Revolter

Did you know I have a new book coming out in 8 days?

Probably not.

Because I’ve done a terrible job telling people about it.

Even though I love the book, and the characters, and this cover, and the whole story so much, I’ve been having serious trouble getting excited for the release. And I’m afraid this time it’s more than just a standard case of the overdramatic malaise we creative types are prone to. Though if someone has a nice chaise longue I can collapse into, I’m willing to see if it helps.

(Listen, if you’re not in the mood for melancholy right now, I totally get it. But in that case, you might want to just skip to the wrap-up below.)

Revolter, the second book in The Dyrnwyn Strain, releases on 4/25. And I’m only now revealing the cover, which is not ideal marketing on my part. I also haven’t posted any updates, or sent out any review copies, or even tried to contact any of the cool people who sometimes help me hype my books. I haven’t even written the blurb, for crap’s sake. And for anyone keeping careful score, you may also have noticed that there was no kickstarter for it. I’m just dropping this one into the world and hoping it learns to walk on its own.

And frankly, it’s all for the same reason.

Time.

I don’t have anywhere near enough of it these days.

A decent marketing plan takes months and a ton of energy to set up and execute, and the same goes for a kickstarter campaign. But I’ve been so ridiculously busy lately that I’ve barely been able to scrape together the time to edit the audiobook files, let alone to think about actually promoting the book in any meaningful ways. Which, I’ll be brutally honest, would be more frustrating to me if Evoker was, uh…selling. I really tried to go all out for it too, doing all the marketing things, but let’s just say it’s been a late bloomer so far.

So why am I so busy?

Here’s the thing. The worst part of this job is the volatility. When the books are selling well, indie authors like me have lots of time and mental space to write and narrate and think of more cool, creative stuff. It’s a virtuous cycle like that. But when the books aren’t selling well, we suddenly have to devote way more energy to just keeping the ball rolling—including doing other things to pay the bills. It’s not like we can storm into our own offices and demand a cost-of-living increase. And if it continues getting harder to sell books, those authors might end up spending too much of their “writing” time trying to keep the business side running. Which means the creative side slows way down, and then they have fewer books to sell, and so on. THEN if they also do something silly like spend a whole year completing a new series that doesn’t take off…well, they might just end up in a real pickle that they have to spend even more time working out of.

And there are plenty of other factors right now that I can’t control. Like people not buying books in general. It’s a tough time to be anything but a romantasy author right now. And there’s a big chunk of people boycotting anything specifically from Amazon/Audible. Which I get, believe me, but it’s been stinging the sales for sure. Or there’s all the social media apps that want us to pay to “boost” posts just so our updates can be shown to the people who already follow us. Or how advertising platforms keep scrambling their algorithms every other month—so that anyone without a dedicated marketing department has to spend ages trying to suss out which blood sacrifices are now necessary to appease the new AI gods. Or how the market in general is being flooded with AI books and narration that nobody really wants, but that are nonetheless smothering legitimate books with sheer volume. Or how there’s about a 75% chance that this very message landed in your spam folder where you’ll never actually see it.

And I can’t keep up with any of this because I stupidly didn’t get a PhD in Digital Marketing before I decided to write my dumb books about monsters.

And yeah, I am also way behind on those audiobook files.

Friends, it’s exhausting. I hate marketing. It feels like carving out an intricate sculpture and then using it for firewood. Every single day. So I’m not doing it for this book. Which, I know, definitely means fewer people will read it. But I’m tired enough to be okay with that right now. The story exists. I love it. And I’m glad it’s about to be out in the world. And if you do end up reading it, I hope you love it too.

Let’s say it’s a stealth release. That makes it sound cool.

Wrap up:

Revolter is releasing on 4/25 in ebook and print.

I’m hoping the audiobook will be out just a week or two later, but it might be partially up to Audible. I’ll let you know.

And if anyone has some secret magic for selling books in 2025 that doesn’t feel like selling my soul, I’m all ears.

Thanks for reading.

Take care of yourselves.

– Josh