Brandon Varnell
patreon
New Anime, New Books, New Year
🕑 Added 2023-01-01 10:00:03 +0000 UTCPatrons,
Happy new year! It's 2023, which means a lot of new stuff is happening on many fronts. I feel like each year has been a very mixed bag of good, bad, and what the fuck awful. We've had some good anime and new entertainment, but a lot of stuff happening IRL has been pretty horrific lately. However, with the new year comes new a anime season, new waifus to collect, new stories to write, etc. There's just a whole lot of new.
Before I talk about the new year, however, I kinda want to discuss 2022.
2022 was a year with some serious ups and downs. I didn't publish nearly as many books as I did in 2021. I think the reason was a combination a desire to write better stories and fully switching from publishing on Amazon-exclusive to wide.
On that note, my sales haven't been as good this year as they were last year, which I attribute to being wide. Kindle Unlimited was a big proponent of my success. It's sad that I am no longer on it, but I can't condone how Amazon operates. Even now, it kinda burns me up that Amazon almost terminated my account over someone pirating my content.
One thing I've struggled with a lot are feelings of self-worth and imposter syndrome. I have often wondered if I'm cut out to be an author. I look at people like TurtleMe (author of The Beginning After the End) and see this guy who's got 3,000 Patreon subscribers, 20M views on Tapas and over 160k subscribers, and I wonder if the reason I don't have that level of success is because I'm not good enough. I like to think I've done a decent job of not letting it affect my storytelling, but it's something I have been dealing with ever since I started writing.
My confidence hit me kinda hard 2022 because I wasn't doing as well as other authors. I was no longer on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited and my sales weren't picking up on Apple Books, Google Books, Kobo, or Nook. I've tried doing FB and Reddit ads, but I didn't have much success increasing my book sales. I think that's why I've gravitated toward publishing web novels. I was hoping offering something free would bring in more readers. However, the number of patrons I have has decreased rather than increase, which makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong, and I've had some readers (especially on Royal Road) who have been really insulting and cruel, and I think that further hurt my confidence as a writer.
I don't intend to let myself keep me from writing stories. But I wanted everyone to know about this since I often internalize everything and that's not good.
Consequently, this is also why I am so grateful to all the people who are still with me. Your support means so much to me. I can continue to write because you're supporting me, both emotionally and financially. You are the best patrons a guy can ask for, and I hope I can keep doing right by you.
I am hoping to do better this year.
On that note, while I need to sell books to earn a living, I would really like to focus on making my books better. Financial stability is important. It's hard to write books when you're worried about earning enough to pay your bills or put food on the table. But I want to make the best possible books possible, and I don't want to compromise on the quality of my stories. That said, I don't plan to stop publishing just because I want to make better stories.
All my stories are gonna continue getting published at a hopefully regular schedule. I want to publish Man Made God 005, Incubus 5, and A Most Unlikely Hero 11 this year--and in this specific order. WIEDERGEBURT: Legend of the Reincarnated Warrior will continue to be published at a one volume every 3 months schedule. Volume 14 is currently on pre-order with Amazon, but it's not available on every platform, which is why I haven't made any big announcements yet. I don't even have the paperbacks ready. Lol.
Published books aside, I am continuing to give Severing Time & Space as much love as possible. The web novel version is on what could be considered volume 6 now--at least on Patreon. The version you can read on Tapas is still on the technical volume 5.
Now, let me tell you about all the anime you need to watch. This season has so many good shows coming out. Misfit of Demon King Academy season 2, Nagatoro-san 2nd Attack, Bungou Stray Dogs season 4, NieR:Automata Ver1.1a (don't watch unless you wanna cry), The Angel Next Door Spoils me Rotten, DanMachi Season 4 part 2, Spy Classroom, and so many more that I can't list them all here. I heard even Ayakashi Triangle, the new series by To Love Ru's creator, is getting adapted.
Outside of writing books and watching anime, I have two trips planned. I'll be going to Japan in March on the 25th and coming back on April 8th. I also plan to travel to Vietnam in November. I've only been out of the country once, so being able to finally visit Japan is a dream come true for me. I always wanted to go there at least once.
Now, you may be wondering: what does my Japan and Vietnam trip mean for patron? Not much. I still plan to post chapters like I normally do. You'll get two chapters of STNS on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and a chapter of my side story on Tuesday and Thursday. The time I publish chapters will be different since Japan's timezone is different from Arizona, but my hope is to maintain my publishing schedule even while I'm traveling.
There are a lot of places I want to visit in Japan. I'll be in Tokyo on week one and Kyoto during week two. I don't know which city I'm more excited to visit. Tokyo is the land where weeb dreams come true, but Kyoto has all the cool shrines and palaces. I'm excited to see both!
I've got one more exciting piece of news. Amber Lee Connors has agreed to do an interview with me. She's also gonna try and get Grace and Josh in on this. Be sure to add any questions you want in the comments and specify who the question is for.
I know a lot of people set new year's resolutions. I don't really have any of those, but I do want to make more stories for you to enjoy. Do you have any new year's resolutions? Are there any shows you are excited about this season? Anything fun happening? Feel free to share with me!
I hope you're all doing well. Let's make 2023 a good year.
Comments
Norodim
Yeah Kobo was getting bigger in the pandemic, because they were striking deals with some major book seller for very low prices. Furthermore countries which normally wouldn´t make much use of e readers or reading apps in general had a bigger demand, because in a lot of countries here we had some very stricts rules when it came down to going outside in the evening. So a lot of people were reading books or were listening to audiobooks. I have both, amazon kindle and kobo reader app. But the most of the time my friends and me end up using amazon kindle or the app, because it is more convenient. Sadly the energy crisis is not getting resolved anytime soon. The governments are preparing their people in europe, that this is only the beginning. I have seen a lot of different content creators (youtube, tiktokt, spotyfy, game producers) saying their sales are plummeting right now in europe. We have whole streets of bankrupt companies here now. Generally speaking people are reading less now, because they have the feeling to get outside more, because they were forced to stay inside a lot in a lot of countries here in europe during covid. I was writing the post before, just to tell/show you that it is not always the content creater producing content which people don´t buy or read. Your books are good. Of course people like different kind of stories or content. That is normal. But still finding the kind of content YOU produce is very hard. So keep your head up. I wish you the best!
I thought Kobo was bigger in Europe than Amazon? Kobo+ is only available on Canada and countries in Europe. I understand the issues Europe is facing right now. I can't imagine how bad that must be, and I hope everyone there is doing okay. Has there been any news on the energy crisis getting resolved? Fuck?! Doubled?! That's insane. I feel like I can't complain about gas prices in the US anymore. Thank you so much for supporting me despite all that. It really does mean a lot. I know my stories won't make the situation IRL any better, but I hope they provide you with hours of entertainment.
Norodim
Happy new year. As far as i can say your books weren't going down in quality. You are right in terms of reach. I don't know how many readers you have from europe, but at least from the european marketing standpoint, there is sadly basically only amazon or amazon kindle when it comes down to book market share here. I have seen a lot of smaller and even middle sized authors trying to get away from amazon because amazon is constantly censoring and deleting books. Even bigger japanese authors were basically purged by amazon. There were so many light novels deleted over night. But the majority of people still stay on amazon. For patreon i can only say this: Since the rework of the patreon UI a lot of users got very upset with patreon. Furthermore at least here in europe covid is over but at the same time we were hit by a severe energy and economic crisis. Furthermore the war in eastern europe. I had to cut down my patreon support a lot. It literally gave me physical pain to choose between the creators which i had to cut financial support for. My energy bills, housing, cost of food and gasoline doubbled over night. And the inflation is rising every month. Right now i am always asking myself if i really need a new book, game or film. I know this won't help you with your writing or help you to get a wider audience. But i am still keep supporting you, because the books you write are hard to find on the overall book market. So i keep supporting you. (And being competitive is normal. Of course you will look at other authors and try get an auidience as big as theirs.) (About the people writing bad reviews or cruel things. I absolutely understand you how hard and psychologically taxing it can be to deal with this kind of situations. I did discord and forum moderation for a game company for a while. It is one thing when you are a user which can simply ignore this posts. But you as an author can't just do that. I wish you all the psychological stability and sanity in the world to deal with the internet.)
I'm glad to hear it! I'll probably have more on the next books in the series soon.
Yeah. A lot of us struggle with it. Thank you so much for the kind words and support. I'm hopeful that 2023 can be amazing for all of us.
I’m looking forward to more Man Made god! Also more returns to other stories like Incubus and A most unlikely hero! Plus I’ve enjoyed the severing time & space.
Jim Moak
Happy new year! Super excited you’re getting to do some trips you’ve wanted to do. I agree with the imposter syndrome thing. I work in tech and I struggle with it constantly. You are an amazing author and I am super glad I get to read your work. Thank you for everything and I hope your 2023 is amazing.
Thank you! I'm glad you are looking foward to MMG! Yeah. Angel Next Door is gonna give me a sugar overload. I need some of that.
Happy New Year! I hope the same for you. Enjoy all the anime you're watching. :-)
Bart Ursulla Van de Velde aka High Four
Happy new year! Hope you have a wonderful 2023, and good health throughout the year. I will keep enjoying your stories, and keep looking forward to the new releases. Most of these anime are on my watch next list already so I'll watch them eventually, but first the one's I'm watching now.
Jim Payne
Happy New Year! Hope all is well. Loving Severing and looking forward to Man Made God. Angel Next door should hopefully be the diabetes inducing perfection we deserve!
