Some of you may recall several months ago when I made a statement to the effect of “If I was smart, I would drop everything right now and focus on writing Haven.”
I didn’t. Instead, I wrapped up Parasexual. Then I wrote Haven 3. In the weeks that have followed its release, this statement has, if anything, come back to haunt me, and it caused me to begin reconsidering the plan that I had made for myself in December.
For as long as I’ve been speaking with my followers, I’ve maintained a few things. One is that while money isn’t everything, it is crucially important and does keep my bills paid. Another is that I’ve often attempted to find a balance between what I want to write, and what will earn me money. I still believe these hold true, and I still strive for that balance.
However, I’ve also come to learn that sacrifices need to be made if you want to be successful at something. Sometimes it’s sleep, sometimes it’s having a social life, and sometimes it’s working on one project instead of another.
And specifically, what it means right now is dropping almost everything and shifting focus to Haven.
Let me give you an idea of the events that have occurred so you can better understand why I’m doing this.
My sales began to look poor in October, and then they started to get genuinely worrying through November and into December.
January, on the other hand, if it holds steady to what it’s currently doing, will probably be in my top ten best months ever (barring the freak lightning strike in May 2018.) And it is painfully obvious why this is happening.
Haven.
Currently, the Haven series is 4 titles. So far, this month, 69 titles (that includes the A Warm Place titles), have sold in some capacity. So that means that Haven represents 5% of all titles that have sold so far this month.
Haven accounts for 61% of my total income.
Let me repeat that: FIVE PERCENT of my titles account for SIXTY PERCENT of my total income.
That is fucking insane.
They are outselling EVERYTHING by several magnitudes. To help give you a better idea, Haven 1, 2, & 3 hold the top three spots of page reads from the Kindle Unlimited, with Haven 2 holding Spot #3. Spot #4 is The Misty Vixen Starter Pack, and it has earned less than 1/4 of Haven 2’s page reads. It is THAT much of a drop-off. The chasm between Haven and everything else is vast.
Meaning that the reason I’m having a spectacular month is almost entirely because of Haven.
If I was just looking to pay my bills and have some cash leftover at the end of each month, I’d actually be pretty satisfied with where I’m at. For awhile, I was, (or at least I think so, when it comes to the past, we tend to stack the deck.) But at this point in my life, I’m not satisfied with that. I’m still not honestly looking to be mega rich, I’m not interested in having a mansion or taking insane vacations or hoarding money just for the sake of hoarding money. I have a few bigger debts I’d like to pay off, and yeah, I have some expensive things I’d like to own, (it’d be nice not to have a car that needs a major repair every four to six months), but there’s people in my life who I would really, really fucking like to be able to help out in the way that only money, and I mean real money, can. There are causes I’d love to donate to, huge, enormous tips I’d love to leave, people I’d just like to make happy. I honestly fucking love being generous for the sake of being generous when I can afford it.
I think I can get there, I can get to that level of money, if I made a few sacrifices and focused even harder on what sells. Like Haven. I think that if I put the majority of my focus into producing Haven content regularly, I might actually be able to take off. And honestly, I’m tired of living in obscurity. I’ve been doing this for five years now. It’d be nice if I could be one of those people that gets fucking a hundred reviews within a few weeks of launching, you know?
I know there’s a few ways to go about this. One way is to game the system like Eric Vall and hire a team of ghost writers to pump out books for four or five different series. (I obviously don’t know for a fact that that’s what they’re doing, but come on, I don’t think it’s physically possible to pump out a 150,000 word novel EVERY FUCKING WEEK for A YEAR STRAIGHT. Like, genuinely, it’s not possible for one human to do.) Another is to do it like Jan Stryvant and focus on one series that’s already taken off. That one seems much more doable, and feels much more within my grasp.
So this is what I’m going to do.
Since I don’t want to just straight-up abandon working on literally anything else, I’m going to continue doing the 80-20 split. My 80% work will be Haven. My 20% will be whatever other project I’ve chosen to take on. Right now, that means Demoness V, and then probably Lust & Adventure IV since I’d really like to get that out of the way. Then maybe a few Quickies, and then something Sci-Fi. But my point is that I’ll now be aiming to get a new Haven novel out once a month until it’s done. After that, I think I may actually take on A Warm Place, since I feel strongly about that series, and I think it might do even better than Haven.
To those of you who were looking forward to basically anything else besides Haven, I am sorry. I hope the compromise I’ve tried to make with the 80-20 split is acceptable. But, honestly, I guess I feel like in one way, I’m doing this for the fans. The fans vote with their wallets on what sells, and the vote is in: Haven wins.