Hello, one and all. Soooo, 2019 is upon us. When the hell did that happen? I hope everyone had a great New Year, and the road ahead proves fruitful for us all.

You may or may not remember, but at the start of 2018, I made a blog post where I outlined my goals for that year. So, I figured it would be good to go back and see if I hit them or not (spoilers, not really). But goals are good, if you fall short or not. This is more from a business standpoint than anything to do with the art or love of horror, but it might be helpful to some of the other amazing horror authors I’ve gotten to know over the last two years. So, to sum up, what I aim to achieve in 2018:

  • Books to be released: 4
  • Ebooks to be sold: 15,000
  • Paperbacks to be sold: 600
  • Audiobooks to be sold: 500

And how did I actually do?…

  • Actual books released: 2
  • Actual Ebooks sold: 6970
  • Actual Paperbacks sold: 789
  • Actual Audiobooks sold: 2,674

As you can see, I grossly overestimated how many Ebooks I could move, and only managed about half of that. Of course, I only managed to release half the books I originally intended, which plays a part in that. Even so, I bettered what I aimed for with Paperbacks and blew the Audiobook target out of the water.

So what did I learn? Firstly, Audiobooks rock. I know a huge part of that is my producer, Hannibal Hills, is amazing at what he does. But these babies sold better than I ever thought possible. Looking forward to improving on that this year. But the other thing is, that even though getting four books out a year would be great, at the minute with a full-time day job, wife, young child and another on the way, it just isn’t practical. So I need to be more realistic in that regard. That’s why I’ve reset my goals for this year, and the main change is I’m only aiming to release two new books. If I get more, all the better. However, you will see I’m still being optimistic about the Ebook targets. That’s because, later in the year, I will be able to put out some boxsets containing my previous releases, so hopefully help boost things. So here are my targets:

  • Books to be released: 4 (2 new releases and 2 boxsets)
  • Ebooks to be sold: 12,000
  • Paperbacks to be sold: 1,000
  • Audiobooks to be sold: 5,000
  • To be crowned King of the World

The last one may be a bit overly ambitious, but I’ve definitely got my sights set on it 🙂 Whether the other goals will be achieved, time will tell. BUT, I’ll be halfway to hitting my new release target on March the 11th – because that is when my new book will be released! I’ll put out a little more info in the coming days, but really excited about it. One word of warning… this motherfucker is DARK! So make sure you’re ready for that.

And I’ll leave it there for now. Expect more frequent updates in the coming weeks. But keep loving horror everyone!

Lee