A Pentheon of Writers

7/15/2019

Over the last weekend, I had the privilege of joining approximately fifteen other independent authors at the home of Michael and Robin Sullivan, where we did nothing but discuss business for days on end and definitely did not throw knives at anything or anyone.

As you probably know, I spend most of my time either writing or curled up in my carapace, so it's unusual that I ever exchange words with others and see the sun at the same time. But I really had a blast; it was awesome to meet up with a cabal of these fellow independent writers and find out that they're all such great people. It's a rare treat to be able to talk with my peers and exchange notes on books we're reading, marketing strategies, and the current location of the secret Story Idea Shop where we buy all our ideas.

Who was there? That's a great question--allow me to provide you with a list of the other authors in attendance, some of whom you may have read before, and others I'm sure you're about to go read right now:

Michael Miller - Battle Spire, the Dragon's Blade trilogy, and Portal Books
Miranda Honfleur - Blade and Rose and Dark-Elves of Nightbloom
Davis Ashura - The Castes and the OutCastes and The Chronicles of William Wilde
Dyrk Ashton - Paternus: Rise of Gods and also your dreams.
Luke Chmilenko - Ascend Online and A Mark of Kings (with some other guy)
Bryce O'Connor - The Wings of War and A Mark of Kings (with some other guy)
Alec Hutson - The Crimson Queen and its sequel
Phil Tucker - Godsblood, The Chronicles of the Black Gate, Euphoria Online
K.S. Villoso - The Agartes Epilogues, Annals of the Bitch Queen
Quenby Olson - First Position, The Firstborn, The Bride Price, and many others.
J.C. Kang - The Dragon Songs Saga, Scions of the Black Lotus
A.C. Cobble - Benjamin Ashwood, The Cartographer
Andy Peloquin - Defenders of Legend, Hero of Darkness, Heirs of Destiny (these include a bunch of books, seriously this guy has like a million books out, he is a monster who must be stopped.)
T.L. Greylock - The Song of the Ash Tree (Books 1-3)

Now go read.

-Will

P.S. Thanks to Ethan Roscoe on Facebook for the puntheon.

56 Comments

UltraMagnus

7/15/2019 04:41:02 pm

Damn it! I missed my invite to the party. Seriously though, what I wouldn't have done to be a fly on the wall there. I started reading 2/3 of those authors do to my interest in your books Will. Who needs a door made out of stone or someone singing about the elements when you all keep cranking books out!

Davis Ashura link

7/15/2019 04:59:26 pm

Marketing and all that was great, but Andy Peloquin's tacos had to be the highlight of the entire weekend. That giant man can cook!
A close second would be when Will, JC Kang, and I whooped ass in darts by beating Michael Miller, Alec Hutson, and T.L Greylock. Double bulls-eye for the win!

7/15/2019 05:02:56 pm

So, who's book should I read next btw?

Keith

7/15/2019 05:30:11 pm

I haven't heard of any of these authors. Anyone read any that they recommend?

7/15/2019 05:33:04 pm

Crimson Queen was really good.and so are the Portal Books

shantanu

7/21/2019 09:46:02 am

I can second Crimson Queen / Silver Sorceress. Will recommended Alex a while back I think on goodreads? Alex Hutson is a very imaginative writer. I really liked the characters and the immersive plot line. Looking forward to book 3 in the series.

Haven’t read any of these other writers.

Anonymous

7/15/2019 06:31:54 pm

Michael Sullivan’s books are really good!

Fupa

7/15/2019 06:58:44 pm

And online was pretty damn good. I'll have to read the rest of them now. Itll fill the cradle void I've been feeling lol.

Matt S.

7/17/2019 05:56:00 pm

AC Cobble's Benjamin Ashwood series was good.

Pessimist

7/19/2019 01:14:45 am

I really liked The Wings of War by Bryce O'Connor. It's darker than any of Will's stuff (or pretty much most fantasy) but that's one of the reasons I liked it.

7/22/2019 03:15:17 pm

Just read Micheal Miller's Battle Spire: A Crafting LitRPG Book yesterday. It was good. It felt a little like a couple of animes I've seen. If you liked Sword Art Online or Log Horizon, there's a little of their vibe. The crafting direction was interesting and different for me and I really liked it.

Michael Miller link

7/25/2019 06:35:46 am

Thank you man! Very glad you enjoyed it :D

Drew

7/30/2019 01:21:15 pm

The Benjamin Ashwood series by A.C. Cobble is the only series I’ve read that rivals my love of Will’s works.

Luke Chmilenko

7/15/2019 05:35:28 pm

It was an amazing weekend and an absolute blast from beginning to end!

Apollos Thorne

7/15/2019 06:57:40 pm

Jealous!

Lindon

7/15/2019 06:56:37 pm

I honestly have already read a bunch of your guys series. I especially liked The Chronicles of William Wilde and Benjamin Ashwood. Good Job!

Coldsteel

7/15/2019 07:22:50 pm

Phil Tucker's stuff is great. I loved Chronicles of the Black Gate. Godsblood is good too.

As someone else mentioned, Crimson Queen by Alec Hutson is excellent.

Benjamin Ashwood is on my list to read, and the Sullivan books are great, of course. Everything else I will have to investigate.

Extesian

7/15/2019 08:44:12 pm

I would just like to say how wonderful it is that independent authors can exist in this newfangled world. I don't know that was possible in the days of Old Media and I'm glad that independent authors get, as I understand it, a greater share of income. Whether or not I read them the world is richer for it.

7/15/2019 10:57:59 pm

Tbh I just want Uncrowned

Adam

7/16/2019 09:02:21 pm

This ^

Noel

7/17/2019 11:29:08 pm

Cool Person

7/20/2019 03:29:33 pm

7/22/2019 11:48:51 am

^Lindon

Erebus

7/15/2019 11:03:11 pm

This is amazing, I've read the books if over half these authors and the quality of the writing, editing and cover art I would never have guessed they were self published! All of you are legend and need to never stop writing!

7/16/2019 09:42:58 am

This seems to be a general love fest going on here but I would like to add that I originally read the Sullivan's Riyria series back when their books were reasonably priced. I really enjoyed them. Unfortunately, I guess once they had a best seller series on their hands they decided to really pump up their ebook prices. For that reason I haven't read any more of their books, especially since they are part of a series. Just paying to catch up to where their latest series is would cost more than I would be comfortable spending.

Thank goodness most other indie authors, including the ones above, do not gouge their readers on ebooks like the Sullivans do. While it's indeed their right to charge whatever they want, it's my right not to like it and not buy their books. So, they lost one reader as a result of their business decisions. I'm sure they don't care in the least and that's fine. I just hope other indie authors don't look at them as some shining example of a successful business model to follow.

7/16/2019 09:54:49 am

It would be interesting to get some authors input on this. Just a thought but I have always wondered how pricing effects sales numbers and what success does to that. Personally, most of these I have read on Kindle unlimited and decided to buy so I could have them in my digital library.

So:

1) how does success effect pricing and fanbase growth
2) thoughts on services like Kindle Unlimited vs straight to sale

Just wondering.....

Will link

7/16/2019 10:54:13 am

I'm not sure where your cutoff for reasonable vs. unreasonable is, because I personally don't feel like $10 is unreasonable value for a book, but even so the jump you're describing is the Sullivans being picked up by a publisher. They're not independently published anymore.

Their Riyria series is Orbit and their Legends of the First Empire series is Del Rey. Their publishers raised the prices, not them.

7/16/2019 12:15:48 pm

If that's the case then that explains everything. I did not know they had a publisher now, that's a shame. I had assumed that since this was a gathering of indie writers, they were still indie too. That certainly explains why the Riyria ebooks are $11 each now.

Obviously, the cutoff of reasonable vs. unreasonable is subjective and something every reader makes a decision on based on what their budget will bear. For voracious readers, it can become a bit of a bind. Prices on ebooks are a sore subject in particular because of the publisher pricing collusion issues of the past. Obviously not an issue with indies.

I like indie writers because they tend to be much more reader friendly in several ways:

1) While they may price the latest book in a series a bit higher, they tend to keep a reduced price on prior books so catching up for new readers is not a total bank breaker. Some heavily discount the first book in a series as well.

2) They tend to be more DRM friendly.

3) They often have sales or giveaways of some of their books (Will, what you did in that regard on the 4th was incredible).

ADAM BOISVERT

7/16/2019 09:11:38 pm

It is was a physically copy of the book I could understand $10 but for pixels it's a bit steep.

I know for me personally I read a book every 1-2 days and could not afford 10$ a day.

Your books being on Kindle unlimited is the only reason I found them to begin with. I am glad you opted in😀.

10/10 on your books Will, I am impatiently checking every week hoping for news on Uncrowned.

7/17/2019 10:07:03 am

I love Kindle Unlimited, and I'm glad I can be a part of it. I've definitely gone through periods of time when I'm reading 1-2 books a day while making next to no money, and that's hard to support, so I did a lot of re-reading. KU is a great solution to that.

Diego

7/16/2019 10:28:20 pm

In regards to the pricing. I dont read many books due to higher prices. I also shy away from longer series(which is probably bad for me). Minimum wage here is approx 1.66usd per hour or so. I also try the samples first. That lets me know if at least the authors 'style?', 'prose?' is good. (Idk if i used those words right) You know if I can follow whats happenning or not and if i like what im reading.

So a book at 10$ is close to a day of work for me.

Miranda Honfleur link

7/17/2019 06:32:31 am

It was so awesome to meet you and everyone, Will! Author cabin shenanigans have been the highlight of this summer. 😄

7/17/2019 10:08:52 am

Great to meet you, Miranda! I always love a nice weekend of shenanigandery.

7/20/2019 03:34:01 pm

Shenanigandery... I'm going to have to use that in a sentence today now.

ColtonC

7/17/2019 09:00:50 am

Nice try Will!
Trying to distract us from the your next Cradle book!
Not today pal! Now hurry up and finish Uncrowned so I can continue throwing my money at you!

7/17/2019 10:09:05 am

Curses, foiled again!

Nerevar

7/17/2019 03:09:10 pm

Will, I hate to be that guy, but Im curious about Uncrowned progress.
Havent had withdrawal symptoms this bad since Ive read Rothfuss and GRRM last books.
Thankfully you are far more mercifull than those two monsters.
Your writing pace is fantastic and Cradles potential is skyhigh for fantasy lovers such as myself.
Throw some crumbs of info on starving readers plx ^^

7/17/2019 11:32:36 pm

Yes! I love fantasy books, but Cradle has been my favorite so far! It's so interesting and it has so much potential. I just can't wait for the uncrowned king tournament! It's gonna be so cool!

Lindon/Shera

7/17/2019 10:40:06 pm

-Pounds on table and chants,- “BOOK UPDATE, BOOK UPDATE, BOOK UPDATE!”

7/17/2019 10:43:34 pm

P.S- sorry to be one of those people, but I’m wayyy to excited for the next book and I find myself checking your page almost every day

7/20/2019 03:35:18 pm

imagining a lindon and shera as a couple now...

7/18/2019 07:31:12 am

For those looking for Uncrowned anytime soon, Will has said previously that sometime towards the end of this year is a reasonable time frame to expect it, subject to change. He also said previously that he wanted to work on getting OKAK out nextt so I'm pretty sure that's coming up fairly soon. He's been working on it for 2 years which is unheard of for him. So, I'm sure he'll be glad when it's finally out.

Personally, I suspect that OKAK was recently finished and he's now waiting on announcing it and the launch date. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on, though. He's gone pretty dark as to what goes on with his writing since the TEAM took over. He used to be a lot more transparent. Just a sign he's moved up to the big leagues now, I guess.

I do wish he'd get rid of the book progress bar on the blog though. It's useless and serves more as a frustration point than anything else.

7/18/2019 03:59:43 pm

Im fairly new on this bandwagon so I cant say how things used to be, but release dates so far have been great. Its not so much that I have been grumbling for info as I was a bit curious.
Thing is, I am well aware how spoiled I am, and for the most part I blame the time we live in, where so much is pretty easily accesible, we are just not used to long waits
Will has good pace, especially considering how cursed I am.
Consider my favorite authors: Rothfuss all but abandoned his work (the dumbass..), GRRM takes decade per book ( havent even watched last few seasons on TV, cuz I prefer books waaaay more, dodging spoilers was a literal nightmare), my fav manga of all time Berserk releases like 2 chapters per bloody year...

So yeah, having authors like Will and Sanderson around is really awesome. Great pace and quality is something extremely rare, we should bend the knee to these great dudes, lol.

7/19/2019 08:29:49 am

Yeah, I can't stand Rothfuss. To me, he's the poster child for terrible writers.

Not that he *can't* write, far from it, he's very, very talented. It's that he *doesn't* write. If you don't write, you really aren't a writer.

In my opinion, he's far more enamored with the trappings of being a famous author and living that life than he is doing any actual writing. When I saw that he'd been a college student for something like 12 years, I knew he might not ever finish another book and that's back when Name of the Wind was first published. I think his publisher thought they could squeeze out some more money by having him split his already completed book into 3 books. But, that required him to rewrite some of it and add more to it. Big mistake because we may never see the whole thing completed. I think if the publisher had known what his issues were, they might have made a different decision there.

Will is like Sanderson, they are both machines. You can always count on Will not to disappoint either in terms of the quality of what he produces or in how timely he is in producing it.

OKAK though is a bit of an anomaly. I've been reading Will's books since House of Chains was released and he has never taken so long on a book before (even though it's actually 2 books). I'm hoping that once it's released he'll do some kind of post mortem for his readers because I'm really, really curious about how the writing process went on that one and why it took so long to complete. I'm sure writing several Cradle books while he was working on it has played a part in it.

7/20/2019 02:55:36 pm

There´s a thin line between love&hate.

Thats all Im gonna say on the subject lol.

Zizeta

7/21/2019 04:25:01 am

Wait a moment?! I where looking forward to 1st of august for uncrowned had hoped that that part of april fools joke where true 😢 why are you playing with my heart Will?

Jason

7/20/2019 08:53:20 am

I confess to surprise at you recommending a subset of those books. Having read almost all of them, there are some that are pure mantasies if you can use the word pure that way. Anyway, sounds like the event was fun. Thanks for the blog post.

Mark Jaeger

7/21/2019 10:18:24 am

I haven’t read most of these but I started reading Wings of War and ohmygoditissofuckinggood if all the books are that good on this list I have a full month of glory ahead of me. Thanks Will!

7/22/2019 08:59:41 am

you know you're a good author when other people copy your books...
https://www.amazon.com/Sundered-Soul-Wuxia-Xianxia-Cultivation-ebook/dp/B07V79B79G/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ONA3TRN3X978&keywords=rick+scott&qid=1563811136&s=digital-text&sprefix=rick+sc%2Cdigital-text%2C207&sr=1-2

7/22/2019 10:09:32 am

This happens to Ilona Andrews all the time. Does Will have any legal recourse?

BlackMage

7/23/2019 05:36:19 am

Rather premature to claim another author is copying when the book is not even published yet. While the broad description of the plot bears similarities, the plot itself is hardly original in the wuxia genre.

8/8/2019 08:31:01 pm

Having read the book, I can state that it is not a copy of WW's work. Interesting use of Chinese and Japanese magic systems and worth a read on Kindle Unlimited.

Jeff

7/23/2019 07:29:47 pm

I have actually read this book on Royal Road, and it does not seem to be a copy of Will's work, at least not one I have read.

Sword Immortal Darknorth

7/25/2019 07:59:25 am

I wouldn't really call that a copy. It's just another book also inspired by xianxia, which is a massive genre on the internet if you know where to look. The author flat out says "If you're a fan of Asian cultivation stories like the Cradle series, ... then this book is for you!"

Chubby_kittens

7/24/2019 12:15:08 am

Hutson's Crimson Queen is SO GOOD.

Sam the Man

7/25/2019 02:47:29 pm

So is this one of those exclusive "Must have 300,000 novel sales in the last year to enter." Parties I've heard about?

In which we ramble on.
And by we, I mean me.