I'm currently exploring publishing options for my current project, which I have summarized below. I am seeking input on whether this market analysis makes sense. I am considering all strategies, from trad pub to self pub. All novels in this series (aside from the standalone market test) are unpublished and first rights are intact.
The Spell Keeper Chronicles (SKC) are five inclusive, anti-patriarchical fantasy books that combine epic and cozy elements. The theme is how disillusioned readers can cope with lies that have led to envronmental collapse, end-stage capitalism, and mental illness. The series could be described as Avatar: The Last Airbender meets The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. But with queer thundercats.
I am currently market testing a companion novel in this same world at Royal Road. As of this writing, 46 chapters in, I have an average reader retention rate of 94.8% per chapter.
This market analysis is based on the following assumptions:
The SKC are written towards millenial women 35 who are fed up with the patriarchy, who are angry that societal rules no longer have meaning, and who long for hope in the face of seemingly unsurmountable setbacks. There are three specific groups the series is aimed toward, in order of importance:
Told with healthy doses of escapist comedy and darkness (but not too dark), SKC embraces a world without patriarchy, without good vs evil, and no grubby hordes of enemies going to war. Instead, the stories explore personal strength and sacrifice, overcoming unfairness, the loss of societal safety nets, and triumphing over our own fears to find mental and environmental balance. There's no sexual assault, gratuitous violence, incest, or other sensationalistic ploys. There is fade-to-black love and plenty of epic conflict.
The best fantasy is about wish fulfillment. The SKC feature characters who dig deep and bond together. There's a very real sense of empowerment, and overcoming the mental health challenges our world throws at us.
To put it simply, the self-service therapy market is white-hot 6 , and the SKC slot right in. Some of the comments I've received indicate success in the theme:
My sales strategy for the SKC is to approach the US and Canadian network of DBT therapists and position the series as a companion fictionalization of DBT principles. This close network of therapists is overwhelmed by the surge in DBT's popularity. 7 Licensed DBT therapists are completely maxed out and opening in DBT groups are hard to find. So there is a growing movement of self-study groups. Look no further than the sales numbers of DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, the #1 best seller in Social Work 8, with 2500+ sales per month on Amazon alone 9-- and Amazon is not its primary sales channel.10 According to the publisher, Guilford Press, both this book and its companion manual each have more and one million copies in print. 10
Many other self-study DBT books have between 500-2500+ Amazon sales per month. 11 And one of Amazon's top selling books of all time, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (currently at #7 overall), has 10K+ sales per month. 34
There is a significant market for self-help behavioral therapy books, and I have already begun market testing the book with licensed DBT therapists. I am confident in getting a high-profile endorsement. But the SKC are not self-help books, which leads me to the next sales strategy.
The Harry Potter franchise continues to be one of the best-selling series of all time, as proven with sales of the video game Hogwart's Legacy. 12 But anti-TERF backlash against the franchise (most recently against the planned TV series) is significant and vocal. 13 Even fans who continue to buy into the series express remorse. 14 I've spent the last few years building an alt-potter online presence 15 and have witnessed a hunger for alternatives to the franchise.
Finally, there is a significant rise in fantasy sales to the young adult market 16 , notably in two groups: diversity/inclusion 17 , and gamification. 18 The SKC addresses both of those markets. I've released a companion web-serialization novel on Royal Road 19 , where it hit rising stars in less than two weeks. This novel is not part of the overall story, but an interlude between volumes. I will continue to grow readership for this novel and gain a following. My early results are extremely encouraging.
First of all, I'm a good writer with support from experienced writers 21 and illustrators. 20 This book was first workshopped at the 2015 Borderlands Press Bootcamp 21 , and I have since cultivated mentorship from established authors. I am serious about the craft and learned from the best.
I have an excellent chance of getting endorsed by the self-help community. In graduate school I published a study in the American Psychological Association's highest impact Social Psychology journal, Sex Roles 22 . According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 4.154, ranking it 1st out of 41 journals in the category "Women's Studies," 23 which is the primary market of DBT therapists. 24
I've spent the last four years studying the efficacy of DBT therapy and have high confidence that this series will be accepted by the DBT practitioner community. I am hoping, with good reason, that it will go viral in that community.
I also have momentum in the alt-potter and gamelit communities. I have an alt-potter merchandise shop. 25 My magic system was developed in collaboration with the Witches vs Patriarchy subreddit, another top 1% reddit community. My paper discussed gender-based aggression in video game players. It was published 15 years before #gamergate 26 , making it one of the defining studies on the topic, and continues to be cited today. 27 That will give me credibility with the game community.
SKC is written with crossover markets in mind:
SKC has an audio-first mentality when it comes to the writing. I have been reading the chapters out loud for over ten years to live audiences and refining the text accordingly in preparation for audio format. I minimize the use of "said tags" which are fine on the written page, but which become an annoyance when read aloud. My characters have distinct names. I took a cue from Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft, and my prose is written with aural appeal in mind. 28
As a long time film critic 29 and cosplayer 30 myself, I wrote SKC with an eye towards visual practical effects. The scenes are mostly based on easily replicable environments with some simple color correction. The costumes are easy to replicate, with key props and costuming elements to make the costumes come to life. This is a production manager's dream come true.
The magic system (hear me out, I know you get this a lot) is innovative in that it works as both a soft magic system and a hard magic system, both with gamification in mind. Gamification is one of the hottest growing trends in fantasy 31, and SKC has it covered.
Magic in SKC occurs within a strict framework of rules that have clear costs and rich role-playing game implications from the soft magic system. There are four core elements:
| # | Essentiæ | Domain | Element | Primary Stats | Maifestation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chloris | nature | earth | WIS/DEX | cyclical |
| 2 | Certe | logic | water/ice | INT/STR | outward-to-focused |
| 3 | Phyr | emotion | fire | CON/STR | focused-to-outward |
| 4 | Æolia | society | air | CHA/LUCK | linear |
And four axis or polarities players can specialize in:
Spells in SKC have minimum requirements in certain stats and specialization threshholds, all with a numbers system that is simple to understand but with potential for advanced play. You can learn more here, but suffice to say I have developed the series with gamification in mind.
I am a strong writer with industry support, a clear market in mind, a sales strategy to reach that market, and a simple path to additional markets. Not only that, the story is fantastic and based in compelling themes. Ask me for a partial. 32 You won't be disappointed. 33
| # | Source | Key Quote | Link | Go back to reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Adult Fiction Outperforms the U.S. Book Market in 2023, Circana Reports | For the U.S. book industry, annual print volume reached 767 million in 2023, down by 3% compared to 2022, according to Circana, a leading advisor on the complexity of consumer behavior. | link | ↩ back |
| 2 | Publisher's Weekly: The Audiobook Market, and Its Revenue, Keep Growing | The Audio Publishers Association’s annual sales survey, out today, revealed an 11th straight year of double-digit growth in audiobook sales. For 2022, the 28 APA member publishers reported an overall revenue increase of 10%, bringing the estimated industry total to $1.8 billion in sales for the year. | link | ↩ back |
| 3 | Adult Fiction Outperforms the U.S. Book Market in 2023, Circana Reports | Adult fiction was the brightest spot in 2023. Fiction print sales grew by 1%, or 1.5 million units, over the prior year, led by fantasy, romance, coming-of-age, and historical fiction subjects, according to Circana BookScan. This is the fifth year of unit growth for adult fiction in the U.S., which benefited from time spent at home during the pandemic. | link | ↩ back |
| 4 | Wordsrated: Fantasy Book Sales Statistics | Fantasy book sales grew by 45.3% in 2021 compared to 2020, which was the largest increase among all genres aside from graphic novels. | link | ↩ back |
| 5 | The Fantasy Publishing Industry: An Analysis of the Market | One trend is the increased representation of diverse and marginalized voices, as publishers are looking for stories that represent a wider range of perspectives and experiences. ... Gamification are new technologies that are starting to be used in the fantasy publishing industry | link | ↩ back |
| 6 | Self-help book sales | According to NPD Group, The self-help industry has exploded in recent years: by 11% from 2013 to 2019, with U.S. sales of self-help books growing annually up to 18.6 million volumes. Self-help title numbers nearly tripled during the same period, from 30,897 to 85,253. This industry was worth $10.5 billion as of 2020. | link | ↩ back |
| 7 | The High Cost of Dialectical Behavior Therapy: An In-Depth Analysis | The stringent certification requirements also contribute to a shortage of certified DBT therapists. As a result, the demand for DBT services often outpaces the supply, leading to wait times and increased client costs longer. This lack of availability can make it difficult for individuals to access affordable DBT treatment, further exacerbating the issue of high costs. | link | ↩ back |
| 8 | Amazon Best Sellers in Social Work | #1 Best Seller in Social Work 2.5K+ bought or read in past month | link | ↩ back |
| 9 | [awaiting fact checking] | link | ↩ back | |
| 10 | Guilford Press | The Groundbreaking Bestseller More than 1,000,000 in print! | link | ↩ back |
| 11 | Amazon DBT search | link | ↩ back | |
| 12 | GameRant: Hogwarts Legacy Passes Another Massive Sales Milestone | Last year's Hogwarts Legacy RPG sold over 22 million copies in 2023, making it the best-selling game of the year, surpassing Tears of the Kingdom by almost 2 million copies. | link | ↩ back |
| 13 | Harry Potter fans plan to boycott TV series due to JK Rowling’s comments about trans community | I once dreamed of a 1 season per book TV adaptation of Harry Potter but because of JK Rowling’s aggressive anti-trans rhetoric I would not only refuse to watch this show, I would likely avoid any other work by writers, directors, and actors involved in the show. | link | ↩ back |
| 14 | I threw away my Harry Potter books – as a trans ally, I couldn’t keep them any longer | They were the reason I’m a writer today, and I truly pictured myself reading these books to my children. Well, no more. They will help me teach my children about equality, love and feminism – but not in the way I imagined. Now, as an adult – a true feminist and a trans ally – they stand for everything I actively campaign against. | link | ↩ back |
| 15 | [awaiting fact checking] | link | ↩ back | |
| 16 | Young Readers Struggling with ‘Reality Overload’ Drive Surging Sales of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books | Fantasy fiction book sales increased dramatically in the past three years just as teen depression, anxiety and mental illness skyrocketed – parallel trends that may be both a symptom of the pandemic and a possible remedy, literary and mental health experts say. | link | ↩ back |
| 17 | The Battle for Diversity in High Fantasy Fiction | George R.R. Martin has released the first volume of The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty. The book is being boycotted by fans, however, alongside complaints about the lack of inclusivity within the universe, specifically in the House of the Dragon cast. | link | ↩ back |
| 18 | 7 Fantasy Novels That Deserve A Video Game Adaptation | The biggest names in fantasy media almost always start out as books. The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and The Witcher were all novel series before they became the film, TV, and video game juggernauts they are today. Fantasy is one of the deepest and most expansive genres out there, so there is no shortage of novels that would make for great video games. | link | ↩ back |
| 19 | The Hammer Unfalls: Progression Version | "A well crafted narrative set in a vivid world" "Magnificent, magical, prose." |
link | ↩ back |
| 20 | Deena Warner Design | link | ↩ back | |
| 21 | Matthew Warner: Visit to Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers | This weekend, Deena and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers, run by Borderlands Press. In addition to visiting all our pals such as instructors Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and Doug Winter, we had the pleasure of getting to harrass Deena’s brother Rob Lineberger, there for his first experience as a grunt. | link | ↩ back |
| 22 | Video game violence and confederate gender: Effects on reward and punishment given by college males. | Post hoc analyses show that females were punished significantly more stringently as gave violence increased | link | ↩ back |
| 23 | Wikipedia | According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2020 impact factor of 4.154, ranking it 1st out of 41 journals in the category "Women's Studies" and 11th out of 62 journals in the category, "Social Psychology". | link | ↩ back |
| 24 | Dialectical behavior therapy as treatment for borderline personality disorder | Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a structured outpatient treatment based on cognitive-behavioral principles developed by Dr Marsha Linehan in the early 1990s for the treatment of parasuicidal behavior in women with borderline personality disorder (BPD) | link | ↩ back |
| 25 | [awaiting fact checking] | link | ↩ back | |
| 26 | Vox: What we still haven’t learned from Gamergate | ...there is a direct line from the game industry and media’s failure in addressing gamergate to the right wing terrorism we’re seeing today. Period. | link | ↩ back |
| 27 | Violent Video Games and Aggression: A Discussion Based on the Main Theoretical Frameworks | Published 25 August 2023 by Springer | link | ↩ back |
| 28 | Lithub: A Writing Lesson from Ursula K. Le Guin, In Pursuit of the Gorgeous Sound of Language | A good writer, like a good reader, has a mind’s ear. We mostly read prose in silence, but many readers have a keen inner ear that hears it. Dull, choppy, droning, jerky, feeble: these common criticisms of narrative are all faults in the sound of it. Lively, well-paced, flowing, strong, beautiful: these are all qualities of the sound of prose, and we rejoice in them as we read. Narrative writers need to train their mind’s ear to listen to their own prose, to hear as they write. | link | ↩ back |
| 29 | Wikipedia | link | ↩ back | |
| 30 | Rebel Legion | I was the head of all jedi on planet earth for Lucasfilm's official fan organization and turned into an illustrated trading card. | link | ↩ back |
| 31 | What Is LitRPG? An Introduction to Sci-Fi and Fantasy RPG Novels | While LitRPG books might have more in common with games than other types of books, they're still books at the end of the day. | link | ↩ back |
| 32 | [awaiting fact checking] | link | ↩ back | |
| 33 | Me | Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee that you will not be disappointed, but if you have read this far, why not take a chance? | link | ↩ back |
| 34 | 21 Top Book Sales Statistics For 2024 (Latest Industry Data) | The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson is the most-sold book on Amazon | link | ↩ back |
| 35 | Millennial women, congratulations—you’re the economy’s new power players | If the economy starts looking up in the next couple of years, you’ve got women to thank. At least, that’s according to a new report from Ned Davis Research (NDR). From job participation and employment, through to the stock market and GDP, a new study titled The Rising Influence of Millennial Women found that women currently in their late twenties and early thirties are emerging as the silver bullet to many of the economy’s woes. | link | ↩ back |
| 36 | #DBT is trending on TikTok: 4 skills from the popular type of therapy that you can practice daily | #DBT has over 170 million views on TikTok, with users either explaining how they use the type of therapy in their own lives or providing advice for others. | link | ↩ back |