Today on the blog we have an interview with Michael G Manning. He has a number of series out which have a lot of cross-over fans to my stuff. You’ve most likely heard of his Mageborn Series, but his latest, Art of the Adept, is moving copies like hotcakes! Michael is one of the original gangsters when it comes to self-publishing, he’s a Houston area writer like myself (we’re a rare breed), and he’s a fellow beer lover. What’s not to love?
AC: Hi Michael, thanks for joining us! You’ve been at this for some time now and you’ve grown quite a list of books — congrats on the success of your most recent, Art of the Adept, by the way! Can you tell us a little bit about your stories and how they compare?
MGM: It’s an awful lot to tell. My first book, The Blacksmith’s Son, was a coming of age story about a young boy who discovers he’s one of the last living wizards, from there the Mageborn universe spun out into a full fifteen books. Art of the Adept is set in a completely new universe with a different set of rules and completely different magic, although it also begins with a coming of age story.
AC: Wow, that’s an impressive catalogue! What were your inspirations for all of that?
MGM: Boredom—boredom is always the best inspiration. Back in 2011 I had just started using the kindle my wife got me for Christmas the year before. I tore through eighteen books in a week and I was completely out of anything to read. Some of the books I had just finished were by independent authors, and I couldn’t help but think I could do better than some of them, so I decided to try.
I tried to imagine what sort of book I was looking for when I went browsing, then I made a list of the elements I wanted in it: magic, wizards, intrigue, etc… After I made the list it started to materialize in my head, so I spent the next two months writing my first book.
Since then my biggest challenge has been to always incorporate enough boredom in my life to keep me motivated to write more.
AC: You got started in 2011, which in terms of Indie publishing makes you an old head. Can you talk about some of the differences you’ve seen in book publishing during that time?
MGM: Well, back in the first few years indie authors weren’t given the same consideration that traditionally published authors were, but that has changed to a considerable degree. In 2011 indie authors couldn’t join most of the writer’s organizations (like the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in my case), but now most official writer’s groups have rules that are based mainly on sales thresholds rather than being published by particular publishers.
The other big change is that the competition has gotten stronger. There are a lot more indie authors now, enough to fill the voracious appetite of almost any bibliophile. The sheer volume of competition means there’s a lot more books to read, of every level of quality, good, bad, and in-between. The audience serves as the gatekeeper now. Quite a few indies who were around when I started, have now vanished, but for each one that disappears, five more appear, so the competition continues to get tougher.
To make a living, there has been a trend for many authors to write lots of short books, which is the opposite of what fantasy readers gravitated toward in the past. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve kept a fairly strong readership, so I’ve resisted that trend and pushed toward longer books (which helps in the audio market quite a bit as well). I don’t think I’ll ever want to be in the crowd that publishes a novella every month. I can write quickly, but that sort of frenetic pace would drive me to exhaustion.
AC: I noticed none of your books are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, which is unusual for an Indie author. Why have you kept your books wide, and would you ever consider Kindle Unlimted?
MGM: When Kindle Unlimited first appeared I looked at it, but the exclusivity that Amazon demands to enter it seems wrong to me. It was a blatant attempt to corner the market. Also, at that time, they were allowing books from traditional publishers to be in Kindle Unlimited without being exclusive, which was definitely unfair. At the time probably 90% of my income was from Amazon, but my sales were very strong and I decided I didn’t want to get drawn into their net.
Since then my sales through other vendors have grown, although Amazon is still roughly 70% of my income. I know a lot of authors in KU now, and they get a significant sales boost from Amazon’s KU readers and marketing plan, but I couldn’t switch without abandoning roughly a quarter of my readers who only use other platforms.
Currently, I like having other sources of income and I can afford to stay out of KU. I won’t join KU unless Amazon completes its plan for world domination and there’s no other way for me to compete for readers.
AC: As a fellow Houston-area resident and beer lover, what’s your favorite local brewery?
MGM: Southern Star has some very good beers, so they might be my current favorite, though I haven’t been to tour their brewery yet. St. Arnold’s is also high on my list.
AC: Nice, I’ve been to St Arnold’s, the OG Houston brewery, but I haven’t been to Southern Star yet either. Love the Bombshell Blonde though. I’m a No Label fan when I’m in the Katy area, though recently I’ve been getting into Bakfish down in Pearland. And yes, I realize this is entirely irrelevant to 99% of my fans, but they can go start writing their own books and do their own blog if they want to talk about something else!!! Ah well, back to business, what’s next for Michael G Manning? More Art of the Adept? Any other projects in the pipeline?
MGM: The Art of the Adept series is currently very hot, so I’ll continue writing books for that series for the next few years I imagine. After that, who knows? There’s never a shortage of ideas.
AC: You’ve got a great story in your bio about how you ended up as an author, with stops along the way as pharmacist for prisoners and database design. Was writing something you were always interested in, or did you sort of fall into it? When was the first time you considered it might be a real(ish) profession?
MGM: When I was a kid, there were five professions I wanted to go into at different points. When I was five, I wanted to be a wizard, but I knew that wasn’t a possibility, so I decided on becoming a mad scientist. Unfortunately, a few years later I found out that also wasn’t a ‘thing’ that one could reasonably aspire to become.
In my teens I wanted to be an astronaut, a theoretical physicist, or a novelist. I gave up on being an astronaut because I thought my near-sightedness would eliminate me, although I later discovered that that’s no longer a restriction. I gave up on physics because I needed to make a living and there just aren’t that many good paying jobs for physicists. I gave up on being an author because I had read the stories of poverty and rejection that even my favorite authors had suffered through.
I became a pharmacist because it involved science, helping people, and it paid well. Boredom is what led me into software and database design, and eventually, into writing as well.
Despite my interest, I never wrote anything aside from college papers until I was almost forty years old.It was the advent of ebooks that gave me hope, but I didn’t really consider it my profession until 2012 when I quit my job and it became my sole source of income. Since then I’ve been fortunate enough to sell well over a million books, something I never imagined doing, but I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up.Until I figure it out, I’m going to keep writing books.
AC: And that’s it for today! You can find out more about Michael on his website: https://magebornbooks.com/, or go direct to Amazon for the Mageborn Series or Art of the Adept.