So 2020 was quite a year, huh? I obviously don’t blog much anymore (my last and only post for the year was 11 months ago) and I honestly don’t know who even checks by here anymore as, well, blogs aren’t really a thing these days, are they?
Anyway, this year I published two novels: END GAME, the final Man of Wax book, and another novel under a pen name that was published by Amazon Publishing.
First, let’s talk about END GAME.
When I initially wrote MAN OF WAX, it was intended as a standalone. Honestly, a very early draft (one that was shopped around to publishers by my agent at the time) had Ben and Carver raiding the Paradise Motel and killing Simon … only to then learn that they were too late and Ben’s wife and daughter were dead: the end.
Pretty dark, huh?
There was a period of time where I wanted my books to be “real” in that the good guys don’t always win in the end, and while that’s something that can be done effectively from time to time, for the most part readers don’t want to be super bummed out by a book, especially after they’ve invested several hours of their time reading it. So I figured, okay, let’s not kill off Ben’s family. Let’s leave the book open-ended. And with the setup of a grand conspiracy, that led me to consider turning the entire storyline into a trilogy.
So I did something very dumb — without having sold the first book, I started writing the second book in the series.
Why was this dumb?
Because again, I hadn’t sold the first book. And, well, I obviously never sold the first book. So I had an unsold first book of a trilogy as well as the second book with nowhere to go with it, and at the time, the idea of self-publishing just didn’t make sense because ebooks weren’t really a thing.
Fast forward several years and the ebook revolution really took off, and I started uploading some of my unpublished novels. I put up MAN OF WAX, and then a few months later published THE INNER CIRCLE, and then … went on to write and publish other books.
Why?
Well, because while sales were decent, they were nowhere close to making me drop everything and writing the third book. Plus, high expectations became a concern. A lot of readers seemed to love the first two books, and I was worried the third book might be a major let down.
So I always had the third book in the back of my mind while I worked on other novels, knowing that it would be a large chunk of time for me to write the book and that there would probably not be much return on that investment. I remember even saying as much on Brian Keene’s old podcast when he asked me about the final Man of Wax book, noting that the third book in a trilogy is always the worst seller, because, I mean, it’s a trilogy. People don’t buy the third book first. They buy the first book, and maybe they’ll buy the second book, and MAYBE they’ll even end up buying the third book.
Of course, then I had an idea for a thriller that I realized would tie nicely into the overall MOW universe, and that book is of course LEGION, which was a prequel novel that on its surface didn’t really seem like it was connected to the trilogy at all, despite vague references to past events in both MAN OF WAX and THE INNER CIRCLE. I always knew that John Smith and Ashley would show up in the final book of the trilogy, but it’s kind of hard to explain that to baffled readers, some of whom actually got upset that an advertised prequel didn’t seem to fit — plus it probably didn’t help that initially I marketed it as a standalone thriller.
During all this time, of course, I wrote and published other novels, and in 2019 I sold a novel to Amazon Publishing for a quite sizable advance. I don’t want to get into too many personal specifics, but the advance helped pay off debt and put me and my wife in a much better position financially, and I knew that it was finally time to complete the third and final Man of Wax book that I had been promising. Because, again, I knew the third book wouldn’t sell well and up until that point I had been relying on much of my self-publishing income to help make ends meet (or at the very least try to get those ends as close together as I could).
So I finally finished END GAME, and to be honest, I was very happy with how it turned out. I published it back in January of this year, and … it sold just as expected, maybe even less so. I mean, I always knew it wasn’t going to sell great. And I also knew that I wasn’t going to put much marketing into the book (i.e. Facebook ads and whatever else). Mainly, I just wanted to finish the trilogy because I had been promising to finish the trilogy, and I felt I owed it not only to my readers but also to the characters.
For the most part, feedback on the final book has been great. A good majority of those readers that actually read it really seemed to like it and felt it was a satisfying end to the series. Some other readers … did not seem as enthusiastic. For example:
Now, I typically ignore one-star reviews, which often criticize the book itself for whatever reason (my favorite is usually because the book contains swears), but this one really got under my skin. Because this reviewer essentially implied that I don’t care about my readers, which is the furthest thing from the truth. Without readers, I essentially wouldn’t have any reason to write. At the same time, publishing is a business. There’s a reason I write the books I write, beyond simply the fact that I enjoy writing them. I want to write books that readers want to read so that I can sell those books and (gasp!) earn money. Because while writing for me is a passion, it’s also a job. It’s how I pay the bills. So I need to look at all aspects of my writing as what it essentially is: a business. This isn’t a hobby for me that I do in my spare time; it’s my JOB, and so I need to approach every project considering the pros and cons. There have even been projects that I’d love to do which I had to put off because, ultimately, they weren’t something that would pay the bills.
Here’s the reality of being an indie writer: everything is on you. EVERYTHING. Not just the writing but the editing and copyediting and proofreading and cover design and marketing and everything else. I often outsource that stuff to other people, which means I pay them for their time and effort. This means that with every book I publish, I start in the red. Sometimes it takes no time at all to sell a lot of copies and start making a profit, while other times it can take quite a while.
MAN OF WAX was published in 2011. Since then, it’s sold about 23,000 units.
THE INNER CIRCLE, published one year later, has sold almost 9,000 units.
LEGION, published in 2014, has sold almost 9,000 units.
And END GAME, published earlier this year, has sold … just under 700 units.
Now, would that have been the case had I released END GAME in 2013? Impossible to say. One thing I’ve learned (the hard way, for sure) is that with series there needs to be a consistent schedule with a new book every year (or every few months if you can manage it). Otherwise, readers easily move on to other books.
Now, I should also note that this year I combined all four novels into one box set, and with the help of a Bookbub promotion, sold over 7,000 units. So while the individual sales for END GAME fell quite flat, when you combine it with the entire series in that box set, it did decently.
Oh, but that novel I also published this year under a pen name that came out only a few months ago? By this point sales for that are probably close by now to exceeding the combined sales for the individual Man of Wax books PLUS the box set. And again, that’s only for one novel that was released a few months ago. Granted, it got a major push by a publisher who also happens to own the entire platform, so that certainly helped a lot, but you can see why all this time I’ve also worked on writing standalone novels to try to sell to publishers. Because as much as I enjoy self-publishing, there’s only so much I’m able to do on my own, and having a major publisher stand behind a novel can really help give it quite a boost.
Anyway, so that was 2020. A lot of other stuff happened, which I’m sure you’ve read about in the news, but we don’t have time to get into all of that right now. So without further ado …
I never do a top 10 list, but every year I note the books that I really enjoyed and which I think others might really enjoy too.
Some were published in 2020, but many weren’t, and that’s okay, because again this isn’t a top 10 list of books published this year but instead a list of books I really liked.
I’ve put asterisks next to the titles where I listened to the audiobooks, and because of that I’ve included the narrators in parenthesis, as oftentimes the narrator really makes or breaks an audiobook.
FICTION
THE DEBRIEFING by Jeffery Deaver
THE SECOND HOSTAGE by Jeffery Deaver
MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER by Oyinkan Braithwaite
MY LOVELY WIFE by Samantha Downing
INTO THE FIRE by Gregg Hurwitz (read by Scott Brick)*
THE SHUT-IN by Duane Swierczynski and James Patterson
CAPE FEAR by John D. MacDonald
THE BOY FROM THE WOODS by Harlan Coben
THE FAMILIAR DARK by Amy Engel
DAISY JONES & THE SIX by Taylor Jenkins Reid (read by a full cast)*
NORMAL PEOPLE by Sally Rooney
THE WOODS by Harlan Coben (read by Scott Brick)*
FAIR WARNING by Michael Connelly
DEAD GIRL BLUES by Lawrence Block
THE LAST HOUSE GUEST by Megan Miranda
THE LIST by Gregg Hurwitz
NAMELESS by Dean Koontz (read by Edoardo Ballerini)*
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY by Matt Ruff
YOU CAN’T CATCH ME by Catherine McKenzie (read by Julia Whelan)*
BURIED by Jeffery Deaver
SISTERS by Daisy Johnson
GOOD GIRLS LIE by J.T. Ellison (read by Fiona Hardingham)*
BUNNY by Mona Awad
BURNER by Robert Ford
THE HOUSE ON THE WATER by Margot Hunt (read by Taylor Schilling)*
STORIES
SUICIDE WOODS by Benjamin Percy
NON-FICTION
AMERICAN CARNAGE: ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR AND THE RISE OF PRESIDENT TRUMP by Tim Alberta (read by Jason Culp)*
JUST MERCY: A STORY OF JUSTICE AND REDEMPTION by Bryan Stevenson (read by the author)*
TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH: HOW MY FAMILY CREATED THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS MAN by Mary L. Trump (read by the author)*
HOAX: DONALD TRUMP, FOX NEWS AND THE DANGEROUS DISTORTION OF TRUTH by Brian Stelter (read by the author)*
A PROMISED LAND by Barack Obama (read by the author)*
Now, what about you? Any books you read this past year you really enjoyed?
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