Friday, August 12, 2022

Sadly Neglected Forever

Between 2009 and 2018, I was on a mad tear, writing books and short stories like a man with nothing better to do. I churned out a whole bunch of novels, some of which were published by indie publishers and others self-published. I put out seventeen novels in total, but only a few of them received any real marketing or attention.

How many copies of my books did people ultimately acquire? When factoring in Amazon and other online booksellers, indie bookstores, school libraries, personal sales, and social media giveaways, ultimately slightly less than 10,000 copies. However, most of those were from just a handful of my books, namely: Mary of the Aether, Children of the Mechanism, Shadows of Tockland, The Vale of Ghostsand Garden of Dust and Thorns

In retrospect, I wrote too many books. I should have written fewer books and put more of my effort toward marketing them. 

Anyway, in 2017, I began a ghostwriting career, which has proved lucrative and took all of my focus off my own novels. Over the last few years, I've done a lot of writing for other people, including some pseudonymous fiction writing for a UK publisher. Ironically, some of the novels I've written under a pen name have sold very well, much better than my own books.

In recent months, I've begun digging up my own novels, when I can find the time, and trying to reread them with an eye toward making something meaningful out of them. Most of them are just sitting in various online stores, making very sporadic sales. I don't know if there's anything I can do with them at this point, really, and I certainly don't need the sales. Ghostwriting pays the bills.

If I had to pick just a few to focus renewed energy on, I think I would go with the following:




And if I had a lot of free time, I might give some time, consideration, additional editing, and attention to:



So, what do you think, Dear Reader? Have you read any of these novels, and are there any that I should stop sadly neglecting forever?