Recently I posted about Age of Legend hitting the New York Times Bestseller List, but I should have dug a bit deeper

Why? Well, it also hit the  USA Today Bestseller list. This is especially great because the first list singled out the audio release, but the USA Today list is only for print and ebook. So, by hitting both lists, we have all the basis covered!

Of course, this really isn’t my accomplishment, it’s due to all of you who showed so much support for the book and bought them as soon as you could get your hands on them. Robin and I greatly appreciate your support!

While it’s not published in the paper for a little while yet, people’s whose books hit the New York Times get an early notification, an I’m thrilled that Age of Legend joins Age of War as a New York Times Bestseller!

Hey all, Robin here. I took a look today to see how the audio sales were going, and I was pleased to find that all the first books of Michael’s series have made the 100 Bestselling Epic Fantasy audiobook list. That’s Theft of Swords (#95), The Crown Tower (#22), and Age of Myth (#59).  In addition, the latest release, Age of Legend (#25) is still hitting the top of the list, and in a surprise Age of Swords (#17) is doing the best of all the titles. So, we just wanted to thank all the audio listeners for being so supportive of Michael’s work.

Recording of Age of Death starts on October 2nd, and will be released on February 2, 2020. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are.

Oh, and The Crown Tower is just $5 as part of Audible’s Great Escape Sale. So, if you’ve not started the Riyria Chronicle’s series yet, this would be a great time to give it a go!

We are so honored that audiobook listeners flock to our new releases in droves. Since 2015, every single release of my books has hit Audible’s Top 10 bestseller list in its debut week, including last week’s Age of Legend. That’s amazing, especially when you consider there are 61,000+ fiction titles on the site. How can I not be happy with that! So, thank you, audio listeners, for bringing us to the top of the charts so many times.

• #9 The Death of Dulgath  (Dec 15, 2015)
• #6 Age of Myth (May 9, 2016)
• #1 Age of Swords (July 28, 2017)
• #8 The Disappearance of Winter’s Daughter (Dec 8, 2017)
• #3 Age of War (July 8, 2018)
• #6 Age of Legend (July 12, 2019)

*One of July’s Free Audible Originals

It’s just three days before the release of Age of Legend, are you as excited as Robin and I are? Well, we were so excited that Robin decided to see how the pre-orders for the audiobook were going and she found something really interesting.

Right now there are 2,915 audiobooks available for pre-order, and when organizing them by which are selling the best, Age of Legend is #7. Being in n the top 10 with the likes of Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Lee Child, Malcolm Gladwell, and a new Star Wars book is pretty surreal. Being the math person Robin is she tells me that puts it in the top 0.25% of all audiobooks for pre-order (top 0.24% to be precise).

Our thanks go to everyone who has pre-ordered, it was this kind of early support that got Age of War on the New York Times bestseller list. Whether we can repeat that with Age of Legend, who knows, but in some respects, I don’t care because making the list once was the dream of a lifetime.

Oh, and we are working with Audible to get the pre-orders up for Age of Death (coming February 4, 2020) and Age of Empyre (coming May 5, 2020). So you’ll be able to listen to all three remaining books in a span of just under 10 months of each other. That’s much better than the 2 years span for the first three books. Recording starts in early November!!

Grim Oak Press (the distributor for Age of Legend) is running a giveaway for signed copies of all 4 books of the Legends of the First empire series. You can enter to win here.

Even if you have all the books, this would be a great opportunity to introduce the series to a loved one. Plus, there’s another reason to enter. Shawn and Jeff (who run Grim Oak) are also going to be giving away 3 copies of Terry Brook’s Street Freaks and one copy of the exclusive Emerald City Comic Con edition of Unfettered III.

Oh, and while we are speaking of giveaways…don’t forget we still have two other giveaways for Age of Legend.  

• Goodreads (US & Canada) enter here.
• Riyria Website (All countries) enter here.

Age of Legend books will be coming off the presses any day now, so it’s time to do some giveaways!  We’ll have three ways for you to win.

• Goodreads (only open to US and Canada residents). I’m not sure why Goodreads limited the giveaway to just these two countries, but they did, which is one of the reasons why I’ve got two other ways to enter. There are 3 books being drawn on June 30th at 11:59 PM EDT.
• Reddit’s /r/Fantasy sub (open to all countries). Reddit can be a divisive site filled with people with very strong opinions from all facets of the spectrum, but the fantasy sub is an oasis of civility among the chaos. If you’ve not visited it before, this would be a good time to check it out. I’m sure you’ll find reasons to stay.  To enter, you just have to add a comment to the thread and I’ll send you a message via the Reddit site. I’ll be drawing 2 books on June 5th at 11:59 PM EDT. This drawing is open to people from all countries.
• Private giveaway (open to all countries). In today’s publishing environment, there is always some “big entity” between the author and the reader (Amazon, Barnes and Noble or the publishers). I like having a direct relationship with readers such that if these other people ever get “wonky.” I can still reach out to my readers and tell them about sales, giveaways, and Kickstarters. Entering here will require an email address (so I can notify the winner), but you can opt out of being added to my email list. I don’t use it often (I think 6 times in the last 3 years), so don’t worry about being bombarded. But I like having the safety net of being able to reach people if the “big boys” are getting in the way. There are 2 books being drawn on June 30th at 11:59 PM EDT.

All books will be signed (and can be dedicated if you wish). If you haven’t read the other three books there are spoiler-filled recaps available on this site.

• Age of Myth recap

• Age of Swords recap

• Age of War recap

I hope you are as excited about the next release as I am, and good luck on the drawings!

Hey all, we are in the final hours (30 to be exact)  of the Age of Legend Kickstarter, and to say things have gone well would be a gross understatement. We are just a few thousand away from joining the other 4 fiction Kickstarters that have surpassed $100,000 in pre-order sales. How nuts is that?

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.