Prospectus 2023, Part 1

It’s the heart of winter here in the mid-Atlantic US. It’s the best time of year to curl up with a cup of hot chocolate, and a pile of nascent projects for a new year of writing and professional growth. So I thought I’d share some of them, in a series of posts starting with this one, over the next few weeks.

It’s been a while since I’ve had much to say publicly about my plans. That’s partly because I’m still learning and figuring out how to make this whole “start a publishing company and author career out of basically nothing” thing work, but I’m making progress. Agonizingly slow progress to be sure, and filled with sobering revelations about how much more learning and work such plans actually take to move forward, but progress nonetheless.

Fortunately, I’m over most of the “indie author learning curve” I began just under a year ago. I’ve figured out how to create and budget for indie business; how to publish wide; how to network with other authors, and, increasingly, potential readers; how to find artists and commission covers; how to publish e-books, and now, print books, on a schedule (more or less); and a host of other details too mundane to be of interest to anyone without a mild streak of masochism. Doing that while also figuring out how to adjust my life from having a full-time tech career to being a (not entirely willing) early retiree has been a challenge, but that’s working out as well.

The only major tasks left on my publishing “learning curve” are to figure out how to create and sell an audiobook, and how to effectively market and get visibility for my work. I should be able to work out the first over the next few months. The marketing part I saved for last, since it requires having at least a modest body of work in publication, and I expect it to be an ongoing and constantly adjusting process. There’s a simple reason for that: because no one in publishing has a formula for it. I’ve read up on it extensively, though, and I’m getting ready to try some things out on a larger and more consistent scale. Whatever else 2023 will be about for me, it’ll be that.

That, of course, and writing. Now that I’ve got enough things settled, I’m ready to resume work on the next novel in the Sanctum of the Archmage Saga: Crucible of Heroes – Wrath of the Peregrine King. That’s now officially back on the front burner again, and I’ll have more to say about it in Part II. 🙂