December 2025 Newsletter

Ok, Folks! Busy month! We had the ARC (advance review copy) drive for reviews, the launch, and associated publicity. First off, we had our launch on November 19th where Book 1 was re-released alongside Book 2.

There’s no bell or alarm or anything when a book launch happens, so it can seem kind of anti-climactic when you’re sitting at your desk, hitting ‘refresh’ on your browser at 2-minute intervals. That said, there was a lot that was going on.

The ARC had a total of 24 folks sign up to review book 1, book 2, or both. I am incredibly grateful to each and every one of you that signed up and I am grateful for your reviews, as well! Amazon has gone and done something unhelpful, which is limit visible reviews to ten reviews, so for many, I’m relying on you telling me whether or not you did yours. That said, you’ve said some very kind and heart-warming things in your reviews and I really appreciate it.

We’re sitting at 15 reviews for book 1 and 5 reviews for book 2. If you haven’t written one yet, let me assure you that every single review helps and counts. Just because I can’t see your individual review doesn’t mean that other amazon users can’t.

The ARC drive had a custom portrait raffle as a prize. We do have a winner who’s asked to remain anonymous, but we’ll be able to share the finished portrait when it’s done in a couple weeks.

This has been a worlds better launch than the first one last year and a better month than most. I largely am quantifying that by sales and Kindle Unlimited reads.

Some of this is falsely augmented by myself and a friend who scrambled to replace the stolen copies of book 1. Re-ordering author copies has a lower priority than customer copies, so to get them in a timely manner, I had to order some (I ordered 2 and a friend ordered another 1 for the cause), so the sales are really 14 copies sold this month – still the best amazon month to date!

This is how kindle unlimited works. For folks that pay for that subscription, whatever they read, authors get paid by the page, generally around $0.01 per ~225 pages read (not sure on the equation to figure that out. Might be that just them downloading it has a payment and then the per page payment is lower. Who knows). So, what’s that look like in terms of royalties?

Long way to go, but it starts to cover some of the costs. Aside from the extra copies, one of the newer costs this month has been an ad campaign. I had tried an ad campaign about a year ago, but I really had no idea of how to set it up. There was a lot of digital thrashing and wailing, but not a whole lot of results. I watched a couple of youtube videos on ways to set up ads, which were really helpful, and it’s going much better this time around.

So, I’m happy with 191k impressions. I’m happy with 109 clicks. The thing to work on is conversions (meaning clicks that result in sales). So far, out of those 109 clicks, 2 people bought books and 2 people have read it on kindle unlimited. While I am exceeding glad for people finding and enjoying this story independently, it’s a less than ideal conversion rate.

I popped this question into the KDP (kindle direct publishing) subreddit. Yes, there is such a subreddit. There’s also a self-published subreddit, worldbuilding subreddits, etc. You name it. I used to be a reddit shunner because of the infamous AITA stories that were recited to me against my will, but I have become a reddit convert over the past month and a half or so. What reddit gave me is that I need to work on the description in amazon quite a bit – and that’s fair.

So, the road ahead is going to be researching and revising the description on amazon. I am very open to suggestions, but I am otherwise going to look for common themes in techniques among the top 20 sellers in a few amazon book categories, as well as some of the things that you’ve been saying in your reviews. Even though there are a ton of characters in this story, it’s been suggested to me to pick one character to focus on one character for the purpose of making a sales pitch and I am leaning towards Dareum, but (as I said) I’m open to suggestions.

The road ahead also consists of a continued socials presence. I’d also like to thank Monica Sager of the Swampscott Tides for interviewing me (this was my first interview, in this capacity: https://swampscotttides.org/news/from-battlefields-to-fantasy-realms-army-veteran-morgan-spring-glace-explores-war-and-perspective-in-new-book/)

-requesting a professional editorial review of book 1 (this is one of the only times that amazon lets you pay for a review) and do some goodreads giveaways (also for reviews).

-and shows/conventions on the road. Due to a miscommunication between myself and the staff at QuadCon, I’m not going to be at the 13-14 December QuadCon in Columbia, MO. I have rescheduled that, so the next shows I intend to be at are:

21-22 March Quad Con in Columbia, MO

30 May Fae Ball and Literary Market in Overland Park, KS

-as well as working on finishing up book 3. I’ve got about 10000 words left to write (for context, the content without the appendices of book 1 or 2 have been ~115k words), selecting and building the appendices, and illustrations (have a few in mind that I’d like to do some rough drawing of, but I also need to learn from this past one. As much as I really enjoy the product of the Avart Massacre illustration in book 2, it took me months of on-and-off work. As much as I’d like to deliver a book with illustrations, I need to keep it on a timeline for you). I intend to release book 3 around this time next year. Hopefully late October, but we’ll see if I can keep that timeline.

In other news, not a lot of work around the house has gotten done. Repainted some other furniture and made some stairs for the dog to be able to easily climb onto the bed (dog has yet to use the stairs and, if this continues until the end of next month, I am scrapping them).

This was also my first Thanksgiving as the primary cook.

I made most of the food on this table. Only one item was out of a box (the stuffing). My Mom made the corn bread and a pumpkin pie (not in picture). No one died of food poisoning and no animals were har…. Well, the turkey died. Hope you all had a good holiday with you and yours.

Stay classy folks.