The Viscount and the Witch by Michael J. Sullivan Page A

changed.
    Slowly I started to find an audience, mainly due to Robin’s tireless efforts at spreading the word. At the end of two years, I was selling a respectable 1,000 books a month spread over four titles. Nothing stellar or earth shattering, but I was happy with what we had achieved. At that time, October 2010, Robin started noticing that my name was turning up on Amazon’s cross-selling lists (the ones compiled for authors) for industry giants such as Abercrombie, Weeks, Rothfuss, and dozens of others. This made her wonder whether we could use this fact, and my sales record, to get some traction with a New York publisher.
    We contacted an agent who had helped with a sale to the Czech Republic and she put together a proposal and sent it to just seventeen select publishers. To be honest, Robin and I thought that it would take a year or more to hear anything, which was fine with us as we had just released the fifth book, Wintertide, and the last book was scheduled for April 2011. To our surprise she had seven publishers expressing an interest immediately, and Orbit moved quickly to put together a pre-emptive bid for the series.
    Both Robin and I had been very impressed with Orbit. They were not the biggest, nor the most well known, but they picked quality titles and already had an established track record for making the New York Times Bestseller List and many of their titles were getting industry award nominations and wins. Their covers were of the highest quality, and it appeared that they were doing the right things to grow their author’s careers. We accepted their generous six-figure offer (much higher than the standard five to ten thousand dollars for most debut fantasy authors) in mid November 2010. They have taken the six book series and turned it into a trilogy which will be released in three consecutive months starting in November 2011. The breakdown is as follows:

Theft of Swords : contains The Crown Conspiracy & Avempartha
Rise of Empire : contains Nyphron Rising & The Emerald Storm
Heir of Novron : contains Wintertide & Percepliquis
    While signing with Orbit was certainly a pivotal moment in my fledgling career, that wasn’t the only good fortune that occurred toward the end of 2010. The planets had aligned and ebook sales started to soar, not just for me but a whole host of indie authors. In October I had just released my fifth book, Wintertide, and Robin had executed some creative marketing initiatives. The result: sales that month more than doubled to 2,600, but the real onslaught happened during the Christmas season (Nov — Jan) where I saw sales of 9,500, 10,500, and 11,500 per month.
    In comparison to many of the well publicized indie success stories, such as Amanda Hocking or John Locke who sold millions, my sales were very modest. However, where they had priced their books at $0.99 or $2.99 mine had been selling well at $4.95 and $6.95. Suddenly my writing, which had been bringing in only a modest supplemental income, was generating “real” money. In addition, I was also receiving substantial additional income from foreign language sales to Spain, Russia, Germany, France, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Conventional writer wisdom says, “Never quit your day job.” But I had no day job to quit. You see, Robin had been generous enough to act as the sole bread winner for years so that I could concentrate on my writing. One of my most satisfying moments came in April 2011 when I was able to repay her by returning the favor, and she resigned from the company she had been working for.
    What does this very long winded tale have to do with the short you are about to read? Well a few things. Hopefully laying this all out will help explain what has been going on behind the scenes (especially for those who are champing at the bit for the final book and may not know the details about why it was delayed). As I write this September 2011 is coming to a close, and it’s a frustrating time for me because for