There's no denying 2022 was a great year professionally. We had two articles in Military History Matters and one article in World War Two Quarterly. We published a half dozen pieces in 19FortyFive and they want more. We published one lone piece in Rising Apple, but nothing really came of it. They already had a guy doing Mets history, and we didn't want to write, 'Five things the Mets must do this off season.' Besides, by ancestry we're a Yankees fan.
We promised you people three novels this year. We delivered to you people three novels this year. These are The Great Nuclear War of 1975, World War 1990: The Weser, and The Aftermath of 1976. The Weser and 75 are stubbornly resilient sellers, while 76 has popped. It's been in the top 20 of its Amazon category all week. This year's sales will not quite equal last year's sales. KU sales are up, Kindle Ebook sales are down.
World War 1990: Nederland (released December 2020) brought up World War 1990 book sales all throughout 2021. This means there is no financial reason not to keep writing World War 1990
We failed to finish World War 1990: The Final Storm. Will fail. What we saw late in the year just wasn't good enough. We spent the autumn fixing, writing and re-writing. When we're satisfied TFS is good enough, we'll send it to the editor. We will get TFS out this year, but we've yet to work out how. we're hoping for spring. Notice the vague scheduling. Still, at some point enough is enough. One just has to stop.
We did not release a book in 2021. There will never be another year without a new novel. The New American Order is a few months away from being released. World War 1990: The Final Storm will follow. Right now we don't see a third release for 2023. Okay, if things go smoothly with World War 1990: Norway, it could be out late next year.
We've expressed before, our concern that we were being pigeonholed into the World War 1990 universe. That is, World War 1990 is what we're known for, and World War 1990 is what people want to read from us. The nuke novels proved those fears were unfounded. The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is our top KU read ever. Think about that for a moment. As mentioned above, 76 sales are popping. There's every reason to believe The New American Order will succeed as well. Between you and us, reader(s), we think TNAO is a better novel than 76. It is possible we will write further novels in the nuke universe, and we've laid the groundwork to do that. But we've no plans to do so right now.
As with every year we spent a lot of 2022 trying to expand our audience. We don't think our side writing gigs or social media forays bring in new readers. The nuke novels brought in new readers though. We don't know if 75 fans are picking up our other novels. We'll know more in 2023. We're a strong, strong midlist author and in the (something like) top 10 percent of authors worldwide. Most authors sell squat. But there's a huge gap between William Stroock and say, Larry Correia and the 1%. We closed that gap just a bit this year. But there's a long way to go.
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