No, this isn’t an announcement about a Legends of the First Empire television series, but it’s still pretty cool.  Allstate Insurance recently did an advertisement about the resilience and strength of Carolinians in the wake of Hurricane Florence. In this ad, they focused on the Angel Oak of Johns Island South Carolina. It’s an amazing tree (and some say it’s the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi). It’s estimated to be between 400 – 500 years old, and it’s magnificent. It was also my inspiration for Magda, the wise and ancient oak of the Cresent Forest in the Legends of the First Empire series. Even though Marc Simonetti did a fabulous job interpreting the Angel Oak for the cover of Age of Myth, I thought people might want to see Magda in all her glory.

As you may know, the hardcover edition of Age of Swords has gone out of print, and resellers have been charging outrageous amounts (currently $92 – $119) to get copies. We ran a crowdfunding campaign to buy the excess copies from Del Rey and I thought I should update everyone on the status of the the Age of Swords hardcovers. So here goes:

• Yes, we have copies now, and they are shipping from our online store.
• We’ve also full-funded our Indiegogo campaign to buy all the remaining stock from Del Rey, and we are heading toward our 3rd stretch goal.
• Goal #1 and #2 are providing signed Age of Swords bookmarks, and if we reach the next goal, Robin and I will do some online Q&A sessions on writing and the business side of publishing.
• The big shipment from Del Rey is in the warehouse, and I’ll be going there to sign those books after the holiday.

In doing this project, I thought it would be interesting to look at the money side in a bit more detail so Robin pulled some data from my most recent royalty statement (sales through 03/31/18) and here’s some interesting information from that:

• $15,360.42: Our “cut” of the hardcover sales of this book to date  (once we subtract off the money we paid Del Rey)
• $108,016.88: Del Rey’s cut of the hardcover sales of this book (including what we paid them).
• $21,490 – gross amount the crowdfunding campaign has raised so far. Yes in 5 days I’ve brought in MORE money than over a year’s worth of royalties from the traditional publisher! Now granted, not all of that is profit, but we still have 2 weeks and 3 days to go, so who knows how much money we will raise.
• $75,264 – my potential income if all the remaining books are sold at the same price as the crowdfunding campaign ($22).

I don’t know about you but I find that pretty eye-opening.