So I'm back after another longer than expected absence to post another blog entry.

It's strange - I don't mean to go so long between entries, but I almost feel like I shouldn't be blogging unless I have some kind of big, important Star Wars news to share. I know that's not the case, but it *feels* that way.

I think the problem is that I do a fairly regular update on the NEWS page of my personal website (if you can call every two weeks "regular"), and that's where I kind of open up with the more mundane, everyday parts of my life. I don't want to paste the exact same things from my personal site here, so I try to wait until I have something of particular interest to the SW Community.

However, over the past few months I haven't had any groundbreaking news to share. I did do an interview with the folks at Galactic Binder that some of you might find interesting. But I don't have any word on another Bane novel yet. I'm still hoping something will happen, but like the eponymous Sith Lord of my novels, I'll just have to be patient and bide my time.

The sales numbers (and really, it is all a numbers game) give a strong indication that there is enough fan interest to justify another Bane novel. Though, to be honest, the figures I'm working with are more than a little out of date. You might expect the author of a novel to have all the latest info on his or her sales, but the publishing industry works on its own timetable, and its tough to get up to the minute data.

And, since I don't have anything better to update you on, I thought I'd spend the rest of this blog rambling on about how sales and royalty reporting actually works. (A few of you might even find it interesting.)

For my Bane novels I get an update on the copies sold every six months, in April and October. Sounds simple, right? Sadly, no. The updates are actually for the six month period ending 90 days before the update (plus a week or two for the update to reach me via snail mail). So when I got my last statement for PoD in April, it basically only shows me the sales up to the end of December.

I'm always about 4 months behind. And since Rule of Two was released in hardcover in the very last days of December, the only numbers would be from the first week of sales. The data sample was so small, this wasn't even included in my last royalty statement. I *assume* Rule of Two is doing well because of the time it spent on the best seller charts, but really I don't have any hard evidence to go on. And I won't until October.

This isn't unique to my Star Wars books, of course. It's the same with my Mass Effect novels. For these books, I get updates in February and August, but they're also about 4 months behind.

Mass Effect: Revelation came out in spring of 2007. I've only seen sales numbers up to the end of September, 2007... and the game didn't actually come out until November 2007. So I still have no idea if the success of the Mass Effect game translated to increased sales of Mass Effect: Revelation. It's going to be July before I see if there was a bump in sales from the release of the game.

Similarly, the second ME novel - Mass Effect: Ascension - is being released on July 29th. (Yes, Im shamelessly plugging my non-SW sci-fi on my Star Wars blog. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!) My next update for my Mass Effect novels will be in August. But that will only cover the period up to the end of March, 2008, so this won't show me the sales for Ascension. I'll actually have to wait until February of 2009 to get my first sales figures on the second Mass Effect novel.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. This is just how the industry works, and I'm glad to be a part of the process. But it does take some getting used to.

It would be nice to get instant, real-time reporting on the sales of my novels. However, considering I only seem to update my blog here on SW.com every couple months, I don't think I should point the finger at anyone.

Embrace the dark side.

Drew