Today I'm pulling back the curtain and giving you a peak at what goes on behind the scenes. Specifically, I want to share some data supporting why I decided to stop writing books in the Sunshine Walkingstick Series.
Before I get into that, here's some background.
Sunny's first novel, Greenwood Cove, was a side project I wrote while publishing under two other pen names, Lucy Varna (SciFi and Fantasy Romance) and V.R. Cumming (Dark Fantasy and Paranormal Romance). It took two years to write, almost to the day. I loved the story so much, that I decided to extend it into a series.
At the time, I thought Sunny's stories would be different enough that they would need to be published under another pen name, so I created this one (Celia Roman) for just that purpose. In January 2017, I published Greenwood Cove, followed in February by its sequel, The Deep Wood. Later that year, I wrote and published Sunny's third novel, Cemetery Hill.
This pen name has had a lot of ups and downs, and I do mean a lot. I've never been able to publish consistently under this name and trying to has pushed me into burnout again and again. I know why (in short: I abandoned what worked for me) and have been trying to remedy those problems in the past six to nine months. Those efforts have paid off, but that's a story for another day.
Last year, I published Sunny's sixth novel, Vampire Alley. Despite plans to write three additional novels and several shorter stories, I decided to end the series there, on a very poignant note. The reason has less to do with my ongoing battles with burnout and more to do with the financials, and that has to do with another series entirely.
Vanessa Kinley, Witch PI
Between publishing Greenwood Cove and Vampire Alley, I wrote and published another series, Vanessa Kinley, Witch PI.
Nessa started as an idea based on premade cover art crafted by Nocturne Cover Arts. This later became the cover for the first novel, Between a Witch and a Hard Place.
Before finishing that first novel, I had created a rough outline for a four-book series as well as branded titles. Later, I also wrote a prequel novella to use as a reader magnet, The Single Witch's Guide to Online Dating.
Roughly around the time that I was developing this series, I attended a 20Books to 50k author dinner in Atlanta, led and organized by bestselling SciFi and Fantasy author Craig Martelle. There, I met, among others, bestselling Dark Romance author Angel Lawson.
I didn't know anything about her at the time. So, when I was seated across from her at dinner, I bounced the Nessa idea off her and two other writers. (If I had known how successful she was, I might've held my tongue.) In my mind, I'm terrible at marketing and branding, so I really needed (I felt) the validation of feedback. She and the other authors I spoke with loved the covers and thought the titles were very well-branded, which encouraged me to finish writing that first book.
That book was published in November 2021. And then I burned out. Hard. It took roughly 15 months to finish and publish Nessa's second novel, A Witch and Her Familiar; three more months to get the third novel, Black Witch Rising, out; and another ten months to release the fourth and final novel, A Witch Called Justice.
In fact, that fourth novel was released just three months prior to Sunny's sixth novel, Vampire Alley, which factored prominently into my decision to stop writing in the Sunshine Walkingstick Series.
Comparing Timelines and Financials
To recap:
-- Sunny's first novel was published in January 2017. The series now encompasses a prequel novella, six main-series novels, and several shorter stories.
-- Nessa's first novel was published in November 2022. The series now includes a prequel novella and four main-series novels.
All the main-series novels in both series have earned out, meaning the financial outlay I invested in covers, etc., for each book has been covered by sales.
But here's where the series diverge. The first clue lies in the number of preorders: the final Nessa novel had 1.7 times more preorders than the final Sunny novel. Upon its release, A Witch Called Justice had paid for itself in preorders alone. Every penny it's made since then has been pure profit. By contrast, it took the final Sunny novel several weeks after its release to earn out. I have an idea why, which I'll cover in a moment.
For now, let's look at some other financial data.
Nessa #4 and Sunny #6 were released three months apart. Since the latter's release, the former has outsold the latter by more than 2.5 times. So for every dollar that Vampire Alley brings in, A Witch Called Justice earns $2.50. They're both priced at $3.99, so retail price is not a factor here.
Another relevant data point is series earnings. Sunny's series was introduced five and a half years before Nessa's series. Granted, I made a lot of mistakes with Sunny's series: the first covers were entirely wrong for the stories and I initially placed it in the wrong genres. Once those were corrected, the series sold better. Two books were chosen for BookBub newsletter ads, the gold standard for book advertising; those spots are incredibly difficult to snag.
Despite that, Nessa's series has just surpassed Sunny's series in sales on Amazon. Sunny has out earned Nessa on Barnes & Noble, Apple, and various small online retailers roughly three times over, but when sales from all retailers are compiled, Sunny has only out earned Nessa by roughly $500.
Finally, each of Nessa's main-series novels has earned more on Amazon, on average, than Sunny's main-series novels despite not having been on the market as long.
Branding and Marketing
I mentioned earlier that I have an idea why Vampire Alley took longer to earn out than A Witch Called Justice.
The reason is relatively straightforward: I made a deliberate effort to write and brand the Vanessa Kinley Series to market. "Write to market" is an indie-author term indicating that a story has been written with key market factors in mind, such as tropes and character archetypes that readers love and/or writing in a growing subgenre.
When I set out to write Greenwood Cove, Sunny's first novel, I deliberately aimed to counter conventional Southern stereotypes. I tried to stay true not only to Sunny's voice, but also to the very real lives of backwoods Southerners. That's why her family spends so much story time cooking and eating: meals are the glue for many Southern families and communities. It's why I tried to render her accent faithfully. And so on.
My goals for Nessa's series were very different. With it, I deliberately took the things readers love about Sunny (kickass female character, a romantic subplot, family secrets, etc.), but aimed instead at the wider Urban Fantasy market. From the covers to the titles to the tropes, Nessa was meant to please both my existing fan base and to bring in a larger audience while also delivering the same fast-paced, action packed, tightly written ride.
Judging by reviews and sales alone, it's succeeded in doing just that. The Vanessa Kinley Series is currently my top-selling series. It's the easiest to advertise and it consistently draws in new readers in a way Sunny's series does not.
The Smart Thing To Do
Don't get me wrong: I love Sunny, to the point that I had originally planned on extending her series to nine books, several additional shorter stories, and two spinoff series. Creatively speaking, that makes sense. The ideas are there, so why not write them?
But there's a balance to maintaining a writing career. It's not all about creativity and ideas. Financially speaking, continuing to pour energy into Sunny's series makes zero sense. It's difficult to market and doesn't sell as well as some of my other books.
No, the smart thing to do is to extend Nessa's series. Even writing under my other pen names doesn't make as much sense, business wise, as writing more Nessa books.
The problem is...burnout. At one point, just the thought of writing more stories for this pen name made me sick to my stomach.
That's a little better now (I only feel a mild dread now when I think of writing Urban Fantasy), but I've spent the past six months or so writing in a completely different genre with zero pressure to write anything else.
That doesn't mean I'm not tempted.
Additional Hurdles
But there are problems with writing more Celia Roman books.
The first is that my cover designer stopped designing. Even if I wanted to write other Sunny and Nessa books, it would be difficult to match the current covers. And for branding purposes, I definitely would want that.
Secondly, I've painted myself into a corner by writing in a super specialized niche, Urban Fantasy Mystery with a series-long romantic subplot. Super, super niche.
I hate feeling confined. It's why I decided to scrap this pen name rather than trying to break out of that tiny niche, even though business wise it makes sense to try. I reached a point where I'd rather start from scratch with another pen name than try to steer this pen name back into a wider market.
Do I have ideas for other story worlds that would roughly fit this pen name? Oh, boy, do I. I've discussed those elsewhere.
Will I ever write them?
At this point, that's the wrong question to ask. The right one is: will I ever be able to write Fantasy again?
Protecting My King
As I said, right now I'm focused on doing whatever I can just to keep writing. As Becca Syme put it, protecting our writing process and productivity is the king on an author's chessboard. If the king falls, so do our careers. I made a conscious choice to guard my king (productivity) by sacrificing my queen (earnings), hopefully temporarily.
I don't know if that was the correct choice. I just know that I never want to be in a place, ever again, where I can't write or where writing leads to continual burnout. That's what happened during most of the 2017-2024 years while I focused almost solely on writing Sunny and Nessa's series. I never want to live through that again.
So, if protecting my king means writing in other genres, ok. If it means leaving a successful pen name behind, ok.
On the other hand, I'm actively trying to get back to a place where Fantasy is once again part of my repertoire. Again, I hate feeling confined, and that includes being shut out of a genre I love because of burnout.
I don't know what the future holds, and I hate saying never, even where Sunny is concerned. Instead, let me close by saying that I have ideas. Maybe one day my creativity will be strong enough for me to write them.