kobo – Percival Constantine

An update from me is a bit overdue and what better time to get it out there than in the form of a New Year’s message?

2015 was a pretty big year for me as an author. Although I’ve been doing this since 2007, 2015 was really when I started taking it seriously. I went into 2015 with the goal of having a release every month and I did manage to accomplish that goal. And it was my most successful year yet as an author.

So what about 2016?

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions, but I am in favor of New Year’s Plans. First off, a bit of an announcement—recently, I made the decision to make all my titles Amazon exclusive. The reason for this is that the other platforms have really been a black hole. I’ve spent money on advertising, I’ve been patient, I’ve emailed their author support, and it’s led to a steady graph of zero sales (and even zero downloads of my free titles).

The consequence is that by not being exclusive to Amazon, I don’t make any money from Kindle Unlimited borrows. And since Amazon is the only platform I make any money on to begin with, then I’m losing money by being on all the platforms.

I don’t like the idea of exclusivity, but when building a business, tough choices have to be made. And ultimately, I have to go with the approach that will help me build my business. When the other platforms are ready to incorporate a better search engine, more support for indies who aren’t already best-sellers, and stop with this curation nonsense, then I might experiment with going wide again. Until then, my books are only available on Amazon in digital formats, or you can buy them in paperback.

With that out of the way, here’s what my schedule looks like for this year:

January will see the release of The Fixers, book four in the Infernum series. This will see the return of a lot of characters. The book centers on Angela Lockhart, the protagonist of Love & Bullets, and will also see other returning characters: Julie Kim, Tauna, Vincente, Baxter Sutton, William Quartermain, and of course, Dante.
In February, I’ll be releasing Vanguard: The Complete Second Season in both print and digital formats. I initially hoped to have this out earlier but I had some computer issues in December that made it impossible. So I had to shuffle some things around.
Vanguard Season Three begins in March with Vanguard #11: Vengeance. In this episode, the Exemplar is back and out to get back at Cerberus for their part in the destruction of Arcadia.
Vanguard #12: Fight Night comes out in the first half of April. Gunsmith accepts a mission from Cerberus to investigate underground fight clubs that are using a drug to temporarily grant special abilities to fighters.
Vanguard #13: The Tomorrow Man will be released in the second half of April. After being built-up over the course of the first two seasons, Chronos will arrive in the present and encounter Vanguard in an attempt to stop his future from coming to pass.
Vanguard #14: The Trial of the Exemplar comes out in the first half of May. The Exemplar will finally be put on trial for his crimes.
Vanguard #15: The Invasion closes out May. Title is pretty self-explanatory.
The fifth Myth Hunter book, tentatively titled Hammer of the Gods, will come out in June.
The fifth and final Infernum book, Dante, comes out in July.
August will see the release of Vanguard: The Complete Third Season.
September begins Vanguard Season Four with Vanguard #16.
Vanguard #17 and Vanguard #18 in October.
Vanguard #19 and Vanguard #20 in November.
Vanguard: The Complete Fourth Season in December.

This is just a tentative schedule at the moment and things are subject to change. The summer will see a big change in my life and that could very well affect this schedule. The Luther Cross series through Pro Se will also continue this year and I’ll have a story in an Airship 27 title sometime next year. But other than that, I don’t plan to do any work for any other publishers.

You may notice that Dante is the final Infernum book. I’ll be closing out that series but in 2017, I’ll have another series out. Interested in having a say? Check out my reader survey.

Thanks for your support in 2015. I hope I can count on your continued support in 2016 and beyond!

Back when Kindle Unlimited was first announced, I said I wasn’t going to join it. The reasons were that I didn’t like the idea of giving Amazon exclusivity over my content and also because I didn’t like the royalty pay-out of a flat rate per book regardless of the book’s price. Compared to the competing subscription services of Oyster and Scribd (which pay you a percentage of the book’s list price), I didn’t think KU was very healthy.

But that was then and this is now. Amazon has since changed the rules again and now royalties are based on pages read as opposed to a flat rate per book. And some have seen an income drop. But there’s another thing to consider and that’s the performance of my book on the other vendors.

I think it’s great that places like iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Smashwords and more are trying to provide some competition for Amazon. But the fact remains that they’re pretty bad at it. The search functionality of those websites makes discoverability all but impossible and there aren’t many promotional opportunities outside of Bookbub.

As much as I don’t like exclusivity, it seems the only way to build an audience these days is with Kindle Unlimited. So I’ve decided to make the plunge. Season two of Vanguard was going to launch in Kindle Unlimited, but now I’ve taken it a step further and added all of season one into the program as well.

If you’re a Kindle Unlimited user, now’s your chance to read the entire series for free!

[mybooktable series=”vanguard-the-collected-seasons”] [mybooktable series=”vanguard”]

Tag Archives: kobo

A New Year

Why I joined Kindle Unlimited