I’m hear that you enjoyed Volume 5, and I hope you’ll stick with me into the future! If you’ve read the book, but have yet to leave a review on the Amazon page, I would love to read your feedback, for good or for ill! Leaving a review is the easiest/fastest/free-est way of supporting the series, and I read all of them! Why not click HERE and go do that now, hmmm?
Two final points on the publishing process. First: I once stated here on this blog that I intended to keep the price of my eBooks at or below 5 dollars, so I figure I should address the fact that both Volume 4 and Volume 5 are now $5.99. I’ve done my best to scale the price of my books for the content that you’re getting: All of my physical editions are priced at the absolute bare minimum Amazon allows me to within their expanded distribution network (and then rounded up to the nearest 0.99 mark, because that looks better). The eBooks have increased in price as the page counts have increased, but when I set my arbitrary 5 dollar limit, I had no idea I’d be publishing books that were 225,000+ words. I still think $5.99 is a pretty cheap price point for the amount of content you’re getting, and if Volume 6 ends up being shorter than 4&5, the price will go back down.
Secondly, Volume 5 has no hardcover option! I was fortunate enough to be enrolled in Amazon’s beta program for publishing hardcovers, and I’ve always enjoyed offering that option for the five people out there who have consistently purchased them. However, that format has a page count limit far lower than paperbacks, and Volume 5 is VERY close to the upper maximum. As such, I think I should probably reevaluate how I format my hardcovers in general, and I have no plans to offer Volume 5 in hardcover until I’ve delved into other options.
I doubt either of these last two points were at the forefront of anybody’s mind, but out of all of my blog posts, this one seemed like the right place to bring them up! Consider yourselves thoroughly informed!
LESSONS ON BURNOUT AND HOW TO AVOID IT
I do my best to learn my lessons well, and I learned a very valuable one back in late spring of 2022. Burnout caught up with me in a big way soon after the release of Volume 4, and I ended up taking over a month off from anything writing-related in an effort to rest and recover my writing spirit. Fortunately, that rest was exactly what I needed, and I returned to my draft in late May with a renewed passion that carries on to this very day.
With that being said, I’ve tried to codify that lesson into my process, and I purposely have not started writing Volume 6 as of yet. Now, that statement might be slightly misleading: Though I haven’t started writing the prose of Volume 6, there has been a lot of thought put into it already, and I have quite an extensive outline prepped for when writing begins in earnest. Like I’ve said before, the finale of Volume 5 has been planned since the earliest days of Restart Again, and as such, I’ve had years to think about what’s going to happen in Volume 6.
However, this sabbatical has not been spent entirely idle! I’ve been working hard on two separate fronts over the past month: Reseach and Practice. Though I imagine most of you who read these blogs are caught up on the series, I’m still going to avoid directly spoiling any events from Volume 5 on the off-chance you’re solely interested in my blog ramblings. To that end, I will say simply this: Those of you who are caught up understand that Volume 6 has some VERY fertile ground to cover for new ideas, and I’m taking that prospect very seriously in my planning! As such, I’ve been doing a lot of research on other titles and media properties that share similarities with said fertile ground, both as a means of finding inspiration and to ensure that none of my already established ideas are actually just ripping off something I saw in related story/setting types. It’s been a fun endeavor, and it’s also been fruitful for inspiration!
Now, on to Practice! One of the biggest issues plaguing me in my writing process is my writing speed. There’s a lot of things that contribute to my slowness, and in an effort to avoid another 2 year wait for the next book, I’m trying to work on some of those issues through practice! As such, I’ve taken on a little side project. To give you a little background, the J-Novel Club is currently running a Light Novel contest, for which the grand prize is a potential manga adaptation by Kadokawa. It was announced in August of last year, with a deadline of January 31, 2024. When I saw the post, I immediately had an idea which I thought was a fantastic fit for the contest, but I was also in full grind mode for finishing Volume 5, so I simply jotted the idea down in a Google Doc and carried on with my day. Since the release of Volume 5, I’ve been using that idea as a framework to practice some new writing techniques, and so far, it seems to be working out pretty well! I’ve written nearly 20,000 words on the draft in less than a month, which is more than double my average writing speed for Volume 5. I’ll probably continue working on the draft until about mid-May, at which point I will officially switch over to writing the first draft for Volume 6. If J-Novel Club decides to run this contest again at the end of the year, I’ll probably hop back into this practice draft and finish the idea off. Otherwise, I’ll probably try to poke at it now and then on the backburner, commission a few pieces of art for it, and eventually publish it as a standalone light novel project. I suppose we’ll see what the future holds!
SOME QUICK ANNOUNCEMENTS, A SECOND TIME
I’ll keep this section brief, but in case anybody missed my quick blog post updates earlier this month, I have two exciting bits of news! Firstly, an audiobook adaptation for Volume 5 has, as of last week, entered production! I don’t have a release date for it yet, but assuming it follows the production timeline for the previous adaptations, it will most likely be finished at the end of the year. I have also pre-emptively signed the contract for an audiobook of Volume 6, which means production on that adaptation will begin immediately after the book’s publication. Neat!
Secondly, my Patreon page went live on the same day as Volume 5’s publication! If you’ve been eagerly awaiting a way to support the Restart Again universe beyond the already very generous methods of simply purchasing and reading the books, that’s the place to do it! All of my draft chapters will be going up there the instant they’re finished (as soon as work on Volume 6 begins), and I’ll also preview any artwork I have commissioned there before it’s released (within reason, I won’t be spoiling my own stories through art!). I don’t have a consistent schedule set up for content releases on there, but if you want some behind the scenes stuff and early access to my content, go check it out HERE!
TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ, OH WELL
When I wrote my Volume 4 recap in 2022, I was kind enough to include a TL:DR at the end to sum up my insane ramblings. I am no longer so kind. If you’ve stuck with me for this long, I think you’re used to my tendency to yap, and a summary would really only amount to “Volume 5’s release went well, thank you, audiobook production has started, progress on Volume 6 will start soon, check my Patreon for early access!”. And how useful would that be?
For now, I’m still basking in the satisfaction of finally publishing Volume 5, and I’m pretty happy with that. Work will start on Volume 6 within the next month or so, so you can expect to see an update here when that officially begins. After that, you’ll probably see less blog posts in the coming months; the beginning of a new novel usually comes with less fun announcements apart from “Wrote another chapter, woo!”, but I’ll certainly stop in to blog at you all now and again. Until then, stay safe out there, and as always, thanks for reading!
~Adam
