Greetings and Salutations!
Like many, too many, my road to becoming an author wasn't an easy one. I wrote in a variety of genres from 1979 to 1994 and after thirteen novels, and more than a hundred rejections, I quit…vowing never to write creatively again. Well, never turned out to be almost a decade, as I couldn't suppress the itch any longer. Over those eight years, a story had been growing in my head and I decided I would write it on just one condition: that I wouldn't seek publication.
My plan was to write something just to please myself and to share with a few friends and family. My youngest daughter was struggling with reading (she's dyslexic), so I wrote a fantasy series with her in mind (Lord of the Rings is what ignited my passion for reading and ultimately writing when I was thirteen). Those books (written from 2004 - 2008) became my debut series, The Riyria Revelations. After reading the third book, my wife insisted my writing "just had to get out there." I refused because I knew that path led to darkness and despair, so she picked up the gauntlet on my behalf.
After about a year, Robin had amassed her own pile of agent query rejections (more than 200 if I recall), but she finally found an agent to represent the series. After a year with no offers, that agent closed her office to care for her terminally-ill husband. Robin considered self-publishing, but also sent the first manuscript to a few small presses that didn't require agent representations. One of the four, Aspirations Media Inc., offered a no-advance contract which I signed.in early 2008.
AMI was well intended, but also strapped for cash. There were times when the warehouse refused to ship my books to bookstores because of outstanding warehouse fees. One cold winter's day Robin and I actually drove to Ohio and purchased several hundred copies of my own books to clear the publisher's debt and return the titles to bookstore shelves. In March 2009, a month before AMI was supposed to publish the second book of the series, we learned they didn't have the money for its press run.
Because there were already events planned for April (bookstore signings and bookclub meetings) our only option was to self-publish. We reclaimed the book's rights, edited, formatted and used print-on-demand, barely making the April 1st release schedule. Because we wanted to maintain a release every six months schedule, the only choice was to continue to self-publish. About a year after AMI's release of the first book, I sold out the first press run and as they had no money for a second, the rights for that book reverted and we self-published it as well.
Self-publishing in the early years wasn't very profitable, but as the number of titles I released grew (along with the popularity of ereaders), things got better. By the time the four book came out I was selling a respectable 1,000 copies a month and with the release of book #5 the first month's sales jumped to over 2,500. With just one book left in the series, Robin wondered if it made sense to try New York again.
By this time, I had a foreign rights agent who had negotiated a number of overseas translations. She agreed to represent the title for English rights and Robin and I figured it would take six-months to a year before anything would come of it...and more likely than not, nothing would. Teri submitted to seventeen publishers and within a week had interest from about half of them. Orbit (fantasy imprint of big-six Hachette Book Group) made a pre-emptive six-figure offer with an accelerated release schedule. We agreed.
Now, this is where the story gets really surreal. The time is November 2010, no one knows about the Orbit deal (it wasn't made public) but I, like many moderately successful self-published authors) saw a remarkable increase in sales. I was suddenly selling 10,000 - 12,000 books a month and earning $45,000 - $55,000 for November, December and January of 2011.
In March, we announced the Orbit deal, which unfortunately would delay the release of the last book. In August and September, my self-published books were removed from the market to make way for the Orbit editions. They took the six-book series and re-published it as three, two-book omnibus editions. The books came out in back-to-back months from November 2011 to January 2012.
During 2011 and 2012 I wrote four novels. One was a contemporary fantasy called Antithesis, which was actually a rewrite of a novel I had written in 1986 called Wizards. I wasn't satisfied with its result and it still is sitting in a drawer. Two of the novels were prequels to my Riyria Revelations, which I also sold to Orbit. Again, they released the books in consecutive months The Crown Tower came out in August 2013 and The Rose and the Thorn in September . . . coincidentally on my birthday! The two novels tell the origin story of Riyria and how Royce and Hadrian met, their first few jobs together, and puts them on the path of a friendship which will eventually form bonds as strong as steel. The fourth was a science fiction novel called Hollow World which I had no intention to write.
Hollow World has its own rocky road. It was pushed to the top of my writing queue (I always have about eight or nine novels just waiting their turn) purely by accident. I was asked to contribute a short story to an anthology for charity. When my wife read the submission, she was awestruck...but felt it had so much more potential if expanded to a novel. Several people in my writing critique group gave similar reactions, so I wrote a different short for the anthology and set about expanding Hollow World.
Much like my Riyria stories, Hollow World poured out of me with effortless abandon. Concepts and themes that had been forming over decades fit like perfect puzzle pieces. When it was done, I considered it one of the best things I ever wrote...but also recognized that it was (a) controversial (b) hard to confine in most genre definitions (c) would probably be a "hard sell." to mainstream publishing.
As expected, Orbit turned down Hollow World, like Riyria, Robin was convinced his book had to "get out there" so we decided once more to self-publish. Times had changed, self-publishing had grown into a viable path for publication, but we would only self-publish if we did it "right." This meant hiring the same industry professionals that the big-five use to release their books. For the cover, we wanted to use the artist that had created my French edition covers. For structural editing, Betsy Mitchell was a perfect choice. Formerly editor-in-chief for Del Rey for a decade, Betsy had edited more than 150 novels, many of which were award winning and best selling. For copy editing, we selected two people who had three master's degrees between them, edited multiple New York Times bestsellers, and award nominations for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Tiptree awards. Our goal was to make the self-published work indistinguishable from the big-five released titles. We anticipated this would cost about $6,000.
Robin came up with the brilliant idea of using a Kickstarter. We decided to ask for $3,000 figuring we would foot 1/2 the bill for Hollow World and hopefully readers would chip in the other half. Plus, we thought that was a goal that we should be able to reach. We were wrong. The Kickstarter ended up earning more than $31,000 and funding at more than 1000%.
After the Kickstarter, another major publisher stepped forward with an attractive five-figure offer for Hollow World. The problem is they wanted the standard rights: print, ebook, and audio. Having the wide distribution of print is attractive, but we have seen a lack of innovation from publishers with regard to ebooks. Most still insist on DRM encoding, have no provision for bundling with print editions, and aren't willing to experiment with Netflix style models for book buying (such as Oyster and Kindle Unlimited). We turned it down. But Robin had a wild idea that we could get a print-only deal...and she was right. Award winning Tachyon Publications came in with a much smaller advance, which was fine with us. After all, they were only getting one of the rights (and not even the piece of the pie that we expected to be the biggest income producer). Similarly, we sold the audio rights to Recorded Books, and have also received translation rights for several countries.
After Hollow World, I returned to the world of Elan with a new series, The Legends of the First Empire. You see, I have 8,000 years of history about the world my Riyria stories are set, but only I know about it. I loved toying with the idea that history is written by the victors and the "actual" events probably played out much differently than people think. I also like the idea that it's actual deeds of ordinary people who make the difference. And so I started writing what I thought would be a trilogy about Novron, the love of his life Persephone, and how the First Empire was formed. The idea behind this series was it would be standalone and no knowledge of Riyria would be necessary, but for those that had read the other books, they would have a few ah-ha moments as they see the origins of certain things mentioned in the Riyria books. In addition they would learn the truth in some key points of my world that I'd been "less than honest" about. After all, history is written by the victors, and it's easy to supress or even erase inconvenient truths that don't fit the narrative of those in power. Well, three books turned to four and four became five and the series eventually became six, eerily matching the number of books in the Riyria Revelations. In many ways, this series is really two closely related trilogies, and an innocent comment by a minor character opened a door to my world that only I previously knew about.
As with all things involving me and traditionally publishing, The Legends of the First Empire didn't go in a straight line. Having published eight novels through the now "Big Five" and one through a small press, I expected that Legends would show a return to my self-publishing past. Orbit had a right of first refusal to my next work, and I had only one request . . . I wanted to move up to hardcover followed by paperback releases, but they refused. You see, hardcover releases are reserved for a publisher's "A-list" authors, and Orbit just didn't see me that way. To complicate matters further, I was determined to retain my audio rights because my audio advances had been higher than offers for all three rights (print, ebook, and audio). While I had two low six-figure advances books for Revelations (six books) and Chronicles (two books). I sold the audio only rights for the third Riyria Chronicle for six figures - and that was for a single book!
So before I allowed my agent to start shopping around The Legends series, I sold the audio rights for what (at the time of negotiations) was a four book series. I knew that having the audio rights off the table might jeopardize it's ability for traditional publishing, but as I mentioned, I had already slated this series for self-publication, but Penguin Random House's Del Rey imprint surprised me with an offer I couldn't refuse. Not only were they going to do hardcovers, but the advance was more than a half a million dollars for the four books. I quick calculation convinced Robin and I that we wouldn't be able to earn that kind of money through self-publishing, so we accepted the deal, especially since it was only for print and ebooks, and the audio rights for those books had already given me my highest advance to date. But there was a problem. There's always a problem.
By this time I had a new agent, and I made it crystal clear what my requirements were regarding non-compete clauses. For those that don't know, a non-compete limits what an author can release, and my first non-compete essentially said that I couldn't write any book without first getting my publisher's permission so that any new book wouldn't "cut in" to their book sales. This was, of course, ridiculous - but also common in the industry, and it took Robin six months of negotiating to get this clause "defanged" to the point we could sign the contract. When we received the "deal memo" for the books, the non-compete wasn't what we expected. They wouldn't let us release ANY book that is based in Elan until after their books had all hit the market. This would mean the next Royce and Hadrian book couldn't hit the street for somewhere between six and eight years (depending on editing and a yearly release schedule for their books). That was just much too long. But my agent assured me that the deal memo was mistaken, and that Del Rey knew would respect my standard non-compete, which provided an exclusive window of several months on either side of the publisher's release, but that other books could be released outside of those windows.
Many moons later, the contract arrived, and low and behold, the non-compete clause the same as the deal memo. To this day we don't know where the disconnect was. Did Del Rey only hear what they wanted to hear? Did the agent misrepresent our intentions in order to get 15% of a very high advance? Regardless, it wasn't acceptable, so the deal teetered on the verge of dying before it could be signed.
But Robin, is both intelligent and innovative. She came up with a plan. It essentially meant releasing the next Royce and Hadrian book BEFORE the books in the Legend of the First Empire series hit the shelf. In addition, she could "sneak in" a fourth Riyria Chronicle if she didn't iniitally release it to the retail chain and only sold it directly to consumers (through Kickstarter and direct to consumer sales). Then once the Del Rey books were released, she could put it into the retail chain. Those two concessions would allow us to work around the non-compete, but only if I could write the next Chronicle quickly, really quickly. I think it took 63 days.
In 2015, I released the third book in the Riyria Chronicles, The Death of Dulgath. Because the first two books of the series did a nice job showing Riyria's origin, this one left me free to explore completely new ground. As such, The Death of Dulgath is a standalone novel and provides yet another way for people to start with the Riyria tales. It also provided me with the ability to provide a bit of a bridge between The Legends of the First Empire and modern-day Elan. There are Easter eggs in that novel which won't mean much on first reading, but those who read it after the new series, they'll see little winks and nods for "being in the know." Like Hollow World, this project was also launched by a successful Kickstarter and became the 3rd highest funded, and 2nd most backed fiction project in Kickstarter history at that time.
In 2016, I released the first book in The Legends of the First Empire series, Age of Myth. This series goes back 3,000 years to show the founding of the First Empire and tell the true stories about Novron and the first war to save mankind. Age of Myth was my most successful launch to date, passing 115,000 sales before it's anniversary date. It also made the Washington Post's Hardcover Bestseller list. In 2017, the second book of the series, Age of Swords, released, and it outperformed its successor in terms of pre-orders and initial sales. It hit the USA Today bestselling list as well as landing it's own place on the the Washington Post's Hardcover Bestseller list. Also in 2017 (December 5th to be precise), I launched another standalone Riyria Chronicle. The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter, which is an adventure that takes Royce and Hadrian to Alburn and the sea-side city of Rochelle where a wealth whiskey baron's daughter has disappeared and more than one ancient myth terrorizes the town. This launch also included a Kickstarter that surpassed either of the other two.
In 2018, the third book in the series, Age of War, released (July 3, 2018), and for the first time, I hit the New York Times Bestseller List (and once more made the lists for USA Today and Washington Post's hardcover list). The retail release of Winter's Daughter went live in October.
By this time, I had surpassed my tenth year anniversary as a published author (The Crown Conspiracy was released by AMI in October 2008) and sold more than 1.6 Million copies of my books in the English language. I also had more than 75 foreign language translation contracts, and my titles had appeared on more than 250 best-of or most-anticipated lists.
In 2016, I released the first book in The Legends of the First Empire series, Age of Myth. This series goes back 3,000 years to show the founding of the First Empire and tell the true stories about Novron and the first war to save mankind. Age of Myth was my most successful launch to date, passing 115,000 sales before it's anniversary date. It also made the Washington Post's Hardcover Bestseller list. In 2017, the second book of the series, Age of Swords, released, and it outperformed its successor in terms of pre-orders and initial sales. It hit the USA Today bestselling list as well as landing it's own place on the the Washington Post's Hardcover Bestseller list. Also in 2017 (December 5th to be precise), I launched another standalone Riyria Chronicle. The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter, which is an adventure that takes Royce and Hadrian to Alburn and the sea-side city of Rochelle where a wealth whiskey baron's daughter has disappeared and more than one ancient myth terrorizes the town. This launch also included a Kickstarter that surpassed either of the other two.
In 2018, the third book in the series, Age of War, released (July 3, 2018), and for the first time, I hit the New York Times Bestseller List (and once more made the lists for USA Today and Washington Post's hardcover list). The retail release of Winter's Daughter went live in October.
By this time, I had surpassed my tenth year anniversary as a published author (The Crown Conspiracy was released by AMI in October 2008) and sold more than 1.6 Million copies of my books in the English language. I also had more than 75 foreign language translation contracts, and my titles had appeared on more than 250 best-of or most-anticipated lists.
Just before the release of Age of War, it was time to negotiate for the "rest of the series." In the years since the contract negotiation the series had expanded to six books and Del Rey only had the first four. And this is when the true break with traditional publishing came. Robin reminded the publisher that the audio rights were already gone so for the last two books, they had to buy just print and ebook rights. Even though the books were selling beyond expectations (yes we earned out that advance - which we didn't think we would), they couldn't sign ANY contract without audio rights. It was a new corporate policy at the Penguin Random House level, and no exceptions could be made. To complicate matters, as the series expanded it didn't "split well" when taking into consideration the contracts. In other words, it was much better as a 3 and 3 rather than a 4 and 2, and with Robin's amazing negotiation skills, she gave back the advance of book #4 (returning $135,000 to them), and both parties got their nicely tied up trilogies under the same series name.
And so, In 2019, Age of Legend (July 9, 2019) hit the street through self-publishing, but we leveraged the distribution chain of Grim Oak Press to get the hardcovers into the nationwide bookstore chain. When all was said and done, the books were released at about one year intervals and yes, we were able to sneak in the fourth Riyria Chronicle. All four of those books were launched with Kickstarters, and each one topped the one that came before. Oh, and remember how I said that we calculated that it would be impossible to earn the same kind of money self-publishing as what Del Rey was offering? Well, we were wrong on that score. Because of the higher per-book earnings the last three books of Legends have earned between 200% - 250% more than the first three. Even though they have a much more robust distribution system and have been available for sale longer.
And so, In 2019, Age of Legend (July 9, 2019) hit the street through self-publishing, but we leveraged the distribution chain of Grim Oak Press to get the hardcovers into the nationwide bookstore chain. When all was said and done, the books were released at about one year intervals and yes, we were able to sneak in the fourth Riyria Chronicle. All four of those books were launched with Kickstarters, and each one topped the one that came before. Oh, and remember how I said that we calculated that it would be impossible to earn the same kind of money self-publishing as what Del Rey was offering? Well, we were wrong on that score. Because of the higher per-book earnings the last three books of Legends have earned between 200% - 250% more than the first three. Even though they have a much more robust distribution system and have been available for sale longer.
So between 2015 and 2020 I released eight books. The six books of The Legends of the First Empire and another two with Royce and Hadrian. And while those were being rolled out, I started writing what was initially named "the bridge series." There are 3,000 years of history between Legends and Riyria and so it made sense to fill in some of those gaps. The idea was to show important points in the history of Elan through the eyes of three historical figures:
- Nolyn: son of Persephone and Nyphron and second emperor of the first empire)
- Farilane: the unwanted twin in the line of succession who spent her life searching for long lost books during a time when reading was forbidden
- Esrahaddon: one of the two tutors of the would-be emperor who, depending on who you talked to, either destroyed or saved the first empire
As with Legends, we sold the audio rights for The Rise and Fall trilogy while it was still in development. And it brought in a whopping seven figures! Yes, you heard that right. Someone was willing to pay a million dollars for three books and JUST the audio rights. So, not unsurprisingly, we took that deal, and are now 100% back to self-publishing, because no publisher will buy a series without the audio rights - but that is just fine with us.
We, of course, used Kickstarters once again, and because we self-published, not only could we offer hardcover editions but also deluxe faux-leather copies. These are amazing books: Smyth Sewn bindings, hubbed spines, ribbon bookmarks, four color end sheets. They are true works of art, and it's opened the doors for other deluxe editions including the Riyria Revelations and The Riyria Chronicles - which we had to buy the rights from Orbit to produce.
As I write this, it's now the end of 2024, and I've released the fifth book in the Riyria Chronicle series (Drumindor). It's advance for the audio rights topped even that of Legends - bringing in $400,000 for a single book. I say released, and the ebook and audio are available for purchase), but the physical copies (both regular and deluxe hardcovers) are on the press and should ship to us around mid-January 2025. Because of how the retail publishing calendar works, they won't be available to the retail chain until August 2025, but copies can be purchased directly from us in the meantime.
As for book sales. Well it took me about a decade to get to 1.6M and I've hit another million in the last six years. So I'm past 2.5M now. That's an almost mind boggling amount - so thank you all for your support over the last 16 years.
For almost three years, I've been working on what is now titled "The Cycle." At this point the first book is written, and I'm over 100,000 words into the second. Things are going well. So much so, that I was willing to announce the series existence during the release of Drumindor. Will it see the light of day? The jury is still out. I have set an extremely high bar that must be cleared, and it won't be until the last words are typed that I'll know whether I achieved that which I set out to do. Oh, and yes, there are stil more Riyria Chronicle books planned - one in particular which will fill in some needed holes for The Cycle - I've outlined it, but I'm not sure when it will be written or where in the publication schedule it will fall. But rest assured that Drumindor is not the last we've seen of Royce and Hadrian.
If you would like to learn more about "The Cycle" you can read about it here:
Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope you’ll become a follower as that’s how I know whether people are interested in what I have to say.
Michael.
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