What is a good time for writing?

As the Covid pandemic hit last year, I head a lot of doom-and-gloom from authors about how it would destroy the industry, and even had to stop and speculate about it a bit myself. It sounded bad. Printers closed down, bookstores were put out of commission. Of course it is still a good time to write!

But I kept thinking: the need for entertainment is stronger than ever. What will the new normal be?

Now that sales figures have come in for 2020, here is what we found.

There are two markets, that I pay attention to: the traditional paper book publishing market and the indie e-book market. 

The big fear in among authors was that the traditional market would be decimated, but the number of units of books sold actually went up—despite the bookstores being closed. People who buy paper books kept on buying them. Some of us just ordered them from local bookstores. Others bough them in grocery stores or on Amazon. 

In any case, the book sales rose by nearly 7% for the year. Much of that was in the form of children’s books purchased by parents who were trying to keep their kids busy with home-schooling, but we also saw big increases in fiction for the younger crowd.

At the same time, in the e-book sales, we saw a 16-20% increase in sales on a month-by-month basis, with a little over 18% increase in the number of sales over the course of the year.

So books did just fine? In spite of the stores closing?

Yep. Here’s what is happening. People are staying in. They are in quarantine, many of them, and they are longing for escape. Since they can’t go out to shows and dinners and sporting events, many people are turning to reading for recreation—especially since Hollywood has closed down and there isn’t much in the way of new releases in the film department. Since they are not making new content this is an excellent time for you to do so, if you are not sure how to begin, you can check out this post!

In short, more people are reading! It’s a great time to be a writer.

This past Friday, I watched a live demo of the Runelords Board Game. As I watched, I was surprised to see just how fun it looked. I wished that I could be playing!  It so happened, that the next day I read a nice review of the game from a company that reviews board games. Then I did a little interview with a blogger who is a big fan of the game, someone who also spends time reviewing them. She felt that the game is a bit underpriced, and I suspect that she’s right.

So, if you have a friend who likes to play boardgames, please let them know about the kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reddjinnproductions/the-runelords-board-game-relaunch

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