The Rise of Riyria: Michael Sullivan

Leona and I first met at a convention, where she bought one of my books.  Later, when her own book was being released, she asked me to blurb it. I’d never been asked to do this before; I was honored and a bit scared. Thankfully, Leona’s book was great, and I could recommend it without reservations. For those who don’t know, I also created the final cover for Secrets of the Sands. Leona has now been kind enough to give me a platform to discuss how I went from my first book to where I am today–so here I am.

First, I should say that the Riyria Revelations was always carefully crafted as a six-book series told in individual episodes. This was a difficult trick to play, as I had to give each novel its own beginning, middle, and end, but I wanted the larger story arc to build over time along with the tension and stakes.  To that end, I wrote all six before publishing the first. This is not a strategy I would recommend to others, by the way, as it was no small undertaking, especially considering that I did not know if the first few books would even catch on.

When it came time to publish, I started querying agents. After hundreds of rejections I found one, and she did some shopping to New York publishers with no real nibbles.  She actually had to quit the business due to medical problems with her husband, and in retrospect that was for the best.

I had no desire to spend a year finding another agent, particularly since the big houses had seen the book and passed. I opted instead to send the books to some smaller presses that did not require agents. The Crown Conspiracy was picked up and published by AMI (Aspirations Media Inc.) and they did a 2,200 print run. They planned to produce the second book, Avempartha, but they were hit by hard times and did not have enough money to print it, or the second printing of Crown (which sold out after 14 months) so the rights reverted to me.

Having seen what it takes to be published through a small press, it was an easy decision to self-publish through Ridan Publishing (a small press started by my wife, Robin in March 2009).  Ridan Publishing currently has a list of 18 books and 6 authors, and is doing quite nicely at finding audiences for them.  Ridan republished The Crown Conspiracy and put out first editions of the other four books: Avempartha, Nyphron Rising, The Emerald Storm, and Wintertide. The release schedule was brutal (one book every six months) which, even though they are all written, doesn’t mean they’re ready to see the light of day, as it takes months of polishing to edit them.

With the release of the fourth book in April 2010, I was doing…respectably well. I was selling 1,000 books a month and actually contributing to the household income as opposed to bringing in “hobby money”. Still it was a fraction of what my wife made, so she continued to support my full time writing career with her day job.

In September, I had four different Czech Republic publishers wanting to do translation and distribution, so Robin hired a foreign rights agent for me. She closed the Czech deal at a 50% increase from the original offer, so she more than made up for her commission cut.

In October, we released Wintertide and sales soared to 2,600 copies that month. Robin decided to try for a New York publishing house again – now that we showed some success.  To be honest, I thought that a) nothing would come of it or b) if anything happened, it would be late 2011, well after the release of the final book, Percepliquis.

To my surprise, my foreign rights agent had multiple publishers interested in just a few weeks, and we agreed to a 3-book, six-figure deal with Orbit to produce the series. The good news was that the books could find a wider audience; the bad news was that Percepliquis would be delayed.

To date, working with Orbit has been wonderful.  My biggest fear was that they might want to change the books, but that has turned out not to be the case. We made some minor adjustments, including a new chapter 1 for Crown, but other than that, most won’t even notice the differences, except better comma placement, which I’m terrible at. What’s even better is that Orbit is releasing the books on an accelerated schedule: November 2011, December 2011, and January 2012.

Many fans were disappointed that they would not have a completed set of books with my covers/design, and that they would have to wait nine months for the last installment. But again, Orbit proved they are a publisher that cares about the fan base: they have agreed to put out a Percepliquis-only version using my covers so that long-time fans can complete their sets.

Sales post-October have been amazing, even though no one knew about the Orbit deal, which was announced in March. I’ve averaged 10,000 books a month for November through February. In addition, we’ve closed foreign rights deals for France, Russia, and Spain. All this has provided a very nice (and unexpected) bump in income, such that my wife is now quitting her day job and will be concentrating on Ridan Publishing full time.

So that’s where I am today. Editing and covers are already done for the Orbit books, so I’m working on my next story, Antithesis. If the Orbit release is a success, then I have some ideas for some other stories I can spin out of there; but as I mentioned, the story arc for Riyria Revelations is finished with book six.

I’m very excited to see what the future will bring, and I thank Leona for giving me a place on her blog to talk about where I came from and where I am now.

Michael Sullivan is a full-time fiction writer whose most notable work is the six-book Riyria Revelations Fantasy Series, originally released in 2008-2010, which will be re-published by Orbit Books in the fall of 2011. He is currently working on an urban fantasy entritled Antithesis and will release a literary fiction piece A Burden to the Earth in the Spring of 2011.

Michael’s web site may be found here; his blog, here. He can also be found on Twitter under the name author_sullivan; last but not least, he has a Facebook page.