If you are an indie writer, you might be like me and feel that all indie writers are bringing in at least 50K a year. Part of the problem is the only people posting numbers are the super successful. But I’m going to keep it real. If you are not even close to a four figure yearly income from your books, much more a five figure income, this blog is for you.
I’m at three figures! Of course, it’s gross and not net, but hey, I’ll take it. Since June, I’ve wanted to sit down and look over the sales figures, but I also didn’t want to do it because June was so bad. But July was good once again, so I took a peek.
My seven month publishing numbers:
Published 9 works and 86,500 words.
Republished one work with a new cover and added fractals.
Designed and created 4 covers.
Sold 223 books which is a book a day average.
Made almost $250 in royalties.
The disappointments:
Though sales and downloads for my billionaire serial started strong, they fizzled for the last two episodes. The blog readership for the pen name was steady, so I have to wonder if readers quit buying and started reading for free on the blog. I also sunk a lot of time and money into a picture book for the series, and it didn’t bring new readers as hoped for.
The surprises:
My holiday series has had steady interest despite the only holidays in the series right now are fall holidays. An even bigger surprise is the first episode of my slipstream romance is my third best seller.
Overall
I’m going to keep at it. I was pretty upset at the end of June, but after taking a few steps back I see that I’m having some successes. I’m hopeful that the next holiday books will have good releases.
How is your writing year going? I’d love to hear your ups and downs!
Congrats, Melinda. That is super. As for me though I am not an Indie writer, I, too, published nine short stories/articles and I made a grand total of $114.75. Sadly, I’ve never been able to equal 2014 when I earned $764 in one year. I’ve been averaging anywhere from $150 to $300 a year in the years before and since 2014. I was hoping my numbers would continue to rise but actually they went down quite a bit. Wishing you every success.
Wow! I never hit those numbers with my short stories. That’s great! Maybe the second half of the year will be like 2014 again
I’m not too surprised that most of the people posting numbers are the few super successful ones. Lots of things are like that.
Melinda and Shari, I think your numbers sound great! Inspirational to me.
I’ve been getting some writing done this summer (some on stories and a bit of blogging). I decided not to keep track of word counts in the short term for now. Just trying to spend a chunk of time writing. I need simple goals for now.
Still a wee bit of summer left here, so I’m going to push for a strong finish.
Glad to hear that the holiday series is going strong and that you’re continuing it! I really like it!
It’s great that you’re still writing! Summer is over for me, but I hope you get some more words down before it’s over for you. Thanks for reading the holiday series!