Pre-orders & ARCs & Cover Reveals, Oh My!
June Newsletter
Hi! Hello! Welcome to June’s author newsletter. We have some new faces around here, so I thought I would do a quick explanation of what to expect from this newsletter before we dive into this month’s news.
I send a newsletter out about once a month, typically during the last week of the month with a round of up of all my writing/book-related news. I’m at the beginning of my self-publishing journey, so you’ll see me talk about that quite a bit, but I also have work in the serial fiction/web novel space, so I talk about those platforms as well. If you ever have any questions or suggestions for topics you’d like to see me cover in the newsletter, you are always welcome to leave a comment or send me a message.
I also offer free goodies for subscribers. If you haven’t grabbed them yet, you can do so here:
Now, let’s get into the news for June (boy, was it an exciting month)!
The Self-Publishing Update
In case you missed it, the biggest news of the month was that Wyrmrot officially has a cover and a release date and you can now pre-order the ebook and/or sign-up to join the review team. Yay!
Here’s the cover again because I will never not be showing everyone I possibly can. It is my favorite thing:
The official release date for the paperback and ebook is August 13th. If you’d like to pre-order the ebook, you can do that here:
If you’d like to add it on Goodreads, you can do that here:
If you’d like to get a free ebook copy, you can sign up for my review team here:
The form for the review team will close on July 6th, and I will be emailing the book out to those who signed up on July 7th. If you are interested, make sure to sign up before then!
In other Wyrmrot publishing news, I am currently trying to decide between glossy or matte paperbacks. I thought I was going to be TeamGlossy, but then the matte version arrived, and now I think I’m TeamMatte.
Here’s a photo of them together in natural light:
Glossy is on the left, and Matte is on the right. I can’t tell much of a difference between the two (maybe some slight color differences), but I think I prefer the feel of the matte version. I was afraid it might feel sticky or show a lot of finger prints, but I don’t think that’s the case.
What do you think?
But wait, there’s even more publishing news. This time it’s for Wyrmrot’s sequel, Symbiosis. My editor has been scheduled, work on the cover has started, and I have a publication date in mind. I’m not going to share the date quite yet, because things could still change, but hopefully, you will have both of these books in your hands this year.
As a side note, if you ever decide to register your book for U.S. copyright, don’t forget to take the excerpt of the next book out of the end of the document because you will be rejected and have to pay to file again. Ask me how I know. *sigh*
The Serial Fiction Update
Last time we checked in on the serial fiction numbers was back in March, so let’s do another check-in.
As a reminder, these read count numbers are for my Lost Queen series (Young Adult Romantic Fantasy) that is currently posted across five platforms. It is free to read on four of these platforms, and I offer early access and bonus content for subscriptions on two platforms (yes, one platform has both free and subscription content).
My five platforms are Wattpad, Royal Road, Inkitt, Ream Stories, and Tapas.
On Royal Road and Tapas, the series is posted as one book and on Wattpad and Inkitt, it is divided up into three individual books. For ease of comparison, I’ll be adding the individual books’ numbers together. I don’t have any numbers for Ream Stories because they only recently added the analytics feature.
Here’s what the read counts look like for the first six months of this year:
As expected, Wattpad holds the highest count (by a lot!). I would also say it’s the highest in terms of receiving comments. However, it does have a big problem with spam and scammers (watch out for those!). If I had to recommend a platform just based on read count numbers, I would say Wattpad is the place to be, even if it is nowhere near as popular as it used to be even a few years back.
Now, if you are looking to monetize your work, my answer would change. I would say to go with either Inkitt or Royal Road depending on your genre of choice.
Inkitt offers subscriptions that anyone can use and are very easy to set up. This is nice because it means you don’t have to convince readers to go to another platform to join your subscription. My impression is that Romance is their top-performing genre, but you could do well with any genre.
Royal Road doesn’t have subscriptions directly on their site, but you can link to Patreon or paypal for donations. If you write LitRPG or any closely related genres, this is the place to be. Readers are used to the subscription model and willing to support you if they love your work. My impression has been that they don’t really like Romance here, so if that’s your genre of choice, you’ll want to skip this platform.
What I’m Reading/Watching/Listening To
This month I read Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao, Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods, Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood, and The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso. They were all great, but I particularly enjoyed Water Moon. It was just the break I needed after reading a bunch of epic fantasy.
I’ve mostly been watching the Windbreak and The Apothecary Diaries animes. I’ll be very sad when they end for the season at the end of June/beginning of July. I’ve been very curious about the K-Pop Demon Hunter movie that’s on Netflix right now. I keep seeing it pop up on social media, so I might have to check it out. If you’ve seen it, let me know.
And finally for listening, it’s been all ambiances again, because that’s all I listen to while I write. In fact, I’m listening to this one, as I write this newsletter. With the birds chirping in the background, I can almost pretend I’m outside (I will not actually be going outside until October or November because I do not wish for my skin to burn off. Summer is no joke if you live in the desert.)
And that’s all I’ve got for this month. I’ll see you again at the end of July.