Book Planning Breakdown
By virtue of my annual Wrap-Up posts, I’ve discussed writings schedules quite a bit on this blog. What I haven’t gone into nearly as much, on the other hand, is the thought process behind making those schedules. Having been doing this job for so long, I have a rough idea of how much content I can produce in a given year, so it’s often a matter of looking at the available number of words to be written and carving them off into various projects.
That said, it isn’t just a simple matter of rotation. There are other factors at play, which if the title didn’t give it away, are going to fill the rest of this blog. However, we still have one factor to knock out at the top.
Rotation
Yes, I know what I wrote in the last paragraph, but I did say it wasn’t just a matter of rotation. Time between entries in active (key word here) series is definitely a factor I always keep in mind when rolling out schedules. The longer it’s been since a prior entry, the higher the project rises in importance for schedule planning. These are often the ones I’ll start planning my year with, then slot in less pressing content around that. The tricky part is that this is all a bit relative, as not all books are on the same release schedules, and that’s where things start to get more complicated.
Different Series Have Different Schedules
As the name of the section makes pretty clear, my planned release rate for series fluctuates based around several factors, one of the largest of which is word count. To give some examples for context, a book is considered a novel at 50k words, and different genres will have different expectations for length beyond that. For example, most books in the fantasy genre will clock in around 100k or more.
In my case, the various series I write all have their own approximate word count ranges I try to stay consistent with. Fred is the shortest, clocking in around 80k-90k, with only Fred #6 breaking the 100k barrier. Spells, Swords, & Stealth started out in the 80k range as well, but as it leaned more into traditional fantasy that shifted to around 130k. My larger series are ones like Villains’ Code, which was about 275k and 350k respectively, but Super Powereds still holds the crown for length with SP Year 4 clocking in around 450k.
Those of you familiar with my series might have already noticed that the shorter a series is, the more frequent it has entries, and that’s not a coincidence. Fred has gotten an entry per year because I can generally find 80k of writing time left over after the big projects of the year are accounted for. Conversely, I can only do so many of those bigger projects in a given year, so those slots have to get divvied up a bit more.
Fred runs on what was a yearly schedule before the madness that was 2020, but will still stay on a roughly annual release until it concludes. Books like Spells, Swords, & Stealth are less frequent, with those I’m aiming for one every two or three years going forward. Then you have the real big beasts, like Villains’ Code. Those basically eat up an entire writing year just to make the rough draft, so I have to seriously plan and work ahead to build up enough time for one. This series is more akin to my version of The Gunslinger in a scheduling sense, something I know will have years between releases, but that’s the trade-off for being able to create such giant entries.
Momentum
As much as that last section covered, there are still more factors at play, momentum being major among them. Despite what you might expect, I’m actually not referring to sales momentum, at least not on the series release planning level. Rather, I’m talking about story momentum, in the sense of ones that are winding down versus tales that need ramping up.
Examples make this one much easier to work with, and we have a relevant one easily at hand. While the second Villains’ Code book sees it’s audiobook release this month, the first one actually came out way back when Super Powereds was still running. I’ve said before that Forging Hephaestus started as a “for fun” project I had no intent to publish, and it’s the truth, but there was a point in the writing when I had to make the shift to viewing it as a viable release. When I did, I also accepted that it was going to take over the “big book” slot from Super Powereds, which had already entered its final book.
As Super Powereds momentum was reaching it’s end, I made sure to launch my next series in that vein before it had fully wrapped up. Half the battle of being an author is getting your books into the awareness of people who might enjoy them. Releasing the new long, action-based series while the first one was active helped make sure the audience most likely to enjoy it, existing SP fans, would take notice.
Standalones
Standalones are sort of my pinch hitters in the scheduling process. I’ve usually got a couple on deck that I’d like to write at any time, however since no one out there is expecting them, they usually take the lowest priority slot in any given year. Most often they get a chance to step up when the rest of the writing year has been divided into existing series and there’s an odd chunk left over.
The exception to this is when special circumstances intervene, like with Second Hand Curses. I’ve said before that book wouldn’t exist without Audible, as it was an Audible Original that they published. Beyond that though, us testing the waters with one another made a standalone the perfect project, which moved Second Hand Curses way up on the priority list. If not for that, it would still just be an outline waiting for the right opportunity.
Hopefully this shed some light on the thought process that goes into those wrap-up posts every year. Much as I wish I had time to write everything, sadly no one has cracked super-speed yet, so careful structure and making the most of my time is the best I can do. Although if anyone does figure out that super-speed thing, maybe shoot over an email. I definitely won’t abuse the power to get specialty beers from all across the world.