Brian McClellan: How I Came To Create My Own Expanded Universe

Brian McClellan is my beard brother. TREAT HIM WELL, INTERNETS. That is all. Anyway, here he is to talk about some things and some stuff. Stay frosty.

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A week ago I put out a new novella called Servant of the Crown. It’s the second novella and fifth piece of short fiction based off the world I created in the Powder Mage trilogy. That trilogy, starting with the novel Promise of Blood, is published by Orbit Books, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Hachette. The short fiction is something I put out myself electronically.

This makes me a “hybrid” author. You may have heard the term. Our own friend Chuck Wendig has written about it for Writer’s Digest. In short, a hybrid author is someone who has fingers in both traditional and self-publishing. These kind of authors are becoming more and more common.

In my experience, most authors approach hybridization by putting out some novels themselves and others with their publishers. Maybe it’s every other book. Maybe one in three. Everyone does it differently and that’s something that I took to heart when I got my initial idea for the Powder Mage short fiction.

Back when I had just signed my first contract, I asked an author what he thought about writing in other universes for pay. Star Wars, video game freelancing, that kind of thing. I had gotten a nice advance but I knew it wouldn’t pay all my bills, and was looking around for other options. He told me to forget it. Freelancing for another intellectual property is fantastic and can pay well, but I had a good a contract for a shiny hardcover trilogy. Focus on my own universe because it was just that: mine.

I thought about this a lot. I considered applying for a creative position at Riot, one of my favorite computer game companies. I daydreamed about writing for Blizzard or Star Wars. After all, I grew up reading Star Wars novels and playing Warcraft. How stinking cool would that be to write in those universes? I never pursued it seriously.

The idea of self-publishing came up once in a while when my bills were tight. I had some old novels laying around that I could clean up and put out myself, but that seemed kind of silly when I have an agent and a publisher. If I was going to go to that effort I might as well try to sell them traditionally. But I worried about trying to juggle two original universes. I don’t have that kind of brain power.

Like looking for a creative job in another EU, I never took the plunge on self-publishing a novel. Then, strangely enough, I read an article about erotica.

The article talked a bit about the success some erotica authors were finding on Kindle, Nook, and the other self-publishing platforms. They’d go for volume, pumping out a 4000-word piece every week or two, and build themselves a big backlist. Over time, that turns into a pretty solid income stream.

We could have a debate over “art” and “selling out” and “oversaturation of the market,” but I thought that was a smart business model. Maybe I could make a serious go at self-publishing with shorter stuff like what these particular erotica authors were doing. But I was writing in fantasy, not erotica, with a different end-game in mind. I didn’t want to just pump out a bunch of content to make a buck. I wanted to create something with the depth of a fantasy world and, happily enough, I had a universe already handy.

I took an idea for an origin story of one of the side characters from my trilogy and wrote an 8000 word piece called “The Girl of Hrusch Avenue.”

I had a budget of exactly $0. Using some awesome friends and family, I had it edited professionally and threw together an adequate (if generic) bit of cover art. The only hiccup came when my agent asked if my publisher was going to be cool with this. After all, they had the rights to the trilogy that this universe was attached to. After a stressful day or two waiting for my agent to check with them, I got the green light.

The result wasn’t overwhelming at first. The way Amazon’s royalty rate is set up I would only make $.35 off of a $.99 sale, and I could not in good conscience charge $2.99 for one of these short pieces (the minimum required to make a 70% royalty rate). But they kept selling consistently, and my first book Promise of Blood was doing better and better, and I noticed that when my novel had a good week the short piece would often have a good week as well. It was a small spike, no more than a few books, but a logical and easy correlation.

I wrote another short piece and did the same thing. Zero budget but with professional editing and lots of beta readers. Put it out. It did a little better than the first. Then Promise of Blood went on sale for $1.99 and got some well-placed publicity and there was a (for me) huge spike on the short pieces as well, which put money directly into my pocket every month. For someone who gets paid sporadically, that’s kind of a huge deal.

Over the fall, a bunch of awesome things happened. Promise of Blood was a finalist for Best Debut Goodreads Author in the Goodreads Choice Awards and a semi-finalist in the Fantasy category. It garnered a few more cover quotes by really awesome authors. The sales continued to increase (it was still $1.99 at this point) and with them the sales of my short fiction. For about every ten sales I got of the novel, each piece of short fiction sold one. Small, sure, but that does add up.

I was pounding out book three, The Autumn Republic, at this point. I had ideas for other short fiction and fans had started to ask me about putting out more. But I was pretty busy. That’s when Orbit delayed The Crimson Campaign by two months. It was a good decision in the end and I’m glad they did it, but I was the one who had to tell fans that it would be late. In the end, I delivered the news and immediately tore into writing what would become my first novella, Forsworn. I hoped if I could put out something new, they might forgive the delay easier.

I revisited the Powder Mage Universe, this time with a prequel featuring the mother of one of the main characters. I gave myself a $500 budget, which I quickly went over, and I commissioned my first professional art and was able to pay a copy editor. With a longer piece and real cover art, I felt good about charging $2.99. Note that this means Forsworn would make six times as much money per sale as “The Girl of Hrusch Avenue.”

From start to finish, Forsworn went from an idea to readers’ hands in about six weeks, reaching them a full two weeks before Crimson Campaign‘s original release date. It sold well and no one complained about the price, which is something I worried about a lot. I never want people to feel like I’m trying to rip them off.

This is the point I realized that I had created my own expanded universe.

There are a few downsides to self-publishing an EU. For one, I have to keep all this stuff straight. If I write something in a short piece it’s technically cannon. I can’t just pull a Star Wars and wave my hand, saying none of this actually happened in-universe.

Well, I could, but it would be a jerk thing to do.

I worry about oversaturation. More publishing credits means I’m hawking more things on social media, which is a dangerous line to walk before getting all of your friends and fans annoyed with you. I also worry if I put out one of these short pieces too often if people will get sick of them, but I suppose if that happens I’ll just see sales dry up.

In the end, it has too many upsides to ignore. It’s good for me because I get to pull down an extra small salary from a half dozen electronic publishers. I get to explore all the little side plots and prequel stuff that would never make it into the novels. I also have greater control. I can see how many of each story are selling each week and on what format, with all that data at my fingertips. Deadlines and production times aren’t really a thing. The last novella, Servant of the Crown, went from an idea to published in less than four weeks.

It’s good for my publisher because I’m creating things that draw my fans deeper into the world, getting them more excited for the next book to come out. And it’s good for my fans, because they get to explore the world alongside me. Every time someone emails me and says they can’t get enough of the Powder Mage Trilogy, I have someplace I can point them.

All of this is because, as a friend once advised me to do, I’ve invested in my own universe rather than one that belongs to someone else.

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Brian is a flintlock fantasy author of the Powder Mage Trilogy, including Promise of Blood, recent winner of the Gemmell Morningstar Award. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, where he plays computer games, gardens, and tends his hive of minions honey bees.

His newest is the novella, Servant of the Crown:

Captain Tamas is an ambitious young officer in the Adran army. As a commoner, he is one of very few without noble blood to hold a rank. When he challenges the son of a duke over an insult, the subsequent duel lands him in hot water with the nobility and the royal cabal of Privileged sorcerers. Tamas is soon drawn into a conflict that goes to the very highest office in the land, and his only ally is the most unlikely of people: a young noblewoman named Erika, who needs Tamas to teach her how to wield her powers as a powder mage.

Brian McClellan: Website | Twitter

The Powder Mage Series: Amazon | B&N