Looking back on this fourth year of writing, I suppose the general theme has been - ennui.
I'm not entirely sure why, but on the latter half of the year, I rather lost my drive. For a couple of years, I held true to a daily writing goal of a thousand words, and while that did produce lots of words, it didn't produce lots of success.
I realized that I was flirting with burnout, so I abandoned the writing goal and went with a much simpler goal: write something every day.
As a result of that and fewer releases that did well, my revenue this year is down 30% from last year's, but I rather expected that result because I had fewer releases.
I still enjoy the process of creating, but recently I haven't really been pushing myself.
I could blame the general state of my health, which is always an issue. I could blame the various problems during the year that have stolen my attention away from this hobby, such as the recent reroofing project, and the upcoming jaw surgery that still hasn't been scheduled because I've been stuck in insurance limbo.
All of those had something to do with it, yes, but I've been able to push through those things in the past.
Not recently, though, and I think I know why.
I've gotten a bit bored.
That is, I feel like my writing has become too samey. I need to do some branching out, to stretch myself in other directions.
I also feel the need to write stories that align closer to my morals. I've explored all the taboo topics, and I've decided that writing that sort of stuff isn't really making me happy.
The story I'm currently working on is pure nightmare fuel body horror. Its lack of sexual content and slight change in direction fulfills both of my goals. I don't have any definite plans to keep writing stories in that style, but you will start to see my future stories evolving somewhat away from what I've done in the past.
That said, the 'Training Betsy' and 'The Rubber Order' series certainly do align with my goals, and I do plan on eventually adding more to those universes.
By The Numbers
The releases here are in revenue order.
Choose Your Submission
Word Count: 79,153
KENP: 11,198
Released on February 25th, this anthology was barely beat out by 'Doll Factory' in terms of raw KENP page reads. Even though this was a new release this year, it performed far ahead of any of my other works.
I'm rather pleased with that fact, though it shows that I really probably ought to be splitting up these shorts into separate releases instead of putting them into an anthology.
On a side note, writing in first person severely messed me up when I swapped to another story that I was writing at the time in third person. Fixing the tenses during editing was a real pain - apparently my brain finds it difficult to shift between modes.
Enthralled Book One: The Divine
Word Count: 80,761
KENP: 10,170
Both of the Enthralled books were written together in one manuscript, then split later when I realized that they had turned into a duology. That meant that most of January and February was eaten up with editing, with the first novel releasing on January 20th, and the second on February 7th.
I'm not sure if the back to back releases were an issue, but both of these books I consider a flop. It's too bad, because I think that this is some of the best slow corruption I've ever written. The audience for that kind of story must be lower than I had originally thought.
Enthralled Book Two: The Awakened
Word Count: 93,544
KENP: 5,536
With half the KENP page reads here, that suggests the readthrough rate was only about 50%. That's pretty bad retention. Overall, this didn't work out as well as I had hoped it would.
Hive: Dronesday
Word Count: 43,016
KENP: 6,423
For a 'short', this seemed to perform fairly well. Yet another drone story though, right? I thought I was trying to get away from writing them...
Purification Agent USA
KENP: 4,107
Almost, but not quite a novel. My most recent release, but yet again not a great performer. I guess not all of my ideas are good ideas.
Non-KDP stories
Penned Up - 50,001
This was meant as a palate cleanser to help me get away from the feeling of being restricted by Amazon's content rules. It didn't quite turn out to be as nonconsensual as I thought it would be. I guess I'm just not wired to be super mean to my characters (usually).
Breeding Understanding - 14,000
This was an extra short I wrote for 'Choose Your Submission.' It's impossible to know how it affected the sales numbers, and I never did get any comments about it, so who knows, it could have been a dud.
I've decided never to write tie-ins for my longer stories, because I really have no idea if they have any effect, and they take a long time to do. If I have ideas like this in the future, I'll release them as separate works in their own right.
Totals
Top Ten KENP
- Doll Factory (2022) - 100,697
- Sky Trained (2022) - 91,339
- Target of Corruption (2023) - 66,342
- Droneship (2023) - 48,713
- Training Betsy (2023) - 35,337
- The Rubber Order (2021) - 29,481
- Containment (2022) - 26,264
- Over Easy (2023) - 19,973
- Tick Tock (2024) - 19,825
- Bull Moon (2023) - 15,982
