How long till book 2?

TLDR; It depends on how well the first book sells, but 1-3 years from today is the goal.

One of the biggest fears of any reader when choosing to start an unfinished series is that the next book will take forever, or worse yet never be published. Some of the greatest series of modern times are unfortunately fanning the flames of this fear. Rothfuss, & Martin have left truly astounding series unfinished for decades, Robert Jordan took so long that he passed away before finishing his series. It’s not a new problem. I recall decades ago David Eddings starting additional series before completing his Mallorean.

I assure you that all of these events have affected me too, and as a reader I found myself having great difficulty forgiving these phenomenally successful writers for their tardiness. In the case of David Eddings, I suspected that the publisher was to blame, trying to make sure that readers would get hooked on the new series before completing the old one… As a result I vehemently refused to read any David Eddings until the final book of the Mallorean came out… and as a result, I never read anything further by that author. Someone actually gave me a copy of the Diamond Throne before the Mallorean was complete, but it still sits on my shelf unread today. When I look at it I only feel the remembered irritation, and never feel like actually reading it.

So now that I’m an author how do I feel about these things? I have less sympathy, not more. These authors have the blessing of success and the ability to write full time. I on the other hand must spend my free time in the evenings and weekends, and fit in the writing when and where I can. The mortgage has to get paid. My book has made it as high as #8 in one placement, and had a best sales rank in the low 4000’s. Over five months, that meas I’ve made about $900/month. Before tax. Before cost of advertising ($1500). Before other promotions and not even counting the cost of my editor and my cover art… Overall, the book is still in the red despite uncommon success for a first time indie author. Note that a month or so ago I looked into it and found that I had better sales rank than all than most of the finalists in the SPFBO #9 competition, so for a self published book with no awards (yet) I am doing quite well.

Promoting, and tracking things however has taken quite a bit of my time, time that could be spent writing of course. So a lot depends on finances and sales, and its very hard to be sure. What I can do is consider some scenarios.

Scenario 1: We can imagine that next week my book shoots to #1 and I sell a million copies (vs the ~2000 sold to date) and money is no longer a problem, how long would it take?

So in this case I could drop everything else and work exclusively on book 2. I know that when I was writing the second half of book 1, I seemed to write about a page an hour of first draft material. The first half of the book was spread out over 30 years, and I have no idea how much time went into it, but I’m willing to guess, that planning, plotting, and ideas took perhaps another hour per page, but I have a lot of plans and world building done already. I think for book 2 there’s probably no more than 30 min/page required for ideation. Then comes editing the first draft into final for. This seems to consume almost as much time as the first draft for me. There is then probably at least 3 months of planning and coordinating to publish and launch the book in a coherent manner. For book 2 this will include getting it onto Ingram-spark from the start (something that is still on my “to-do” list for book 1, but getting close!), but won’t include the month long delay to bootstrap an author page on GoodReads.

So in the end we are looking at 2.5h/page plus a fixed 2-3 months for publishing.

How long will book 2 be? It’s hard to say at this point. I already have 100 pages of first draft, and expect book 2 to be somewhat longer. The environment of an academy of wizards leaves a lot more room for sub-plots, and there won’t be a break point in the middle that forces a disconnection between the first half and second half of the story so I’ll be having more fun in that direction. I’m guessing 400-500 pages, but that’s totally subject to change. For now we’ll assume I have at least 300-400 more pages to write.

That implies 750 to 1000 hours of work. If I approach that like a full time job, it’s in the range of 5-6 months, but I’ll admit that I probably can’t write 8 hours a day every day. 5 hours is more likely before I get tired, loose focus and just need to do something else. Creativity comes in spurts of course, so there might be some 10h days and some days off… but 10h days are probably rare, because creating is also tiring, and there’s a good chance the last 3-4 hours of such a day will be drivel and need to be re-written anyway. So maybe 9 months or so? In the best case book 2 would probably take me a year from now, maybe sooner if full time focus speeds things up.

Scenario 2: I’m working full time as a consultant and writing evenings and weekends, 10h a week is a concerted consistent effort without entirely abandoning my wife or the rest of my life… In that case we are looking at 75-100 weeks, or about two years minimum. Life is rarely smooth, and something will likely disrupt my life in that time, so without instant best seller money, two to three years is more likely.

Scenario 3: We can imagine that my book experiences a bit more success, but not stupendous success. Let’s say it makes it to #1 in one category, maybe earning me 30-60k in a year. This is where there’s some good news. Since I am a consultant, I can arrange my life/work balance as I see fit, and a moderate success that generates tens of thousands of sales dollars will definitely allow me to consult part time and write part time. I don’t need to break all records to accelerate the process.

So if you want book two to come faster, you CAN help. The biggest problem selling a book is getting the reader to take a chance on spending money and (more importantly) time reading it. It is very hard for me to convince anyone, because nobody believes the author. Authors always think their book is great. I need your help to convince others to read it. If you want to help rate it it five stars, and leave a written review telling people what you thought of it.

Please bear in mind that any other rating will lower the overall average and reduce the number of readers. Four stars hurts more than it helps, and tells me you don’t really want the sequel any time soon, especially on Amazon or Good Reads. I’m not haranguing you or anything. That’s just the fact of how Amazon’s algorithms, and user behavior on Amazon is. I have no control over that.

If you want to use your own rating system on LibraryThing, Storylace, or The StoryGraph that’s fine, but Amazon and GoodReads directly display on the Amazon page and Amazon promotes higher rated books over lower rated ones.

On Amazon or GoodReads only five stars is good. Everything else is BAD.

So I’ll keep plugging as time allows, and I hope some of you will spread the word and help me move a bit faster with book two.