2021, Thinklings' Second Full Year, In Review

Well, we've reached another milestone and thought we'd make a "yearly recap" blog post into a tradition! It encourages us, motivates us, and helps renew our focus. So read on for our highlights of 2021. . . .

August 2, 2021: Our eighth book, and first sequel, The Merry Band, was released. The Disposables' epic quest continues, with stakes rising and new characters/creatures adding to the hilarious drama! Author Katherine Vick has amazing talent for delivering super-funny content with such a deep underlying message!

November 1, 2021: Our ninth book, and first literary work, Sand to Glass, was released. We welcomed our newest author, Remy Apepp, into the Ranks of Awesome. ;) Remy is brilliant at fleshing out characters and weaving subtle complexities while avoiding purple prose.

​In April 2021, the first few chapters/episodes of The Midnight Files (originally called Surviving in Horror) were published on Kindle Vella. Amazon's new platform for serial stories had just started up, and we were pleased to be among the first invited to use it! Deborah happened to have a short story that could be expanded upon with more episodes; that story is now the first three episodes, which are permanently free to read. As of this writing, The Midnight Files is up to 15 thrilling episodes with more on the way! Hailed as "action-packed and highly original," it follows supernatural agents who are sent on missions to stop genres (like Fantasy, Romance, and Horror) from taking over the real world.

Another great thing we did in 2021 was to revamp our newsletter. It's now full of speculative-fiction book recommendations with a new, fun theme every couple of weeks.* We were accepted into a second affiliate program, aside from The Zon, and are working hard to perfect our affiliate marketing game!

A final accomplishment is that we opened our Redbubble store. We created dozens of fantastic designs, both for merch to go with our books and general, fun book-lovers products. We're now up to 88 designs and hope by summer to reach 100, which is a tier that will help our shop become more visible. (Like a book having 50 reviews on Amazon.)

​While none of our books has reached 50 reviews yet, Skate the Thief is closing in with (as of this writing) 43 ratings/reviews! That's great progress, and we hope that people will continue to spread the word about our amazing books and about how crucial reviews are!

Another mild disappointment is that the December 4th comic con (a local one near our COO, Sarah) was postponed until this coming July. We understand and agree with the decision, and we can't wait to sell our books and merch at that event this summer! Sarah has recently reserved vendor tables at two other local cons, which will both take place in June. She's going to have a very busy summer!

A silver lining of the postponement is that she was able to sell our books and merch at her local mall on two different Saturdays in December. It was good practice and lots of fun!

Looking into the future:

What's next for Thinklings? We aim to publish two more books this year and possibly add another new author. We're open to queries right now and have received another sequel. (Okay, yes, it's Katherine Vick's conclusion to the Plot Bandits trilogy - we're too excited to keep it a secret!)

​We're trying new things, growing and learning new skills, and working with a new marketer. We've had some technical difficulties that we're waiting on resolutions for. But we're optimistic and more than motivated to make 2022 a fantastic year!

What was your favorite thing about 2021? What are you looking forward to this year?

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