Case study · Fantasy · 2024
ASIN B0DKR7M3VQ
An indie fantasy author writing three books a year. We edit on an 18-day cycle, designed a six-book cover system that scales, and ran audiobook production on book one. Combined sales across the first three books crossed 410,000 copies; royalty crossed $94,000 net of ad spend in year one.
Inside the project
Working shots from this engagement — interview sessions, manuscript pages, cover concepts, launch day.
Elena is the productive indie fantasy author. She writes a book in 11 weeks. Her bottleneck has never been writing speed — it has been the structural decisions a series of six books accumulates.
The structural pass Sam ran on her outline before book 3 went into draft is the single highest-leverage piece of work we have done with her. It cost two weeks; it saved a structural rewrite that would have cost her six months somewhere around book 4.
The cover system is the second-highest-leverage piece. Six books that read as a series at thumbnail size on Amazon’s category page. The lantern motif rotates color across the six covers — a subtle visual cue that tells the reader “this is book 4, not book 1” before they read a single word of metadata.
Books 4 and 5 are written; book 4 is in copy edit. The full series concludes in 2027.
“Sam read my six-book outline and told me book 3 was structurally broken. I disagreed for two weeks. Then I read his proposed fix and realized I had been writing book 3 inside the wrong structure for nine months.”
Cover rounds
The shortlist we presented to the author before round-one revisions. The selected concept is the second in the strip.
Project facts
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