Hey all, Robin here. Michael and I might just be old fuddy-duddys, but we aren't glued to our phones (I don't know where mine is most days) like many are. As such, we've never used Tik-Tok or Instargram, and we aren't really on social media (goodreads being the exception). Yes, we have facebook accounts, but we haven't looked at them in years, and I really need to make Michael a BlueSky account (as we don't use twitter these days either), but there are just too many other things to do.
Being as isolated as we are (both in our remote living location and electronically), we don't know much about Michael's popularity - or lack there of. But there are two metrics I look at with a fair amount of regularity and that is the number of followers on Goodreads and Amazon.
Well, today I looked and Michael hit 42,000 followers on Amazon - that's an amazing number to me. Especially when we started this whole "writing thing" and I took up the mantle of "getting people to know the books exist" I asked Michael, "So how would you need to consider yourself a success?" He replied, "If fifty people read my books." But then he paused a moment, and added a clarification. "But they have to be people I don't know."
Now, granted, not all 42,000 of those people have Michael's books, and while he has "sold" more than 2.5M copies, we also don't know many of those have been read, but based on review numbers, I think it's safe to say it's more than 50 :-)
Michael's numbers on Goodreads are even better: 92,400+ followers. There was a time when he was ranked #40 on the most followed list, but he's slipped from that height over the years.He's now barely haning on to the bottom rung (#50), and I suspect he will soon fall off completely, but I think he's been on it for over 10 years which is quite impressive.
So while I have your attention, if you don't currently follow Michael on Amazon or Goodreads, I'm going to make an appeal for you to do so. Why? Well it's not to boost Michael's ego — he doesn't know any of this "number stuff," and I suspect he doesn't care one way or the other. It's only me, the ex-engineer, that looks at such things. But if you do hit follow, you'll be notified when a new book of Michael's hit the shelves, and I think if you are reading these words, that might be something you'd be interested in knowing.
As always, thanks for the amazing support.
As many of you may know, the Legends of the First Empire was a hybrid publishing project. The first three books were released through Penguin Random House's Del Rey imprint, and the last three books were self-published by us. These books were also released as mass market paperbacks, ebooks, and audiobooks (both dramatic multi-cast dramatic and non-dramatic single-narrator) editions.
The Legends series has done very well for us:
Hey all, Robin again. We've seen some recent success at some of our Reader Initiatives including:
For those who aren't familiar, Royal Road is a serialized fiction site where authors (both aspiring and established) post stories for free. It tends to lean toward the LitRPG and Progression fantasy genres, but there is also a fair amount of Science Fiction, Cozy Fantasy, and even a bit of traditional epic stories.
I started posting content on this site about a year and a half ago. This includes short stories, entire novels, as well as bonus features (like the deleted scenes from Esrahaddon, and recaps of Legends of the First Empire books).
In the world of Royal Road, Michael is an extremely "small fish" - which is something that baffles me since he has more than 2.5 Million books sold. But, it is what it is, and I'm not planning on abandoning the platform. To date we have 1,645 pages posted (over 500,000 words). Here's what you'll find there:
Hey all, Robin here. I want to first thank everyone who has been commenting about our new feature Sullivan's Spoils. The first episode has been received very well - and I'm all preparing episode 2.
Right now a lot of our efforts are going to "The Cycle, a project that I'ms sure will be Michael's biggest and best work yet. But IT IS ONLY for those who have read all 20 books in the Elan Universe. If you skip Riyria, or Legens, or Rise and Fall, then you absolutely should skip "The Cycle" - because it's ONLY designed for die-hard fans and it will make little to no sense to those who try to read it without the pre-requisites.
Luckily, Audible is going to help those who have missed the Rise and Fall series, as they put Book #1, Nolyn, in one of their huge promotions - Buy One Get One Free Sale. And if you've read Legends, then you absolutely won't want to miss Farilane. Both Michael and I think it's his best single work ever, especially for those who read Legends first.
There are a lot of good titles in the sale, and I thought I should give you some other choices for your "other credit pick. So here goes:
| Title | Author | Rating | # ratings |
| Nolyn | Michael J. Sullivan. | 4.6 | 6,771 |
| The Princess of Potential | delemhach | 4.8 | 631 |
| Bastion | Phil Tucker | 4.7 | 3,318 |
| Circe | Madeline Miller | 4.7 | 55,327 |
| The Wizard's Butler | Nathan Lowell | 4.7 | 8,395 |
| Dawn of Wonder | Johnathan Renshaw | 4.7 | 42,418 |
On Monday March 24th, we received 20 pallets of Drumindor books and on Thursday April 3rd, a USPS truck with 11 pallets consisting of 2,419 orders left our warehouse.
For those who don't know, publishing works on a quarterly sales cycle that has certain calendar cutoffs. Based on it's print date, this title was slated for the fall 2025 sales calendar, and the earliest a book in that quarter can go live in the retail chain is August. Tuesdays are always release days in the book business, so we made Drumindor's book release date August 5th. So, from now until then, pre-order pages are up, and the more pre-orders we get, the sales reps will work harder to convince the buyers at the various retail sites to make their first order a high number.
If you want to pre-order, here are some links you can use: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books-a-Millon | !ndigo | Waterstones | Powells | Wallmart | Target | Blackwells | Foyles | IndieBound | Bookshop.org | Canadian Indie Bookstores | Thalia | Beter World Books.
Oh, and if you use a libary, they take book request from patrons seriously and usually they have an online form for submitting book requests. So it would be greatly appreciated if you would ask them to add a copy of Drumindor to their collection. Use ISBN 978-1943363711 when making a request.
I've also modified our own online store to take orders for both editions of Drumindor and you can only purchase the deluxe edition directly from us. Buying direct has several advantages:
