Quarterly Author Update: January 2025

Book sales, Husk update, and a new podcast

Happy New Year!

I decided to fully commit to the author career in 2023 once I was heads down on Crypto Confidential. And this series is where I share updates on how that career is going.

You can find the previous one here: October 2024 Quarterly Author Update.

Agenda for today:

1. Crypto Confidential Update

2. Husk (Sci-Fi Novel) Update

3. Nonfiction Book 2 Update

4. New podcast update

5. Blog & audience building update

Crypto Confidential

It’s now been almost exactly six months since Crypto Confidential launched.

While nothing about the book has changed since six months ago, the one big change since then is that interest in crypto has started to return in force. Bitcoin reached a new all-time-high over $100,000, and we’re starting to see retail investors return to speculating on memecoins and AI agents and whatever other fun new metas are starting to emerge.

In terms of where we are in the market, I still think it’s quite early. I suspect this bull run will continue through 2025 and there will be a ton of new things to speculate on through that period. So if you’re seeing Bitcoin at 100k and thinking you’re too late, you’re not. It really hasn’t started to get silly yet.

For comparison at this time in 2021, ETH was just below $1,000 and ran up to $4,000 in four months. Bored Apes didn’t exist yet. No one was playing Axie. Stepn didn’t exist. Solana was at $2.50. We’re still in early innings, so if you want to dive in or understand what’s going on behind the scenes, this is a great time to read the book.

Sales

• Total Sales: 3,182 (38% growth)

• Sales this period: 879 (2.8% growth)

• Foreign sales: Unknown

The sales this period doesn’t look great, but the chart tells a more interesting story:

After launch, sales died down significantly. There were a few weeks where it only sold 25-30 copies.

But once the market started to pick up again in November, you can see the sales increase quite significantly.

In October I only sold 141 copies. But in November, I sold 354. That’s great! And you can see December is following a similar trajectory.

This is roughly what I expected, I even wrote as much in the last update:

“I think the sales are slower because people aren’t very interested in a crypto-mania book right now. Crypto still feels dead to most outsiders, we’re not in a fervor where people are gambling on NFTs and shitcoins, and when so few people are trying to understand what’s going on in a crypto bubble there just isn’t that compelling of a reason to pick the book up.”

And while this is sort of a vanity metric, the reviews on the book increased quite a bit the last few weeks. With 241 on Amazon and 418 on Goodreads, I’m now within striking distance of 700 total.

Finally, two new translations came through this quarter! The book is being translated to Italian and Romanian. Not sure when these launch though.

Anyway, I’m excited to see how the book does through 2025!

Earnings

No change here. I’ve made $175,000 from the book and will get the last check in July of 2025.

After that, I won’t get anything else until the book has earned out its advance.

Husk (Sci-Fi Novel)

Current status: Third draft done, working on final draft

Quite a bit has changed here since the last update.

First, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ve decided to self-publish Husk by working with Scribe. And since I made that decision I’ve only become more excited and convicted about it.

Retaking ownership has been extremely motivating, and I’m very excited to publish it with them.

I finished the second draft on schedule towards the end of October, then did another draft through November and December.

It’s now at a point where I’m getting some last feedback from people and I’m sending it to Scribe’s editor tomorrow for the manuscript review. They’ll read it and give me feedback by the end of January, and I’ll send them the final locked version in mid February.

At this point there are only minor plot details I want to change, and I’m mostly flushing out some of the descriptions and relationships. I have an easier time writing action than I do writing description so I’ve been focusing on improving that side of my skillset, and trying to make the world feel bigger and more alive.

I also decided during this period that I want this to be a series of at least three books, which affected the ending and the world a decent amount so those needed to be reworked. But I’m starting to feel pretty good about it, and I think with this last six-week sprint I’m going to be able to get it to a very strong place I’m proud of.

The current plan is to publish it late May, so look for the cover announcement and pre-orders in February. Since I’m self-publishing it I can do quite a bit more on the pre-order side than I could with PRH, so I’m very excited to share my plans there.

Nonfiction Book 2

Current status: Abandoned indefinitely

The more I work on Husk, the more I enjoy working on Husk, and the more doing another non-fiction book feels less attractive, at least for now.

The other factor here is that since I’m going to make Husk a series, I should focus on getting that done before I move on to another project. The best marketing for a fiction book is more fiction books, especially more fiction books in a series, so I’d be spreading my efforts too thin to try to do both at once.

I’ll definitely pick up another nonfiction book at some point in the next few years, but it’s less of a priority now. I’m having too much fun and see too much potential building out the Huskiverse.

New Podcast: Between Drafts

This will get its own post next week so I’ll just tease it here.

Nathan Baugh and I are launching a podcast called “Between Drafts” following our journeys to become career authors. It’s a mix of practical advice on writing, editing, getting an agent, building an audience, as well as a behind the scenes look at what authors actually do and how they build their careers, like how Nathan is getting an agent for his novel, how I’m publishing Husk, how book deals work, and so on.

The first episodes come out next week, but you can subscribe to the show now: YouTube, Spotify, Apple.

Blog and Audience Building

In the last post I committed to getting more active on the blog again. And I sorta did it. But I also fell off the habit for a month and change while heads down on the latest draft.

For 2025 though I’m committing to getting back on the once-a-week cadence. This blog has been the most valuable thing I’ve ever worked on, and I regret letting it fall by the wayside the last couple years.

In addition I’m working on figuring out how to get more active on Instagram again. I hacked an audience there with Booktok and then got bored and quit, but I’m going to pivot it to sharing what I’m talking about with Nathan on Between Drafts plus other book and writing stuff.

Thanks for following along on these updates. Look out for the Between Drafts launch next week, the Husk cover reveal in February, and other fun posts along the way until the April update!