The Full Contradiction of my Time

I'm now knee-deep in the first book of an SFF trilogy (I'm tentatively describing it as Science Fantasy, I don't know if anyone actually uses that term), and I have a lot of uncertainty. Not about the books per se, I'm committed and confident I'll finally be able to write this story. I'm a little nervous about writing my first series, because I've only written standalones.

This is probably technically a good time to be switching to a new genre with lots of ????, since a lot of things are changing across the board anyway and the old conventional advice may no longer apply (ranks slowing/freezing on amazon means some of the old promo strategies might not be as effective, etc etc). But I feel like I've gotten off the bus on the opposite side of town and have no idea where everything is.

I've taken steps to reassure myself.

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Time for numberwang! It's always fun when my "big counter" ticks up to a milestone:

This is just for active titles on D2D. I've actually sold over 5,700 books across platforms. My bestselling book has sold 320 copies in like 2 years (and in case you're wondering, YES, it is emphatically one of my stupidest books!). I think I've published 50 books so far, but I delisted the stinkiest ones sales-wise so IDK.

As you can see, even if your books don't sell "a lot," especially up-front, over time it adds up if you keep on truckin'.

I know someone whose recent pen-debut novel sold more copies in one week than I sold from my entire catalog in one year. It would be foolish of me to compare myself to them, even if we were in the same genre doing similar things, because you never really know what's going on under the hood. Even if they TELL you what's going on, you're taking their word for it, not only that they told the truth but that they actually understand what made the difference (oftentimes, we don't unless you've got years of experience in a genre and you keep meticulous records).

You decide what you're asking your pen name to do for you. You decide what's cool. My first year I sold maybe 250 books. I decided 5.7k books in 3 years is cool. YMMV.