Hello again from beautiful Wonder Valley!
Well, it’s been a while since I posted on my blog. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come back, but since I plan to get rather in-depth about the recent survey I sent to my newsletter subscribers, I figured this would be a better place to discuss the results than in my newsletter itself, especially since it’s already pretty bloated with other commitments. I hope that’s OK with everyone.
Now, just to clarify, we are not going super-DUPER in depth here. We’re generally covering the first three or four major responses to the most important questions. In some cases, engagement wasn’t high enough to warrant major analysis, such as my questions relating to audiobooks. Apparently, not a lot my readers know I have audiobooks, but I will be changing that very soon! Hopefully, next year, we’ll see some more fleshed-out responses.
Lastly, I should point out the obvious: Less than 40 people filled out this survey, but in my mind, that’s pretty high engagement! The readers who care enough to take time out of their day to let me know what they want are absolutely the most engaged with my work. So while this doesn’t constitute the majority in terms of sheer numbers, this does speak volumes to me in terms of what my die-hard readers want! Though, if you read to the end of the post, you’ll see that I’m still taking some of the results with a grain of salt. Just thought I’d throw that in there for the analysts among you who may or may not have filled out the survey. Do you think this is the right thing to do? Let me know in the comments!
Oh, and in case you found this post out in the wild and haven’t read my newsletter, you can sign up here to join the fun and get a free short story!
Anyway, I don’t want to ramble on for too long, so let’s get straight into the meat of it: Now I know what YOU want to see!
So, the first question I posed was: How did you discover my writing?
Here’s what you had to say!
By and large, most of you have subscribed to my newsletter via free giveaways! This makes sense as over the course of COVID, this was largely the only level of marketing I could afford, and it was quite effective!
“Recommended by another author” came in second place, which is amazing! I love seeing that so many of you have found my work because another author was impressed enough to share what I’d created with their audience. To those of my fellow authors who have done so, thank you so much!
In third place was “Amazon ads“. I’ve pulled back on Amazon ads recently because I wasn’t sure if they were drawing enough people in. I was seeing sales and some engagement, but until now, I didn’t know if any of my dedicated readers found me as a direct result of Amazon ads. I’ll have to look into running some more in the future!
Moving on, the second question I asked: What is your preferred way to read my (or anyone else’s) books?
Here’s what you had to say!
A staggering 59.5% of you prefer to read eBooks! Paperback also has a fair share of the rest of the margin, with one vote for “All of the above“, and one write-in for “computer“, which I’m assuming means eBooks.
I’ve got to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised to see paperbacks with such a high margin! I’ll have to consider pushing my paperback editions harder in the coming months, since it seems like there is still a solid audience for them among my most engaged readers!
Next up, I asked: Should I write shorter novels quicker (between 2 and 4+ a year) or longer novels slower (1 every year)?
With this question, I wanted to gauge my readers’ preference for longer and shorter books on realistic release schedules for each length.
Longer books slower has won out, but there is interest in more shorter works as well. Both parties are in luck! Although my next few books will be shorter, I do have some longer works nearing completion that I really think you’ll enjoy!
This, though, is one of the few results I have some problems with. We’ll get to that later…
Next up: What is your favorite genre(s)?
Quite a few surprises here!
Unsurprisingly, “Thriller” takes the lead in this multi-choice round! But “Action/Adventure” isn’t far behind, with only six fewer votes. Then, we’ve got “Sci-Fi“. Not a huge surprise, but it’s what came in fourth that surprised me the most!
I’ve been saying for a while that the Western genre is far from dead! While it didn’t get as many votes as the first two genres, it’s still amazing to see it rank so high! Ever since publishing T-REX, I’ve been wanting to get back into a Western, so that might just have to happen sooner rather than later!
Next up: If I posted more on my blog, what would you like to see?
What do you want from the blog? “Short stories” by quite a margin!
This I might try and make happen! I posted a few under the brand “Monday Morning Micro Monstrosities”, but in hindsight, that title might have done more harm than good from a marketing standpoint. For the time being, you can check out my short fiction on the blog under that name, but with so much interest in short fiction, I might rebrand those posts in the future!
Second in line was “book reviews“, which I will also try and make happen in the future.
Now, obviously, a large portion of my audience isn’t interested in blog posts, which I’ll admit isn’t a huge surprise. I didn’t see a lot of engagement at the time, and I still don’t. However, I may give the blog one more shot in 2023, now that I know what my readers really want to see!
Next up: Which of these upcoming novels/series are you most excited for?
WOW!
Another round with a very clear winner! Readers love Asher Bryant, and I will absolutely be giving you more! Based on this response, I’ve moved the second book up in my schedule and will continue working on that over December and January!
In the meantime, read the first Asher Bryant novel here!
Second in line, to my surprise, was Rise of Egypt, a trilogy (it could be longer, but I know I want to write three books, so I’ll call it a trilogy for now) about the Ancient Egyptian gods returning to modern-day Earth. And, of course, they’re bringing dinosaurs with them because someone’s got to do their dirty work!
I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect that to come in second place! Don’t get me wrong, I love the book and the characters, and I knew it would get votes, but second in line was really surprising to me. I’ve also bumped this book up for obvious reasons and will resume work on it early next year!
Third in line, The Beast of Big Timber, my upcoming book about a disgraced police officer who must save his dog from Sasquatch! I am in the final stages of this novel now and am thrilled to see it rank so highly! With how well creature-features have done for me in recent years, I think this will be a hit with readers! I mean, who doesn’t want to save a puppy?
And there it is!
That’s the bulk of the questions! I had some write-in ones where people left me some very nice messages, but we don’t need to go over those publicly. Just know that I truly appreciated every single one of your comments!
And I know, I didn’t go over some questions. For some of them, the answer was obvious enough, like for YouTube: Almost no one wants more YouTube content from me, and I’m happy to put that to bed for now. I enjoy the process of creating YouTube videos, but editing takes so long and just isn’t worth the time when I need to be writing more great novels!
Want me to go into even MORE detail? We discussed all this and more on a recent episode of Publisher’s Cluttered House, the podcast I co-host with my wife and fellow author, Faryl! Check it out here if you want to go super-DUPER in depth!
So it looks like the answer is clear! People want more fiction above all else! Not too surprising, if I’m being honest. Some of the books that ranked highly surprised me, though! It’s also clear that while readers would like me to publish longer books less often, there’s also a place for my shorter books I can finish quicker! With all this in mind, I plan to serve both markets in 2023!
For the moment, 2023 was already stacked before I sent out this newsletter. A LOT of projects are finally getting the time they deserve, so before sending the newsletter, I made the schedule you can see below. While I plan to serve the longer-novel market with a couple of these titles, the facts are that for the moment, a few shorter novels are almost ready. They’ve been patiently waiting their turn for a while, so once they are out the door, I might re-focus my efforts on longer work.
But that said, let’s address one more elephant in the room. I can see this one, but most of my readers probably can’t: My shorter fiction is outperforming my longer novels.
This is a bit of a look behind the curtain, but a fun one for those of you who care about the ins and outs of publishing. The facts are that the shorter a book is, the better it’s sold for me. I’ve written a few longer books, one exceeding 100k words, but those just haven’t done as well, even though there appears to be demand for them. However, most of my books that are selling well have a word count of around 40K-50K. This is one of those times where I’m not sure if I agree with the results of the survey, simply because it doesn’t reflect what’s been happening to my career as of late. So, for now, I’m going to take those responses into consideration in the coming year, but with my shorter novels doing far better than my longer ones, writing longer novels just doesn’t make financial sense right now. They cost more to write and make less money, at least for the moment. So if I want to keep doing this as a career, shorter novels it is!
Quite a lot to take in, I know!
Anyway, as of now, we have a rough release schedule to work off of!
February: Beast of Big Timber
April: DenCom Cryptid Spinoff 1
June: Rise of Egypt Book 1
Auguest: Asher Bryant Book 2
October: TBD Benedict Origins Story (DenCom Novella)
December: Swim 2
BONUS DECEMBER: A DenCom Christmas (non-canon short story for charity!)
That’s the plan right now, obviously subject to change! COVID taught us all that plans can change on a dime, which is why you won’t see these preorders go up for a while!
I have what I like to call an “Emergency Button” book in the works as well, just in case something isn’t done on time. But almost everything you’re looking at is in a near if not fully complete state. The only thing that is nowhere near complete right now is Swim 2, but I’ll be starting work on that fairly soon!
Also, on the Godqueen Trilogy: It’s not impossible that I’ll add the third book to the schedule and wrap up that series in 2023, but that’s largely up to the publisher! If I do this, one of those titles may need to be pushed back so that the series finale (for now, anyway) can have the space it needs, marketing-wise. We’ll see what happens!
Also, on that bonus story: A DenCom Christmas should have been out this year, but with so much on my plate, I just couldn’t make it happen. Plus, I’m trying to find a platform where I can sell the eBook that will send all the proceeds directly to charity, and that hasn’t been as easy as I would have hoped. I could just list it on Amazon and do the math myself, but I don’t even want to risk screwing it up. So if anyone knows a service that offers something like this, please let me know! It’s a little late for DenCom Christmas this year, but hopefully next year, we can make that happen!
So how do you feel about the survey results? Do you agree? Disagree? I want to know!
If you’ve read this far, thanks for your support, and have a great holiday season!
-S.T. Hoover