2025 — Year in Review

(giveaway at the bottom)

My friends!

Another year has passed, which means it's time for my year in review + transparency report. I always have a healthy dose of dread mixed with a shot of excited anticipation when writing this. I know there are areas I've failed expectations, and other areas that have exceeded. It always makes me wonder what it would take to become full-time, and finally be able to dedicate all my time to the craft I love.

What became clear as I started looking back was that this was the year of short stories. I added 5 more to the collection in 2025:

1. The Last Ride of Kanashimi, sold to the Unavowed anthology
2. The Bane of Ixmu, sold to the Worldcon Grimoire '25
3. Anamnesis, sold to the Dragonsteel Grimoire '25
4. The Night the Birds Fell Silent, sold to the Emerald City Comic Con Grimoire '26
5. Fast Falls the Evening Sun, sold to the <see below> anthology

Along with the two I sold last year (The Snowmaker's Child & Five Silver Rings), I am well on my way toward having a full high fantasy short story collection—and yes, that is the plan. Even cooler is that I have now had my stories printed alongside nearly every fantasy author I respect and admire (Brandon Sanderson, Christopher Paolini, Matt Dinniman, etc.) And more importantly, I think my stories hold their own!

How many of my short stories have you read?

A little sampling of my year!

In my 2024 Year in Review, I started out by saying I had failed. Later, I explained this was because I had hoped to have a draft of Cloudfall finished. While I am in the same place this year, I actually feel good about it, mostly because I finally feel well positioned to drive this story forward. It's much more ambitious than Threadlight, and I want to get it right.

I also mentioned last year that I'd be selling a new Convention Edition Omnibus of Threadlight at in-person events. Turns out, people like them! Between Emerald City Comic Con and Dragonsteel Nexus, I sold over 300 copies, which means I am likely to sell out at Emerald City Comic Con this March. In other words, I need to place another order for more books. So...if you have a copy, is there anything you would change? If you don't, any unique ideas you have to add?

No matter how busy I get with the day job, kids, and coaching soccer, reading is what brought me into this community, and I always try to find time to squeeze in a few books each year. This year it was 10 books, slightly less than average. Still, it was a great reading year. Loved them all in their own way!

Total: 5,978 pages / Favorite: Ship of Magic

2025 Highlights

• Conventions & People: This was the most conventions I've ever been to in one year. Honestly, I'm tired! But I wouldn't trade it for anything. Starting out in March, I had a booth at Emerald City Comic Con and was able to spend time with some great people, but mostly spent time selling books. In August, Worldcon was different. I had no booth. My wife was with me. And we had such an amazing time. Many of our author friends and book community friends flew to Seattle to attend, which is our neck of the woods. So we decided to invite some to our house! There's something special about opening your door to friends, and that evening was amazing. We were also able to meet a ton of new friends and just had the most amazing time being on panels and being surrounded by bookish people. Last, there was Dragonsteel in Utah. This was equally amazing. I had a booth, but I sold out so quickly that I was able to wander and hang out with folks for the rest of the time. We were also lucky enough to be invited to the Worldhopper Ball VIP session and dance the night away with amazing folks. Unforgettable memories this year.
• YouTube collabs: One big surprise came later in the year, and that was collaborating with my wife on her YouTube channel! If you don't subscribe her already (@bookborn), her content is really wonderful. After seeing these fun gameshow-style reels from KaiserBoys with movies, I pitched to my wife doing some fun bookish ones for her channel. Her videos are typically more focused on intellectual topics and deep dives, but these entertainment-focused videos have been really fun. Our first video ("Guess the fantasy book based on the dragon") has more than 1 million views just on Instagram! We've already recorded a few more and plan to continue the series!
• Writing group: My writing group has officially been together for a year! I shared 10 pieces (typically chapters) throughout the course of the year, which they reviewed and discussed. Everything I write has improved as a result. Outside of our regularly scheduled meetings, it's also nice to have a group I can throw something at (like a short story I finished that I need to submit for an anthology) and have folks who are willing to jump in and take an early look and leave feedback. Love my crew! Huge shoutout to JA Andrews, Andy Peloquin, ML Spencer, JDL Rosell, Michael Webb, and Michael Michel.
• Indie Fantasy Fund: We recently announced another round of grant winners over on the website! With the generous donations of many authors and community members, we were able to give $3,000 to 3 different authors to support them in creating audiobooks. We've now granted over $30,000, and have helped 28 indie fantasy authors on their journey!

2026 Upcoming

• Unbroken: Okay, I may have redacted it above, but if you made it this far then you get the exciting news! My story "Fast Falls the Evening Sun" (the first official look at Cloudfall) will be included in the soon-to-be Kickstarter, Unbroken. I became friends with Peter Orullian at Worldcon, and solidified that friendship at Dragonsteel. He is a wonderful person, and I'm proud to offer a story to help cover the costs of his upcoming medical expenses. My story was originally intended to be the prologue to Cloudfall but has been repurposed to better work as its own short story. That said, it is more action packed with a lot more worldbuilding than many of my other short stories. I hope you love it!
• Emerald City Comic Con: March 5-8. I will have a booth and many Convention Editions ready to sign and sell! I will also have a story in the Grim Oak Press Grimoire for ECCC, titled *The Night the Birds Fell Silent*. It's a standalone story about a boy in a small village in the forest. I think you'll love this one!

Project Updates

• Cloudfall: I feel a bit like a broken record at this point, but progress continues, slowly. I've been sharing chapters with my writing group, and continuing to update my outline and worldbuilding document. One fun highlight was sharing a bunch of my worldbuilding with an author friend, Gregory Kontaxis, who happens to be Greek. He loved all of the ancient Greek inspiration in the worldbuilding, and even at one point said "Why didn't I think of that?!" So I think it's in a good place. Now I just need to hunker down and finish the actual writing of it. 2026 will be the year of the draft completion. I'm committed to that, whereas I was not ready to commit to it last year. It's go time.
• Short stories: I'm sure I'll hack away at some more short stories next year, but I do not have any currently planned. The one that has been on my mind the most is called "Shadows Walk in Empty Streets". But no promises! I imagine I won't need another story until the next Dragonsteel Grimoire is happening, so there are at least a few months where I can think about which story I want to write next.
• Other Novels (Paramortals/Tom Blade): No progress on either of these books.

Previous year for comparison

Ratings: 1,833 / 1009 / 790

To-read: 8,707 / 1,375 / 1,168

Financial Transparency

Total Revenue: ~$25,000

• eBooks: ~$1,200
• Physical books: ~$17,000
• Audiobooks: ~$3,000
• Kindle Unlimited: $800 (~200k page reads)
• Anthologies: ~$1,500
• YouTube: ~$1,400

Expenses: ~$13,000

Total profit: ~$12,000

YouTube Metrics: Epic Fantasy Audiobooks

• Subscribers: 31,300 (+4k)
• Watch hours: 580k hours
• Views: 630k views
• Estimated revenue: ~$8,500
• Author payouts: ~$7,100

Quarterly payouts for YouTube contributing authors

Over the last five years, I am at ~21k books sold. If we include free content (Kindle Unlimited and YouTube) then I am well over 50,000 readers reached. Pretty amazing to look back and think about those numbers!

That's it for this year.

Thank you for helping make my dreams of writing a reality.

—Zack Argyle

As with every newsletter this year (there were only 6), I'm giving away a book! Last time it was a combined giveaway with other authors, this time it's just me, so you have better chances ;)

Enter giveway!

NOW AVAILABLE FROM MY FRIENDS

A dark, bloody standalone story by one of my new friends, Jonah Everts! I have heard nothing but good things, and I'm excited for him to officially join the indie scene!

Check it out!