The Timing of My Next Book

My goal was to release the first book in my new Gentleman Space Pirate sci-fi series – The Rise of The Captain – in September. This felt like a totally doable goal.

Then reality set in. I didn’t get the book finished and out to the editor before the end of June. It didn’t get back to me from the editor until almost the end of July. It’s 44 chapters long. So it will take me 22 days, 2 chapters a day, to edit it and record it.

Why 2 chapters a day? Because more than that sets up potential strain on my voice while recording the audiobook. Also, each chapter being around 2000 words or so, that’s a lot of work to read through. Going too fast or doing too much at once potentially sets me up to make unnecessary mistakes.

On top of all this, I’m about to start my annual medieval reenactment vacation for 10 days, AND my wife and I plan to take a trip together in September. Hence, despite my desire to put the book out in September, it will have to wait for October.

I could attempt to throw in 1 more chapter every couple of days. But I’m also still writing the rest of the series (I’m at the end of book 4, but will likely fall shy of finishing it before I depart). So, as much as the goal to release the next book was September, I need to change that.

There are many ways this can benefit me

I very much want to build buzz around this new release. Pirates. In space. How cool is that? Obviously, I think it’s SUPER cool.

Okay, so, that said, marketing the book before I put it out to the world has potential. Rose, my cover artist, has made some things I can use to help with that. I will begin to set up the pre-sales across multiple channels as soon as I’m back from vacation. Ergo, I’ll have about 2 months to share links and promote this new book.

To that end, I’m still tweaking the blurb. The cover and some other art is complete, and I’ll likely ask Rose to do the cover for book 2 in August. This is some great sci-fi space opera, but it’s got a few unique elements, too.

For starters, each book stands alone. Yes, they are sequential. The events in book 2 follow book 1, and so on. However, no book ends in a cliffhanger. All of them are complete stories from beginning to end.

That means a reader can grab any book in this series and read without being lost. I thought that might be a fun twist.

So, the delay in the timing of my next book is to my benefit, but also yours as a reader. I can share things to entice you and others to check this new series out. I’m psyched to share it. And even though I’m a tad flustered about the timing, it’s not a big deal.

The timing of my next book

For Savagespace, I released a book a month over 3 months. And, frankly, that was too much. This set a brutal pace, and by the time I was done, I was exhausted. And, sadly, my own interest in this series lessened because of it.

Yeah, it is my creation. And I’m still proud of the story. But the pace I set to get it out to the world was too much. I can write a lot in a short span, but self-publishing is more than the writing. The editing, recording, formatting, re-editing, and marketing are all time-consuming, too.

I feel as though I did Savagespace a bit of a disservice because I pushed it too fast. The timing of my next book shouldn’t make me question my love of authorpreneurship. I take joy in the work, even the parts I’m less fond of.

When it came to putting out the last 4 books of Forgotten Fodder, I set up an every-other-month timing. This worked, and I think I can maybe do something similar with the Gentleman Space Pirate series (though I might make it a once-every-three-months thing). So if I put book 1 out in mid-October (likely 10/13), odds are I won’t put book 2 out before January 2027.

At that rate, I’ll release all of the Gentleman Space Pirate books across 2027. As much as I would like to put out more books before the end of 2026, I need to be realistic about the timing of my next book.