I failed.
In my 2023 Year in Review, I made a promise, which as of today, I have broken.
But maybe I should start on a more positive note...
Since I have been attending and selling books at more conventions, I decided i wanted to do something special. So starting this year, I will have a special CONVENTION EDITION of the Threadlight trilogy that I will be selling for $50. It includes all 3 books and the post-credit scene written for the Kickstarter. Cloth-bound. Silver foil on the case and dust jacket with a matching silver gilded edge. For now, these will only be available for purchase at conventions. So come find me!
As a part-time author, writing is often low on my lengthy to-do list. My family and day job come first. And both require significant time from me. I coach soccer and baseball, volunteer at my local church (I'm actually in charge of the choir now!) and I recently switched teams at work. For those who don't know, I work in software engineering at Meta. This year I switched from working on Messenger to working on VR. It still makes me laugh coming into the office and seeing so many people with Quest headsets on.
That does mean less time to write. Hence, my failure. I said that I would have a book finished in 2024, and I do not. I did make progress, but I am still far away from done. You can read more about that in the Projects Updates section below.
Let's not focus on that though. Let's see all the great things that happened this year, starting with the books I read!
Yes, I read ACOTAR. No, it wasn't for me. Clearly, DCC was...
Previous year for comparison
Ratings: 1,287, 683, 506
to-read: 6,006, 931, 755
2024 Highlights
- Anthologies. This was the first year that my short stories started appearing in print! Starting with the Advent of Winter, it has been great to see people really enjoying The Snowmaker's Child. Even more epic was selling Five Silver Rings to Grim Oak Press for their Grimoire for Dragonsteel Nexus. Having my story alongside folks like Robin Hobb and Fonda Lee was a dream. And lastly, I'm excited for a brand new standalone story to appear when Unavowed ships next year.
- Italian Translation. Speaking of selling rights...2024 was the first time Voice of War has been translated into another language thanks to the folks at Letterelettriche! If you speak Italian, give it a go and let me know what you think.
- Events. This year was so much fun. Two particular events stand out. First is the writing retreat I went on with some author friends (Michael Webb, Andy Peloquin, J.D.L Rosell, and Michael Michel). We had such a blast and I finally had dedicated time to get some writing done. Won't be the last time. And the second event was Dragonsteel (Brandon Sanderson's convention). My wife was there with me, and it was so fun to have people coming up to meet both of us for our own individual paths. AND, I was able to meet some long time digital friends in the flesh for the first time, which is really one of my favorite things.
- Epic Fantasy Audiobooks. This was the second year of our little YouTube experiment, and it seems to be going quite well! We added 10 more audiobooks to the channel, including 2 new authors (Derek Alan Siddoway and Ashley Capes), and generated over $15k in ad revenue again this year. This year was much smoother as far as admin goes, but I did have to make 16 copyright removal requests for various people re-uploading our audiobooks on their channels. We now have 6 videos with over 100k views, and one with over 400k!
- Indie fantasy fund. This year, our non-profit focused on larger grants for a smaller number of recipients to focus on audiobook creation. Proud to say that we received $12,000 of donations that we split amongst 4 winners, based on the length of their books. This continues to be a lot of work, but very rewarding to be able to support other authors in this way.
2025 Upcoming
- Emerald City Comic Con
- World Con
- Dragonsteel
Project Updates
- Symphony in the Skies. This is still my main project. In many ways, this series is what Threadlight prepared me for. There is a bigger world, more complex magic system, and a broader cast of characters. I have very high expectations for myself on this project, but I'm finally happy with what I have so far. The world feels unique. The pacing feels good. And I really do think you all are going to love it. I would put this at 40% done, with a lot of work ahead of me. I may have commissioned a series logo, and I already have a beautiful map. So we're getting there!
- Short stories. I have three short stories that I'm playing around with, one of which I hope to sell in 2025. It's an ancient Maya inspired standalone story called "The Boy with No Boon". It's brutal, and has a great ending. Still some work to do on this one, but here is the opening line teaser: "The great god Ixmu has three children, and I will kill them all."
- Other novels (Paramortals/Tom Blade): No progress on either of these books. With my limited writing time, I decided I wanted to stay more focused on getting out Symphony in the Skies. I do expect these both to be much easier to write, so I'll likely take a pass on them once I finish the other book.
Financial Transparency
Total Revenue: $32,000
- eBooks: $3,000
- Physical books: $18,500
- Audiobooks: $8,000
- Kindle Unlimited: $2,500 (~500k page reads)
Expenses: ~$12,000
Total profit: $20,000
YouTube Metrics: Epic Fantasy Audiobooks
- Subscribers: 27,300 (+10k)
- Watch hours: 1.1M
- Views: 1.2M
- Estimated revenue: $15,500
- My revenue: $2,500
- Author payouts: $13,000
That's it for this year.
Thank you for helping make my dreams of writing a reality.
—Zack Argyle
NEW RELEASES!
Book 4 in the bestselling Ranger of the Titan Wilds series.
Now available on Kickstarter!
A new novella in the Mortal Techniques series (starts with Never Die)
Now available on Amazon!
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