Business Post: System Apocalypse - A Review (Patreon)

Information to give context:

- This is for System Apocalypse.

- this is for the main series (12 books - ignore where it says 16).

- As some of you might know, the protagonist is a bisexual POC. We start out apocalyptic, end up space opera really.

- I write in 3 book arcs, so every 3 books, we switch to a new story arc with one very long story arc (which finishes in book 12).

- Books are ‘short’ for the genre, at roughly 100k words each book. This makes a HUGE difference in income. I did the math and I probably would have done a lot better if I could write longer books (assuming everything else held the same). Sadly, I can't so... here we are.

- There are also 3 omnibuses, 1 short story anthology, 2 co-authored series, over 10+ short stories and novelettes and a graphic novel created for the world. I’m also translating all the books into German and a bunch of other languages. All those sales are not included in the data

- We have everything in paperback, hardcover and audiobooks (hardcover since 2021) for the entire series. Obviously, not reflected in sales here either.

- some minor spikes you might notice come from my other series releasing, but you can see the real spikes are during big book releases

Details about my journey:

- For the first 2 years or so, I mostly just concentrated on writing.

- Unpaid promotions during that time were basically social media (there’s a very strong FB community), my newsletter and website and the FB author page.

- Total promotional spend for the series is in the $45,000 range. Total development cost (for the books) are roughly $24,000.

- I started using AMS from Nov 2017 or so with first month spend of $9.98. I would not increase spend beyond $25 or so a month till Jan 2018 where spend increased to roughly $200 a month. Only in Dec 2018 would I start spending more, with average spend roughly $150 a month till start of 2021 where I again found time to focus and increase spend to >$200+. Spend has now fluctuated, with mostly defensive AMS ads.

- FB and paid promos are the remainder of my paid promotions with FB being the majority. Most of that was in 2019 or so when I had time to spend actually focus on advertising (and late 2020 saw an increase when I hired my first Personal Assistant to help and again in beginning 2021).

- These days, advertising spend is roughly 12% of ebook monthly income.

Some thoughts on the graph:

- We started out very strong, with some issues with book 2 release as readers dropped it due to the LGBTQ aspects.

- Book 3 release sees the huge trilogy spike that happens in fantasy as well as the ending of the first ‘arc’.

- Book 5 ends with a big cliffhanger that pushes people into book 6. There’s some complaints since I sort of sidestep the cliffhanger, timeskipping people 4 years ahead but you can see readthrough and readers are huge. Book 6 is also when I start switch to a 6 month(ish) release schedule instead of every 3-4 months

- Book 7 is when you see a new space arc (told you it mattered). You can see that arc starts out well, but we lose readers since switching genres mid-stream loses some readers.

- And then they all start coming back in book 10 since the end of the series and BIG buzz as the story picks up steam for the beginning of the end.

- Book 11 sees a drop as people start holding off on finishing the series because it’s all cliffhangers from now on the end of each book.

- And book 12 we have another big spike as the series ends.

- You can also see the effect of continual paid promotion for FB ads and AMS when I start doing it regularly starting in 2019, with my ‘floors’ much higher than ever. Continual marketing rather than ‘burst’ promotions is my preference, with only concentrated additional promos around low points and/or releases to drive in even more readers.

- Obviously, having a ton of books in the series also helps. When my co-authored series came out last year around August 2021, you can also see the much fatter and wider spike of readers as people jump back into the main series.

- The minor dip in KENP during Dec 2021 was mostly due to a big promo putting a LOT of books on sale, so readers went over to buying books rather than reading on KU.

- Going back to the LGBTQ aspect, I can certainly say having John be bisexual has had effects on pickup (in both general sales and on-going); but also meant that I have had to constantly find new audience. It's why I spend (and continue to spend) a large chunk of my income on advertising. I'm in that weird space of basically NOT needing to market a huge amount IN the genre, but having to find people outside it to market to.

- That also means that my AMS ads are almost entirely defensive. Like, I spend hundreds of dollars every month on my name and the series name. It makes it much more expensive for others to target my own terms, with only marginal spend on other works. That might change now that I'm not releasing as much as I need to refresh also boughts, but that's where it stands right now.

Takeaways:

- Get lucky / Hit the market right. Sorry, can't help otherwise. If you've read my other posts, you know I stumbled into my initial success.

- Work hard to establish yourself in the market (I wrote those 6 books and another 7 more in the same genre in that 2 year period, all while running a business full-time. So, yeah, lots of long hours)

- Consolidate your fortune! Don’t just rely on the market growing but grab your fans as much as possible. Newsletter, social media pages, sending them to your Goodreads account or Amazon author page. Work you control is obviously best.

- Once you’ve got enough books in the series (3 books in a series I’d say minimum); start paid advertising. Start small, learn the systems first. Constant promotions over burst marketing will generally work out better in my experience.

- Be willing to fail. Some of those line extensions did horribly (see graphic novel and anthology).

- Expand your hits! Co-authors, translations, audiobooks – all those have helped generate significant income over and above what you see here and which have elongated the life of the series.

- Start planning for the future. I knew SA ended in 12 books, so extending release times to every 6 months meant I could write and publish new works in-between in search of a new hit. I got that with ATL, though now I need to find another LitRPG hit or see a big decline in income.

There’s no guarantee you’ll ever get another big hit, so it’s worth planning for not just the lower income but also for new series in-between. Really, if there's any one thing I can suggest for anyone in this business is plan for low months and the long-term.

I guess that’s about it. Let me know if you have further questions. I won’t dig too much more into the income side, but outside of that, I’m happy to discuss.