The largest of these is marketing. Now, if you read that word and immediately felt the dread coiling like a python of tedium then you had the same reaction as me.
I actually started writing Journey to Altmortis a month or two before Bane of Souls came out. This wasn't a cunning plan, I'd just left the cover art to the end and had nothing else to do... or so I thought.
What I should've been doing is trying to get interviews and reviews to promote the book. How well that would've worked I don't know, but it can only have helped. For a self-published chap, even one who writes characters as delightful as Captain Urquhart, the first and probably biggest hurdle to overcome is getting noticed at all.
But I didn't do that. I did get some reviews, all 4*, on Amazon, and really enjoyed reading what people thought. A more concerted effort to get reviews on blogs and other sites would've helped, the question is only how much or how little.
Anyway, my plan at the moment is, after Altmortis is out, to try and spend a few weeks at least promoting it with interviews and reviews and so forth. With luck, there'll also be a chain effect, with people who enjoy Altmortis then going on to buy Bane of Souls.
Speaking of which, I've done two more interviews, which can be found at the below addresses:
http://blog.pauldorset.com/2012/12/author-interview-thaddeus-white.html
http://joeypinkney.com/amazoncom/5-minutes-5-questions-with-thaddeus-white-author-of-bane-of-souls.php
Thanks to both Mr. Dorset and Mr. Pinkney.
As for writing, I'm still working through the to-do list for the present redraft, but the largest individual bits of new material have all been writing. 3 out of 4 work well and I've slotted them into the 20 chapters, but the 4th seems a little off.
Thaddeus