Relaunching Dungeon Runner

After a year of wallowing in despair (not really, but let me paint a picture!), I have decided it’s time to turn my lemons into lemon bars. I don’t actually like lemonade, so we’re going with lemon bars.

Full transparency—deep breath, because I need to look at something that only pains me, haha—Dungeon Runner made a total of $839 across three books.

• Dungeon Runner 1: $474
• Dungeon Runner 2: $197
• Dungeon Runner 3: $131

Those who know me well know that I’ve never cared about the money. I can make more in a month being a code monkey than I can make in a year as an author. But the money is an easy gauge to see how a series is doing.

So, let’s compare. After nearly a year, the whole Dungeon Runner series has made $839, while the first Arachnomancer book has made $17k. 400k words vs 93k words. 5 years of on-and-off effort vs 3 months.

It’s not hard to see the disparity. . . .

Sometimes, a book just doesn’t hit the market well. There are many variables outside of our control. All we can do is tell the best damn story we can, then hope for a miracle. (Not entirely true; let me exaggerate!)

And sometimes, a book is just cursed. But even if these books are cursed, I love them like a proud parent should! Come, my cursed children, we shall flee to the Wilds and live like hermits.

These aren’t bad stories. They are brimming with my most creative ideas and characters that I absolutely love. When I finally finished the series, emotions were felt. A tear or ten might have been shed.

Alright, let’s dig into the problems.

The Title

When I originally wrote Dungeon Runner, it was meant to be a newsletter magnet for the main series called Eternal Fantasy Online. It was never meant to be more than a 10k-word story. But then I got this crazy idea of having a newsletter serial. Every month, I’d publish more story, increasing the value of being subscribed.

I did that for six novellas: three main, three side, featuring Eizel. But it was hard to give Dungeon Runner my focus when I was behind on Arachnomancer.

Eventually, I decided that publishing the novellas for free would garner more reader interest, which would help me sell more Arachnomancer books. I gave away 10,000 novellas. But this is where I started running into a title problem.

Dungeon Runner is not an original title. Everyone and their black-spotted white cat has released a Dungeon Runner something-or-rather. There are songs, albums, video games, board games, books, and even erotica!

Why is there erotica!?

Novella Confusion

It’s easy to think the three novels represent the three main novellas (episodes 1, 2, and 3). Goodreads, even after several emails, still doesn’t understand this (last I checked). They’ve added Ep. 1 to book 1, Ep. 2 to book 2, etc.

It doesn’t help that the second book and the second episode both have a water theme. They look at the two covers, point, and say, “They are the same!” And I yell back, “They are not! I should know! I wrote them!”

I’m not sure I used enough exclamation points. . . .

For those who don’t know, Dungeon Runner 1 includes all the original novellas. Dungeon Runner 2 is 100% original content.

Preorder Problems

My audiobook publisher loves preorders. It’s the way of business for them. But for smaller authors who are Amazon-exclusive, preorders are bad.

The way Amazon works is they track your sales over a period of time. This influences your sales rank. Your sales rank influences the search results. If you’re not a big seller, people don’t buy your preorders because they have nothing to go on and no reason to be hyped for the launch.

What Amazon sees, then, is a book that gets no sales for a prolonged period of time. This kills the sales rank. When the book is finally available, you have to work harder to counteract the average days of no sales before release.

Okay, so not ideal, but then the audiobook—which didn’t have a cover for most of its preorder time—was linked to an unrelated Dungeon Runner book. . . .

That damn title, haha.

This link pulled over the unfavorable reviews from the other Dungeon Runner book to appear on my Dungeon Runner book.

Two things potentially happened at this point. Amazon saw Dungeon Runner 1 as an old book already in their system, and Amazon saw a rating score below 4, which hinders discoverability. This is why authors say anything below a 4-star rating represents “I hate this book, the author, and his family.”

When I couldn’t find the book via its main keyword (GameLit), sorted by new arrivals, I contacted Amazon. They did a search for “Dungeon Runner 1 by Dustin Tigner” and found it, so to them, everything was working perfectly. . . .

I’m a developer. There are a lot of complexities around databases and code logic, especially when we’re talking about massive websites with a billion moving parts. A problem existed, but it wasn’t a problem a random help-desk person had control in fixing.

Dungeon Runner fell through a crack and disappeared into the void.

Suffice it to say, there were a lot of problems, and thus, a lot of lessons learned. The writing business is hard. It has always been hard. I’m no special case. For every book that succeeds, there are thousands that fail.

Were I to give advice to other authors, I would say you need to believe in yourself and believe in what you create.

You will spend countless hours creating something you love only to find that no one cares (yet). In these times, it can feel pointless and frustrating and lonely.

But you must push on.

You must carry your torch and carve a path to success. If you don’t have the resolve to get through the hard times, you won’t make it. My mentor always says that the only way to fail at being a writer is to give up.

Sadly, that’s the outcome for many writers.

They stopped believing in themselves and their work.

I lost faith in Dungeon Runner. After its failed launch, I distanced myself from the series and did the bare minimum to market the second and third books. It seemed pointless, so I invested my time elsewhere.

Well, I’m back. I took the time I needed to recover, to remember how much I love these books. I believe in them. So, I’m not giving up on them.

I have much to do before re-publishing these books: website, music, art, print extras, etc. For now, though, here’s a sneak peek of the first cover.

This is still a work in progress. Everyone I have shown this cover to has seen a very similar yet very different cover. My design process looks entirely different than it did a year ago. I think, once I’m done with the new designs, it’s time to write up an article detailing my process.

The above is a resized screenshot. All of the details can easily change (and will) before the book is released. Lots of time is spent on the color balance and tiny details to improve readability.

One notable change to my process is that instead of designing the eBook cover and then extending that into the print edition, I’ve started working in the other direction. I want full wrap-around covers. Whether or not print books sell well, I’m committing to releasing them. :)

I think the print edition of this book is going to be gorgeous!

Alright, that’s it. Lots to do! Thanks for reading. :)