I took a vacation from publishing this year. I have 6 books finished in one series, 5 books done in another, and rather than submit to my usual publisher, I thought I'd take a year off, think about publishing and what I want to do, and approach everything fresh next year.
I still have a very active back-list that I can promote, I have a good relationship with both of my publishers, so I'm confident I can get back in the game if I want to. I am going to look at other publishers, just because I think it's good to branch out. I love the two I've worked with, but another publisher might stretch me a bit, and I do like a challenge.
The 6-book mystery series is, I think, ready to go. My other series, the Endless American Dream, is still in process. I won't even think about submitting it until I have 7 book of the 9 book series done. At the rate I'm going, that might be the end of next year. We'll see.
I did do some promotion this year on Goodreads and other spots, but I'm not sure it paid off. However, I'm not sure that any blatant promotion really helps. It's word of mouth, "buzz", that sells books, I believe. It's hard to generate that. I'm going to delve back into promotion at the end of this year, to work on getting more of my back-list books sold. My goal is to wrap up my current manuscript by mid-October then dig in to submit to publishers, do promotion, and decide on strategies for next year. I may write another mystery later this year, too. I already wrote 2 this year, so I may not.
One thing I'd like to try is to write the penultimate book in my Dream series next year. Here's my plan:
The Dream Series
Nightfall (the First Generation)
Volume 1: Books 1-3
Volume 2: Books 4-6
Volume 3: Books 7-9
Midnight
Generation 3 (the grandchildren of people in books 1-9)
Morning
Generation 5 (the grandchild of the main character in Generation 3)
So I might write "Morning" next.
Or maybe not. We'll see!
Lots of thoughts about how to handle my "free" time once I wrap up the current writing on Book 5. But I have to do that first, so it's time to wrap up this post and get busy!
