2020 in Review: We got Lit

By any measure it's been a great year professionally. We published World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas, Seven Stories and most recently World War 1990: Nederland. Three novels in a year, that was hard to do. We said we wanted to do it and we did it. So it was spoken and so it was. Career goal: checked off. We sit by the fire, sip our whisky, light our Arturo Fuente Short Story and think, we published three novels in a year.

Anyone else remember what a slog Three Seas was? That was a hard novel to write and a harder one to edit. But the payoff has been massive. Three Seas is our most successful novel since Israel Strikes, and its success has fobbed off on the rest of the World War 1990 novels. A rising tide lifts all boats, as it is written. We're happy to report Nederland is on the same path and selling at the same rate as the other WW1990 books. The case of Seven Stories is interesting. As we suspected, it never really took off. Instead, Seven Stories acts like a back lister. It gets read and gets reviewed. That is enough. We'll do another short story comp at some point. It's also been gratifying to see older books, A Line Through the Desert, A March Through Hell, even Pershing in Command and Blooms move a bit.

Overall it's been our best sales year ever. As always our best markets  look like Normandy Beach + Australia. Yay English speaking peoples! We actually made some headway in the French market. So far, no one in the Netherlands has bought Nederland. Here's the overall 2020 sales story:

That first bump is the Three Seas release. Sales leveled out in September and would have settled into that spot in December if not for the Nederland release. That's three months at the same sales floor. Wouldn't it be something if that were permanent?

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 was originally supposed to be part of Seven Stories and well...here we are. Our all-out push to get the 110,000 words done by the end of the will be successful. We're impressed with our effort, we admit. We might just make it three novels with the first two released simultaneous like. At this point, you people are going to have to talk us out of it.

On the magazine front we've written dozens of articles for Inforos. Our GRU handler pronounces himself pleased with our effort on behalf of the Kremlin. He pays many rubles. We've been looking for some other gigs and we think we found one in which we'll write about cultural stuff. We haven't published anything in print military history magazines this year. If they want us, they're just gonna have to pay more. They won't pay more.

As with all other years our social media forays, FB, Gab, Parler etc have not produced results. We're about ready to pack it in on that front. This blog does not grow and never has. We keep doing it because it's a good way to get the day started.

Soon we'll be finalizing plans for 2021. Ideas, suggestions etc, welcome.