2024 Year in Review

In this post, I want to review my 2024 publishing goals and give a status report on where I landed with each.

I started 2024 with some ambitious goals, including:

1. The Alchemist's Forge release - Completed
2. The Assassin's Code release - deferred to February 2025, but on track
3. Character Profiles - These are sort of like NPC character sheets for the characters from my books. While I didn't start the year with any set goal of completing any specific number of them, I'm calling this a success because I completed so many. Each book page lists the characters featured in that book, or you can start at the World of Uhl's People section and drill down from there to view them all. I'll continue on these in 2025 with a goal of completing them all.
4. A new short story featuring Elizabeth West - Not completed. This one is high on my list for 2025. I should add that this is different from the flash fiction story "Master Thief" that went out to Magic & Mayhem subscribers. I'm actually hoping to launch a new series with this one, but we'll see.
   
5. Make signed print books available via my store - Not completed. I researched this, including devising a cost model for shipping my books. I also looked into enlisting a POD service to ship digitally signed versions, but some quality issues gave me pause. More work remains here, and this is definitely another high-priority item for 2025.
6. Patreon - I ended this experiment due to a lack of interest and moved all the content to my World of Uhl sub-site. Go forth and explore.
7. My Readers' Group - I rebranded this as Magic & Mayhem. While I had a goal of growing the number of readers, the overall number actually went down because I've been somewhat ruthlessly trimming people who join, download the free books, and then show zero interest in anything else. Given the pay structure for maintaining an email list, I have no plans to change this approach in 2025 other than I would like to focus more on quality subscribers, so I will involve myself in fewer Bookfunnel promotions featuring free books moving forward.
   

All told I'm pretty happy with how the year went. I am a little disappointed I only had the one book release, but I'm well on my way to having The Assassin's Code ready for its release on February 4, then I can focus on other projects with an entire year ahead.

Indulge in fantastic tales of sword, sorcery, and alchemy today by joining thousands of readers like yourself who can't get enough of Scott Marlowe's "intense" storytelling and "skillfully written" adventures. You'll get two free stories, The Hall of Riddles and The Assassin's Dilemma, plus an original short story set in my world delivered to you each and every month.