MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
To Stand Alone in a shared world.
I've made no secret of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld as well as Dungeons and Dragons being major influences in my fantasy work. From the beginning of the Sorcerous Crimes Division I envisioned that world as a vehicle for many stories, small and large, where any type of adventure could unfold sequentially, concurrently, or in disparate time periods. I had already finished two volumes of the Sorcerous Crimes Division when I began to write The Dragon's Banker, and so had the world already established. I assumed going in that most readers for Dragon's Banker would be followup readers from SCD. I skimped on some of the world building and relied on prior reader knowledge perhaps more than I should have. Of course Dragon's Banker ended up being my most successful self-published title to date, selling more in one year than Devilbone has sold since it's initial release in 2014.
One of the chief complaints about Dragon's Banker is the shy world-building, as it mentions many locations in passing that were explained or explored in the Sorcerous Crimes Division, and new readers didn't have the benefit of two novels worth of details to draw from. I'm keeping this in mind as I work on my next novel-length work in this shared world, another stand-alone with the focus on travel to different locales and interactions with fantastic settings and creatures.
I'll talk a bit more on why the amount of new readers subverted my expectations later on.
(Non)Epic Fantasy
I've talked at length about my goal in writing Dragon's Banker being to write a true-pacifist protagonist who could not and would not solve his problems through violence. Part of this was a challenge to myself to deviate from the typical action-packed science fiction and fantasy books in my catalogue, and part of it was a desire to explore the slice-of-life aspect of living in a fantasy world without being involved in the grand machinations of its workings. Sorcerous Crimes Division was originally supposed to be something more along these lines, exploring what it would be like to work for the secret police and masked enforcers of an authoritative city government. But the scope got away from me a little bit in Devilbone and half-way through it turned into a more typical epic fantasy story. The Servant's Tower leaned into both sides of the coin again, but struck a stronger balance.In Dragon's Banker I managed to finally nail the formula of what it would be like to be an ordinary person living and working in a fantasy world and facing extraordinary challenges. And I did it without writing a single sword fight. In fact, Dragon's Banker contains a total of two physical action scenes. The rest of the action is cerebral, and generally involves some combination of planning, plotting, negotiation, and barter. A year after writing it, the accomplishment of shifting gears from an action story writer to create a financial drama is still one of my proudest feats as a fantasy author. In the foreword I mention that Dragon's Banker was my favorite novel that I have written, and I think that will be true for some time. I cannot understate how in-love with the story of Sailor, Arkelai, and the rest of the cast I remain to this day. It's a story about good intentions paying off in unexpected ways. I crafted multiple layers, side plots that happen almost entirely off page but still pay off, and curated reader experience for each of these twists through foreshadowing and reveals almost exactly the way I intended. Certain types of readers pick up details very early on, which I love, while others need a second reading to catch every detail, which I also love. The book isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but from a narrative goal-meeting standpoint I fucking nailed it.
To Pub or not to Pub
Let's talk about the publishing history of Dragon's Banker, the nitty gritty details.Originally, following the conclusion and submission of Where Vultures Dare to Parvus Press (the small-press publisher who handles my science-fiction catalogue) they offered me another two-book deal for a new military science-fiction book and an as-yet undetermined fantasy novel.
My focus at the time was on Dragon's Banker, theirs was on the Military Science Fiction novel. I leapt at the deal at first, seeing it as a sure avenue to get The Dragon's Banker out to readers, but after the fact I had second thoughts. Ultimately I didn't think Parvus was as in-love with Dragon's Banker as I was, and asked them to invoke their right of first refusal to allow me to self-publish Dragon's Banker, and eventually asked to be released from that two-book contract entirely, vowing never again to sell a book before it was written. Part of this, I'll readily admit, is because as I struggled with that new Military Science Fiction. I realized I was writing it to market, rather than writing it for myself. This conclusion I reached after two iterations of a manuscript, approximately 20,000 words each, that I absolutely despised. I forced myself to put each word on page, and I could feel myself burning out. For some time after being unofficially released from that deal (the actual legal contract cancellation came at a later date) I seriously considered quitting writing all together. During this period I also took a new career path that essentially tripled my yearly salary, which in turn made my leisure time that much more valuable. If I was spending it writing things I didn't enjoy for money I really didn't need, then logically speaking, I shouldn't be spending it that way. I took a break to enjoy some alternate creative pursuits.
Please understand I don't hold any of this against Parvus. It was my decision alone to sign the deal and then later to request its nullification. Parvus was both fair and understanding at all junctures.
After a few months of downtime, I'm of course back at it with another fantasy work, and meanwhile on the back burner I've been puzzling through some of the issues with the new Military Sci-fi work so that I can take another crack at it my way, no contract or deadline this time. There were some really unique concepts and ideas for that story that I still want to explore. But I'll do as I've done in the past, show up with a complete and polished manuscript of my own design without market influence or publisher interference. Making a deal with any publisher is ultimately still surrendering some amount of control over your work. Making a deal for a book you haven't even written yet is surrendering too much control to be palatable.
I do sometimes worry that my attitude of only writing when I am not writing to contract/market is anathema to future publishing prospects. But fuck it.
One-Man Marketing
Devilbone had a poor launch. My fantasy debut suffered from poor editing (my fault), poor marketing, (my fault), and really every other self-publishing problem you can imagine. Except, oddly enough, poor writing. Those that did read it, by and large, really enjoyed it in spite of its obscurity and lack of editorial standards. That above all else
Still, the damage was done. Devilbone was doomed to obscurity, and even though I corrected the majority of those mistakes and slowly gained readership over the next few years, when it came time to release The Servant's Tower, it simply didn't have enough steam to succeed as a sequel. This, more than anything, is what makes a third installment of the Sorcerous Crimes Division so unlikely. I don't expect it would ever make up its initial investment of time and monetary resources. The damage is done.
Going into Dragon's Banker was different. This time I had a fresh start, a (mostly) standalone work, and both a plan and budget. I won't be shy about the fact that the public aspect of self-publishing is my least favorite. I abhor networking, detest social media, voraciously hate spam and mailing lists of any kind, and as it turns out, get near anxiety attacks asking other authors for cover quotes.
What I'm trying to say, is that I'm not what you'd call a self-publishing guru.
Still, despite those challenges I had a budget somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 earmarked for the release of Dragon's Banker and the patience to set a release date several months in the future. That second bit is much harder and more important than you might think when you have a finished book and the publish button staring you in the face. About half of that was dedicated to Netgalley (and half of that just to get the copyright in order to be eligible for Netgalley) to get the book in front of motivated reviewers. It paid dividends when I was able to add pre-release buzz and quotes from positive reviews directly to the product page on Amazon, and also to gauge whether or not a book I wrote with an extremely niche subject matter -fantasy finances- could garner general appeal. The other half was split between independent promotion sites (generally worthless) and Kindle and Facebook ads with middling success. It's difficult for me to judge the effectiveness of Amazon ads in particular. All of my books launch on Kindle Unlimited (Since I like making some cash for effectively 'giving away' my stories) so it's impossible to tell whether or not that high click-thru rate and high average cost of sale was at all influencing the high amount of page-reads through Kindle Unlimited. To date, the Kindle Unlimited Lending Library constitutes -by far- the highest source of royalties for my self-published books. Reviews don't ever mention whether they bought the book or borrowed it. I also spent a good deal of time sending review copies and requests out to many review blogs and publications, but even contacting reviewers that fit your niche results in a response maybe 1/10 times. It's not disdain for indie works, reputable reviewers are just plain slammed. The fact is, there are just too many books for too few reviewers. This is one of the reasons legitimate Amazon reviews are so critical to self-publishing success.
Right now, Dragon's banker is both my best-reviewed fantasy work (Currently 4.7 out of 5 on Amazon) and has the greatest amount of reviews for my self-published titles, despite being only a year out from release. The majority of which were new readers, and as far as I know not carry-overs from my much better-known and higher-selling Union Earth Privateers series. I was honestly surprised at how well-received Dragon's Banker was by new readers. Self-Published Financial Fantasy is about as niche and risky a genre as you can get, despite Orcanomics winning the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off.
I'm not, and will likely never be, a big name in Fantasy. My attitudes towards the business aspects are too antithetical to what makes a self-published author truly successful
Still, I'm proud of what I've accomplished with Dragon's Banker.
