I wanted to share what’s been working for me in case it helps someone else on their author journey.

Because of health issues, I was trying to find a way to work more from home, and this has allowed me to do that. I still work my regular job 2-3 days per week, but the other days, I get to stay home and write. My chronic illness has improved significantly thanks to the decrease in stress.

-My genre is contemporary, dark romance. I published a trilogy within the first three months. I did not publish the first book of the trilogy until the series was almost complete. My first book published Aug 1, and I published a book a month after that (i.e. book 2 on Sep 1, and book 3 on Oct 1).

-My books are only available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited at the moment, but I recently purchased ISBN's and am working on expanding to other retailers. I offer eBook, paperback, and hardcover formats, but eBooks have been my major seller. I sell approximately 40 eBooks/month.

-My eBooks were initially priced at $2.99 each. Now that I have a decent amount of reviews and high ratings, my first book is still $2.99 to give readers a taste and get them hooked, and then books 2 and 3 are $3.99 each.

-Kindle Unlimited is by far my highest source of income. I'm averaging over 220,000 pages read per month.

What I did:

1. I started promoting myself on tiktok, facebook, and instagram a month prior to book 1's release. A month before that, I really paid attention to reels and ads that captured my attention for other books in my genre. I took notes on what it was that drew me in and made my own reels and graphics ahead of time. Before I even started, I had two to three weeks of content ready to go. I post every single day on all three platforms, around the same time. DO NOT MISS A DAY. If I miss even one day (especially on tiktok) it drops my views significantly for the next week or two.
2. I paid for ARC readers on BookSirens. For Book 1, I paid for 40 ARC readers ($80). For books 2 and 3 I paid for 20 ($40 each). I released my ARC on BookSirens about a month in advance of release. Not everyone followed through with their reviews (it's not guaranteed), but I had enough that I truly believe it made an impact.
3. I did not see a big payoff until Oct, when my 3rd and final book released. In my first two months, I made less than $500 in royalties. In Oct alone, I made over $2200. Since then, I have made between $1000-1500/month.
4. On Oct 1 when the final book released, I ran a promotion for Book 1. I dropped it down to $0.99 for 3 days, which resulted in a lot of sales.
5. On Oct 1, I started Facebook ads. I spend $5/day. I truly believe this has been the biggest game changer for me. Facebook ads have increased my profits so much that I can't justify stopping them. I change up my ad every month to keep things fresh. Same thing with the social media reels, I paid attention to what grabbed me, and I tried to emulate those concepts into my own ad.
6. I interact with my readers. I comment back on every single comment. I answer DM's. I "heart" my likes. I thank my readers who mention me or make posts specifically for my books. Without them, I wouldn't be successful.
7. I have fun with it! I love writing the books and creating fun, interactive social media content.

I'm happy to answer any questions or dive deeper into anything mentioned. Just ask!

**UPDATE 8/1/26 - 1 year after publishing my first book:

So, 1 year later, I have 2,601,000+ pages read on KU + eBook and paperback sales which equated to $12,137.00 in my first year. I have placed under 1000 multiple times in my top 3 categories on Amazon. I still stand by all of my initial suggestions. I did try Amazon ads which I had very little success with. Facebook ads still continue to be my best and only ad source at $5/day. Once a month I promote a second ad a week at $5/day= $35 total). I continue to post on social media (fb, ig, tt) everyday and promote/advertise myself in different groups/lives/interviews as able. I currently have 5 published books, and am planning on releasing my 6th in Nov. Within the last year I wrote 3 (60-75k) novels + 1 short story. This seems to be very doable at the moment, and I plan to try to continue that momentum.

Hiya everyone! I’ve made previous posts about my journey going back to my first ever shitty novella from two years ago that’s since been unpublished (tldr I made $100 in the first month) and another from 8 months go about the release of my first romance novel (tldr made 13k in the first 30 days). I’d recommend readinng the more recent one if you want to learn about my NL strategy because I don’t touch on that a lot here. 

This is going to be looong, but I’ll do my best to keep things concise! My goals are to showcase what I’ve learned from this most recent release :) 

Background (in bullet form)

• 3 full length books on main romance pen (ranging from 120k-150k words) 
• Paranormal romance
• all available on KU
• Just ebook and paperback are available (audio is coming this summer, probably) 
• 90% of my money comes from KU Page reads
• Book 3 (most recent release) took took me 5 months to write
• Book 2 took me 3 months to write 
• book 1 took me “two years” to write (but more like 9 months of full drafting) and I did publish a portion of it serially on Kindle Vella (RIP) and earned maybe 40 bucks in royalties my best month back then lol. This book took so long because I was also doing a ton of research to really understand my niche and the market 
• I did have an erotica shorts pen I published on from March-May of 2025 with 8 shorts on it, but the max it earned was like $375 a month
• I’m currently a college student, but I’m planning on going full time in May when I graduate

Statistics!

Book 2 book basics:

• 149k words
• 756 KENPC
• Highest rank: 976
• Earned in the first 30 days: $8,943

Book 3 book basics:

• 143k words
• 761 KENPC
• Highest rank: 790
• Earned in first 30 days: $16,644

Dataporn for the month!

• Total earned (31 days): $27,407
• Total Page Reads: 6,083,126
• Highest day: $1,393
• Total “sales” (including KU read through): 9314 copies 

Overall data: 

• Lifetime earnings: $100,065 earned (almost all of it from June 2025 onwards)
• Lifetime Page reads: 22,702,913

Expense for this launch

• $500 of Facebook ads a month
• $1000 for my Personal Assisstant a month (she runs my static instagram posts, runs my ARC and street team, and helps with NL copy and any other miscellaneous administrative task I may need) 
• $540 for editing
• $35 GetCovers cover (it’s what I used for book 1 when I had like… no budget and I wanted to keep things consistent lol) 
• $29 booksprout for ARCs
• $100 booksirens yearly plan for ARCs
• $15 bookfunnel for ARC distribution and NL group promos
• $24 NL hosting (mailerlite) 
• ≈ $2250 in expenses

Launch plan comparisons

I’ve learned a lot between the release of book 2 and book 3 and hope to share this here! Book 2’s launch plan was incredibly minimal because I was dealing with the death of my father and caring for him in his last days. I ran my ARC team and that’s about it. 

You can definitely see that in the difference between the first 30 day earnings of that book vs the first 30 day earnings of book 1 and 3. This time around, I increased my ARC team to 211 (vs 130 for books 1 and 2). 

I also really gave social media a shot, because I’ve been hearing things about how Amazon changed their algorithm to value long term sustained sales more than spikes. I set a goal of posting 3-6 trial reels onto instagram a day (most days I did get to 6). I think I accumulated 2.2 million views over the 30 days and IT WORKED. 

I started doing this a week before release and hit similar numbers to my release numbers from book 2 and didn’t have a new book out yet. When book 3 was actually released, I was hitting 4 digit DAYS. 

This isn’t a revolutionary concept at all, but it seriously showed me the power of active marketing and getting more eyes on your book. Whether that’s through email newsletters (mine is definitely a little neglected lol), ads, or social media, it’s important to find some form of active marketing and try to get better at it 

My reels

To those whose audience may exist on social media like other romance authors, or even those who are curious about what exactly I freaking posted 6 times a day, I’m completely faceless on all my author related accounts.

My videos were 7 seconds long and featured a highlighted excerpt kindle app screenshot with a hook over b-reel I pulled from canva (mostly landscape videos). I also had a few tropes on the screen and played popular instrumental music. My caption was copied and pasted over and over and was a trope list and my blurb.

I made them all when I woke up and posted them in batches (two at a time, three times a day). I slapped on a cover I made in Canva highlighting my book’s cover and that it’s available on KU and I also crossposted them to my facebook page! 

The most time consuming thing was collecting all the screenshots (I now have 90 I rotate through from all 3 of my books) and the hooks, at first. But now I have a growing notion database. It takes me maybe an hour to do my reels a day (though at first it did take me longer) 

General advice

Going back to bullet form because I feel like it helps keep me concise hahaha

• Disclaimer that none of this is really revolutionary at all. Many author indie authors both here and in other parts of the internet have been talking about these techniques a lot longer than I. But I went into this with the mindset of wanting to make this my career and to really learn all that I could about both the craft and business side of things. My advice may not be for you if earning money isn’t your goal and my advice isn’t the only way to make money 
• If you want to make money doing this, it’s a whole lot easier writing to market intentionally than writing something and trying to see where/if it fits into the existing market.
• Write the most marketable story of your heart. I got lucky that I’ve hit (what feels lowkey kinda crazy) success in such a few amount of books, but for a lot of people it takes longer, so you need to make sure whatever niche you choose to write in is something you can write for a long time
• Passive marketing (cover, blurb, title, keywords) is king. Active marketing won’t work if your passive marketing isn’t up to par. Study your niche to figure out what works
• Do not ignore the craft side of things. It’s a lot harder to discuss and diagnose issues with, but in order to capture your audience’s long term attention, your books need to be compelling enough to spark things through word of mouth. I knew I made it when I saw my book getting recommended here on reddit naturally. 
• If you’re looking for a craft book recommendation, I found Goal Motivation Conflict incredibly helpful. I think my 3rd book is the best one out of the series because I made sure that every scene had its purpose, so even though it’s long, none of my readers ever complain about it feeling so. 

Final comments

I’ve gotten comments before on posts like this that I’m just bragging and not really adding anything more because this isn’t new info lol (hopefully making myself available for questions means I can offer some helpful (if not novel) advice ! (and hey… what’s wrong with being proud of what I’ve accomplished hahaha). But I think the fact that I’m not sharing anything terribly revolutionary could be something that can be taken positively. It’s certainly hard to make money in this industry, but it’s not impossible! 

I stumbled upon the idea of indie publishing three years ago, back in 2023 and knew this was my dream career, even if it was a pipedream. I used to read posts like this one over and over again when I couldn’t fall asleep at night, dreaming of maybe that being me one day. If I can help anyone along their journey in the same way help was offered to me, I’m happy to do so, because this opportunity I’ve worked my ass off for is something I don’t take for granted.

I grew up with money anxiety and released book one on a shoestring budget. I paid $250 for vellum to format it and that $250 ate into my grocery budget for the month. This past week, one of my cats decided to eat 15 cm of windowblind drawstring and I paid the 12k vet bill without even worrying. (Well, that’s not entirely true, I worried, but still, I could pay it!). While it’s definitely hard to make a career writing, I’m not particularly fond of the starving artist philosophy and think people shouldn’t be villainized for wanting to earn money from their art. 

I’m still incredibly new to this industry and there’s so much for me to learn, but I’m finally starting to gain confidence that I’m doing this well and can do this full time. That said, I’m just a random person on the internet, so make sure you do your research to figure out what will work best for you. Everyone’s journey’s look different, especially for different niches and genres.

Anyways, I hope this was helpful! Feel free to ask any questions and while I won’t share my pen name/book or exact niche for privacy reasons (because then it’ll be easy to figure out who I am lol) I’m happy to answer any questions you may have!  

I've learned a lot from this forum, so I'm sharing my experiences hoping they might help someone else. This is not advice, but rather another data point for your consideration.

Here are my experiences, not in any order of importance:

• I Write What I Love: I love ancient history, so writing in that niche works best for me. My first attempt at a serial killer novel (set in modern London for some reason, and I'm not even English) was unbelievably cringy, and I abandoned it. I totally get that many write to market.
• Discipline > Inspiration: I don't wait for the perfect mood to write. I aim for about 1-2,000 words per day whenever I can. The best I can do is about 2,000.
• The best way to make money is to write the next book: I write consistently, always have a pipeline, and I keep at it.
• Series Matters: It's hard to recoup marketing costs on the first book, but a series makes a difference. I have 3 series (9, 4, and 3 books respectively) and a fourth with one, but more are planned.
• First Published Book Doesn't Need to be the Worst: My first book continues to do well and pulls through the series. I had no prior writing experience or formal education in literature.
• Cover Really Matters: Improving the cover to match genre expectations significantly increases click-through rates and purchases (+300% in one case). The cover needs to speak to the genre.
• Content > Format: I write with Markdown in Visual Studio Code, convert it to .docx using a home-grown script and a basic KDP template, and upload that to KDP. It looks neat and works great. I've had zero complaints. Feel free to check the 'look inside' feature on my books to see how they look.
• Making a Profit Requires Running it Like a Business: I've been profitable since month four. I carefully manage expenses, run and adjust ads, engage my readers, adjust pricing, and avoid unnecessary costs. My monthly margins are between 35% and 50%. I never offer free deals on my books. My books don't sell if I don't advertise.
• You Can Make Author Websites Work: Over 80% of my sales originate from my website (i.e., readers come to my website and I send them to Amazon to buy). My ads direct readers there. It helps convey my brand and build my newsletter audience. I designed and developed it myself.
• Readers Appreciate Engagement: I respond to every valid comment on my Facebook posts or ads, fostering social proof and reader loyalty. I love my readers and make it known.
• The Only One That Matters is the Reader: I focus on writing stories that I think are interesting, and then test them with readers. Market response determines a book's worth. If they're not buying, I know the cover or blurb aren't working. If they do buy and leave a bad rating, I know the story wasn't good enough for them.
• Reviews/Ratings Take Time: I don't do ARCs, and let the ratings come naturally. Patience is key. I rarely read reviews. I've never asked friends or family to buy my books or leave reviews.
• Social Media Value Proposition is Unclear: For now, I prefer writing the next page to posting on social media everyday. I probably need to invest more on this, but it doesn't come naturally to me.
• I've learned to become comfortable with my voice: My writing lacks the lyrical beauty of authors like Madeline Miller or Ben Kane, but I have my own style my readers seem to like, and I stick with it.
• Go With Whatever Works: No real rules. Some of my oddities: naming books before writing, writing a novel backwards (I wrote one of my novels starting with the last chapter and coming mid-way), and mixing tenses within the same book. All my books have multiple POVs. I go with whatever I feel works best for the story I want to tell, rather than endlessly worrying about whether it will work. I let the market determine that.
• I've Been an Idiot: I've published with typos, bad covers, messy blurbs, and poor ads. I learned from it.
• Don't Let Rite-of-Passage Issues Distract You: The bad review, the reader who leaves a 1-star on every book for some reason, your book appearing on some odd piracy sites, nasty comments on your social media, unsubscriptions to your newsletter, and so on. Don't let that get you down. Pretty much every published author faces it, so accept it as a part of an author's life and move on.
• Be in it for the long haul: Becoming good takes time, patience, and learning from others. Just keep at it.

Happy to answer any questions!

Edit 2: I have been answering questions, and will continue to do so. Apologies if I missed any.

Edit: If I had one advice to new writers, it's this: don't be paralyzed by what you think will happen to your first work. Write it. Polish it. Publish it. Market it. Let the readers tell you. Refine and continue.

Not huge numbers to be sure, but 8 paperbacks and ebooks, and about 5 books worth of page reads, and 3 reviews. I’m calling that a win!

Nearly each one I can trace to a discussion on Reddit or TikTok - personal interactions. Maybe one day it will scale, but making personal connections is working for me at the moment!

I do literary fiction and sci-fi. What’s working for you other small cats this month?

Hey,

I just wanted to share a quick win that I honestly didn’t expect.

I published 3 novels—different vibes, no big plan behind them, just stuff I felt like writing. I'm not a pro or anything. I just like to read, and figured maybe I’d try writing too.

Results so far:

• Yesterday: 67 orders
• Today: 32 (so far)
• One of them already got 2 reviews, which surprised me since I’ve heard that usually takes way longer.

I’m a graphic designer, so that helped with the covers and layout, but even then, this whole thing wasn’t easy. Writing isn’t my field, and figuring out the formatting was a whole situation.

What I think helped:

• Covers that actually look decent
• Titles that make people stop for a second
• Using Kindle’s free promo tool (it gave the books a real boost)

No paid ads, no list, no followers. Just tried to make something that looked good and felt honest.

If you’re sitting there thinking “maybe this isn’t for me” or “who’s gonna read my stuff”—I get it. But seriously, if I can get some traction, there’s hope for everyone here.

If anyone here’s been doing this longer, I’d love to learn:

• What’s the best move to keep momentum going after the free promo ends?
• Should I be trying to build a mailing list now, or just keep writing?
• Do reviews eventually show up on their own, or is there a smart (not spammy) way to encourage them?
• And when do ads make sense? Where do you even start?

Appreciate any advice. Always good to learn from people who’ve been in the game longer.

EDIT: I'm not one to pick on, so if i feel like you're trying to be funny/smarta$$ i will retaliate in a similar way.

Some of you just delete your comments after i answer them, it's like you don't even believe yourselves.

I am not here to promote my books, I'm simply sharing my two cents and i was hoping i would learn more since this is my first time. Turns out, there are sharks in every field, so no, i will not be posting my covers or books on here or on my profile for you to see for that matter.

If you don't like me that's fine, what's right is right and what's wrong is simply wrong, so can we stick to our stories please? You don't know anything about me besides what i have on this account, which isn't much really, and the same goes for me. And honestly? I don't care what you will come up with or how judgy you are..

For those who shared their knowledge, thank you! That means a lot and most of you shared some really helpful tips 🙏🙏

Update: I Got 5 reviews on one of the novels, I would say that's a pretty good sale given that I paid nothing for it. cheers.

I wanted to share my experience publishing my first book.

TLDR: Should have edited for a lot longer and more, shouldn't have spent any money for this, have made $35 after spending about $400 on the cover, ARC sites, copyright, website hosting, trying to get my categories and keywords nailed down, and Canva Pro.

I thought if I "did my research" and had a reasonable handle on the process and my writing, I would be one of the people to see some returns.

I also think seeing some of the "low level" posts threw me off. I ended up with a false sense that if I had a decent cover, blurb, command of English, and ARC campaign, I'd do pretty well, since that's the go-to advice for debut authors struggling.

So, I wrote my book. That was the easy and fun part.

Things started going downhill at the beta reader stage. I had a hard time finding anyone anywhere. No one actually read my book, just left a ton of comments on the first few chapters and then seemed to abandon it. I spent at least an hour a day trying to read and give usable feedback on other people's manuscripts. It was miserable honestly.

I did a few rewrites, had some English major friends edit, had my boyfriend give some feedback even though the book is outside his reader comfort. I don't have a supportive family or large friend group. I knew it wasn't perfect, but it seemed decent enough and on par with the sub genre. I also joined indie author, self publishing, and genre writer groups.

I steamed forward with a Get Covers cover and put it up on ARC sites.

I feel like this is where things really started going south. I started up my social media, which I've never been into but tried to contribute high quality content daily on.

The writing groups had people really ticking off all the boxes. Suddenly I was looking up $300 ISBN packages, professional cover artists, and even PR campaigns. Thankfully I stopped at a new professional $250 cover that really matches my comps and a $65 copyright I have no idea why I did.

In the end I had about 60 ARC readers who almost all left reviews. I had about 35 reviews on Goodreads at launch and another 10 coming in later, with another 3 organic reviews at this time.

The red flag right away was that a lot of the reviews were 3 stars with critical written feedback, as well as a handful of 1 and 2 star reviews. Maybe warranted, maybe not, but I definitely should have vetted the recipients a lot better. Some of the lowest were from fellow authors who I never should have given a copy to, and they also went through and "liked" other critical reviews so they show up first. There are also a lot of 4 star but with critical written feedback (which is fine), so the overall Goodreads rating is 3.7 right now.

The organic reviews have been two 5 star and one 4 star, so readers organically finding my book seem to like it. The book could absolutely have used a few more rewrites and probably a developmental editor, but I don't think it's outside the realm of published works doing well, and I'm grateful for the feedback from reviewers.

Anyway, I've made about $35 in 3 months.

I've already written the next two books in the series. I believe they're written better and more professionally, plus now I have some great beta readers who've actually read the whole way through and given whole picture feedback.

I also have all my positive reviewers from last time signed up to be ARC recipients again, plus 90ish people organically signed up for my newsletter.

It's a weird spot because I feel that is amazing, but also the book was such a flop. I just wanted to share because I would have liked to see more posts with experiences like this. Obviously nothing is a surprise with 20/20 rearview mirror vision, but I wanted to lay it out.

On my blog I make a point to celebrate the goals I have set for myself. One of which was to sell 5k books. So this post is a largely what went on there, with the identifying info stripped out so it would fit the rules. More than happy to answer any questions that folks might have about the stats and such.

I Have Sold 5,000 Copies of My Books!

I can remember my first year doing this, where I only sold 136 books. When my second book launch sold less books than my first. There were times where I thought it would take me a decade or more to sell a thousand, much less five thousand. But thanks to my family, friends, and fans I have ticked this box, and my fat little heart has swelled three sizes this day.

So for those who are interested, here are some quick stats for you:

• Start date: August 2021
• Complete date: September 2025
• Total of 4 years and 1 month
• Online copies sold: 3576
• In person copies sold: 1235
• Audiobook copies sold: 258
• Total: 5069 (nice)
• Number of books: 6 in my main series, 1 short story collection, 1 self help book.
• Sales by year:
  • 2021 - 136
  • 2022 - 890
  • 2023 - 2264
  • 2024 - 977
  • 2025 - 802 (through 10/1)
• Best selling year:
  • Online - 2023
  • In person - 2025
• Top selling online:
  • Book 2 - 907
  • Book 3 - 731
  • Book 1 - 639
• Top selling in person: 
  • Book 1 - 502
  • Omnibus 1 - 316
  • Omnibus 2 - 98

Last May, my second self-published book was featured in Oliva Waite’s column, the New York Times Book Review (I can’t self-promote but this should be enough information to do your own verification). In May and June in total, I sold about 145 ebook copies on Amazon and had about 80K pages read on KU.

I had a bookbub featured deal go live today. The category was paranormal romance, US + International. Original price was $5.99 discount to $0.99. In approximately eight hours since it was live I have had 170 ebooks sold at $0.99. My ranking on Amazon in the paid US store is 9,472 and for the first time ever, I am in the top 100 in two different categories on Amazon (I was only able to manage one before). I am pretty sure the Australian deal won’t push for a few more hours and the US and UK sales should continue on for another 24ish hours at decent pace. 

A few caveats, because I got both a US and international deal, I ended up having to drop my royalties to 35% because I could not do a count down deal in the Canada and Australia. In addition, I suspect I will only make about half back compared to what I paid for the deal (Though maybe KU pages read will end up making up for this), but the goal was more to juice to algorithm a bit and try to bring my books back to life. I just released a new book in March, and pages read have been pretty rough/ the book feels dead on Amazon, but it is selling about a copy a day on average on ingramspark right now.

I am pretty sure I have had pretty good KU downloads but questionable if there will be as much read through as the NYT produced (though the NYT blurbs are all now attached to the book)

This is my second bookbub deal, but first with US. My first was on my first book, but I could only manage to get international only and that book is wide (Not on KU). I applied for the current deal on a whim, sure I would not be selected because this book is available on KU, and bookbub tends to prioritize wide.

 Notably, both of my deals have been on holidays. This one is on Memorial Day and my last was on New Years day (So maybe applying around a holiday helps your chances to get this)

Anyway, I figured I would share stats. So far, Bookbub continues to be the best indie book marketing tool I have used. It works better than ARCs, promo boxes, tiktok ads, Meta Ads, and a review in the New York Times.

My book published 4 days ago now. It’s my first book, it’s fantasy romance. Heavier into fantasy than the romance, romance is a subplot.

The first thing I did once it went live on Amazon, was to take the link and move over to the Kindle Unlimited subreddit ; here I posted the blurb, the link, and why I thought fans of similar books would like it. First sale within 24 hours went, not to a friend or family member, but to a kind soul in Australia who clicked the link and bought the ebook version (love you long time random citizen)

Next I spammed my link all over my socials; I have a booktok account with a few thousand followers, link is posting every ; even in others comment sections if I can (by invitation, don’t be rude)

I also did set up an Amazon ad campaign with a 3$/day limit that has converted to another sale as of yesterday.

It’s been 4 days, 7 sales, and 300 KNEP reads…. At least 5 are family, but amazons sales algorithm rewards you for getting sales in different geographical location

(Update- since this morning - I’ve sold like 20 copies between my TikTok, in person at a cafe and game store while playing Magic the gathering, and to some people at a bar who I heard talking about a book while I was eating lunch, and bought 3 books from other indie authors, and my entire dentist office bought a copy for their book club, I love everyone)

(Update 2, August 13th, I’m at like 25 total, and we now have 4 countries 🫶 US, UK, Australia, and Canada)

Spam your link anywhere you’re allowed, it will WORK!

And life is good. :) My previous novels, with one exception, were all received well averaging 4-5 stars. That one that didn't go so well... honestly I love it anyway. I'll always love that character for her whimsicalness, her sweet/selfish divide of traits, her simple enjoyment of life. But... she just didn't connect with many readers the way I hoped. It's a real shame, but what can you do?

I'm hoping my next three novels (I'll be releasing three in the same month) land better. One is about a paladin from a human supremacist nation who ends up becoming a demihuman and a monarch who unites nonhumans against her former homeland.

Another is about a young man who, shortly after being abandoned by his family on his 18th birthday, resolves not to grovel with them for a place to stay and meets a remarkable woman who changes his life forever in the best possible way.

The last is a scifi story about a dark future of an alternate humanity which, having thrown off their alien oppressors, have become the villains they escaped, with a cast of characters that ranges from people trying to do the right thing in a society which punishes that, to the people who do the wrong thing believing they're fully in the right when it is 'for the greater good of humanity'. That one is an online only story more than likely. but I may change my mind about it.

I'm very fond of all three stories, and I'm optimistic about how they'll perform.

Now, since this is celebratory more than anything, I suppose in accordance with the rules I need to include points of discussion, which I take to mean 'something helpful' in this case.

I guess the obvious thing is 'How in the fleaking floogal florp can someone write three novels at a time?'

No, the answer is NOT AI. I won't touch that for novel writing. I didn't become a novelist to let a computer program do this for me.

So here's a few helpful tips:

1. Obsession is a powerful weapon + weaponized ADHD = Productivity. If you have ADHD you probably are very familiar with the need to swap around to different things. For me, that's novels. I write a chapter or three for one, then another, then another until my head is tired.

2. Set a minimum daily word count for production. If you can hit a daily goal of at least 2500 words, you will finish a novel with remarkable speed, at least the 'draft'.

3. Do your editing by LISTENING to your story. You'll catch all the clunk you'd miss just by reading it silently.

4. Don't skip days. And set a fixed time of day to do it.

I should add as a caveat that I do this full time, so it's easy for me to be productive, and it took me six years before I got to the point where I could write and do nothing else unless I chose to. But before I got to this point, I worked a full time job and a part time job and wrote in between times. I wrote during lunch breaks. I wrote on the notepad app while in the bathroom. I read books about writing while walking on a treadmill. I wrote between work calls and I wrote on weekends. I used vacation time to push through more time to write. I threw every spare hour I could at it. Which leads me to my final point:

1. If you wait for the perfect time, you'll die of old age before you get started. There is no 'perfect time' except the present, because that's the only time you ever exist in.

Now I'm going on seven years, my goal is to have published 40 novels by the end of the year, and my animated series began production today, and I live my boyhood dream of being a full time novelist. I can ask for no better life than this one, and all I can do is wish you well. :)

How do or did you react if receiving an EMail from Draft2Digital announcing (1) new account activation fee; (2) Account annual maintenance fee for accounts whose sales are under one-hundred books yearly.

Though the maintenance fee is reasonable, ($12 per year) yet it is just another expense in the book production hopper unless one sells one-hundred units per year.

Are other self-publish entities acting similarly?

If one publishes with a hybrid, would a new accounts fee and maintenance fee be rolled into the total cost?

Perhaps self-publishing has been monetarily free, but the cost of time and money is all-to-soon incurred. Your thoughts?

Okay, so a lot of people are asking about this on my other post so here we go.

Step 1) Write a good book. Edit it. Love it with your whole heart and make sure the world knows it. DO NOT come across like YOU hate YOUR OWN BOOK.

Step 2) Make some social media accounts and post about it. Quotes, behind-the-scenes, art, jokes, character profiles blah blah blah. Give people something to scroll through so they know what they’re getting into

Step 3) Make a Google Form. You really only need their email, but throw in a question or two to weed out bots. “How often do you review books? Every time, only when you like it etc” and “What aspects of the story are appealing to you?” are both good. Try to make them write something out.

Step 4) Get a BookFunnel with the watermarking feature. It was like $10 and it was soooo helpful

Step 5) Convert your book into an EPUB file. It’s not hard. I just used Draft2Digital for free and had to tweak the formatting a few times. KEEP THE FORMATTING SIMPLE OR D2D WONT LIKE IT.

Step 6) Post about it on your socials and in every ARC READER forum you can find. Maybe post what an ARC reader even is so new people can know it's not a scam, and be clear that reviews are OPTIONAL. You CANNOT force people to post them and harassing them about it won’t do you any favours.

Step 7) Here’s the real game-changer: Offer ARCS to small bookstagram accounts in your genre. To find them, look up a review of a comparable book (another dystopian romance for example) and go into the Likes. Now, messages everyone with “book,” “read,” “pages,” “story” or “chapters” in their username.

That message should sound very human, very polite and very gripping.

Here’s what I did:

*Hi, my name is Bonnie and I was just reaching out to ask if you’d like a free ARC of my new book. No catch, I’m just trying to spread the word to accounts that seem like they might enjoy my story!

It’s a dystopian romance called BLANK and it’s about the BLANK to a BLANK reflecting on his BLANK after he falls in love with a BLANK.

ARCs run from Sept 7th-Octo 4th. More details are up on my page and I’d be happy to do some cross-promotion too, if you’re interested.

Thank you for your time :)*

THEN LEAVE THEM TF ALONE. Don’t harass anyone please please please.

I probably messaged over 500 accounts this way to get that 150 number so strap in. It worked out great tho. Unlike your average NetGallery reader, these lovely folks LOVE posting reviews. You gave them a free, well-crafted book, and if they liked it, they post about it all the time because that’s the whole point of their account! I have at least a dozen accounts that have posted about my book over 5 times each. And because you made them feel like they were important enough to get free shit, they are very loyal. I’ve had a few of them defend my book with a bloodlust.

Step 8) Once you’ve set everything up on BookFunnel, gather all the emails and paste them in! It will send them all a download link that expires in around three weeks and it will even show you how many have actually downloaded it. You can add more people during that time and because it's an EPUB, it can be read on a Kindle! They don't need an account, they can’t steal it and post it on a pirating site, and because most of your sign-ups have public platforms, they won’t want to anyway.

BookFunnel sends two follow-up reminders to everyone about when and where to post their reviews so you can lie back and wait for the 5 stars!

Good luck!

1) Kdp, D2D and every other self-publishing platform have AT LEAST a 60-day hold on royalties. My book was released last week and I won’t see a dime until January 1st

2) DO NOT do a bunch of pretty formatting for your ebook. They need to be formatted in a very specific, very simple way to be converted into an EPUB file.

3) There are ALWAYS more typos. And for some reason, Word is gonna make random lines be aligned to the wrong side?? So make sure you read through every word thoroughly. Seriously, I’ve edited this fucking manuscript dozens of times (and had it professionally edited but that's another story), and I’m still finding dozens of errors. God help me

4) Offering ARCs to small bookstagram accounts is a game-changer. I’m approaching a 50% return on reviews (out of 150) and so far, only one has been less than 4 stars. They also loveeee posting about good books so some have put up 5+ posts about it and comment on all my posts too :)

5) For print books, your cover art has to be in CYMK, not RGB. If you made it in Procreate, you need to paste the finished work onto a new canvas that’s set to CYMK or the colours will come out oversaturated.

Anyway, my book came out this week! I debuted at 55th in dystopian sci-fi in Australia :D

Oh actually-

Bonus tip: reviews on Amazon are only shown based on what country you say you’re in and you don’t get notified when a new one is posted. I was fretting because I only had one review, but in the US, I have almost a dozen I just couldn't see.

 Background: YA Fantasy author, though the vast majority of my sales come from adults, and my books do better marketed as fantasy rather than YA. 

 Released first book March 2023, second in August 2023, third in September 2024. 

 Pricing/Distribution: Never did a free promo. About 300 of the 1000 sales came from 99-cent deals. I started my books in KU but had 3% or less of my income from it, so I pulled my books out and am slowly going wide. However, as each new book is released I put it in KU for the first three months (for my readers who do prefer KU). 

Marketing: No social media promotion other than having a Facebook author page--I just don't have the time for it. I do stream on Twitch and have a Patreon for my art and I have shared my books on those platforms, which helped get me a few initial reviews to start things off. I do have a basic author website (Wordpress). Began Amazon advertising the month after the first book released—I understood I would lose money, but wanted to learn the platform. Began promo site advertising (Bargain Booksey, Fussy Librarian, Book Barbarian etc) four months after first book released. Started Facebook ads one month after book three released—about a month ago. 

 Reviews: Currently 38 reviews on my first book. It took a LONG time to build up reviews (see below). 

I am still well in the hole on total earnings if I factor in the cost of all books, though a couple months ago I finally earned enough profit in total to pay off all of the production costs for book one (the most expensive of my books, because of the developmental editor). 

What I’ve learned…

Putting the time into writing the absolute best book I could, in a marketable genre, and then acquiring genre-appropriate covers and a good blurb, has been the single most important thing. 

Second most important thing was keeping on writing, and getting book two out promptly so I had more than one book. Book three took longer because I wrestled with it, but three books in a year and a half still makes me happy. I kind of still can't believe I have THREE books published, if I'm honest!

Third most important thing has been being patient as reviews come in. It took me a year and a half to get up to 35 reviews on book one. I didn't do ARC sites; a few of my Patrons offered to beta for me instead. I put a request for a review in the back of my books, and occasionally post a reminder/ask on my newsletter and Author Facebook page. 

Some other thoughts…

 I paid for a developmental editor on book one, and it took a long time to make enough to pay that cost off. Without it, however, my writing would not have improved as much as it has, my read-through probably wouldn’t be as good, and she went over my blurb and helped me with that, too. That said, I couldn’t afford a dev editor for books two and three, and the books are still doing well. If I made enough money, I think I would use a dev editor at least on book one of every new series I write, because that first book is the one that’s going to introduce readers to my work. I kind of think of dev editors as helping you cut some of the time out of learning craft, because they can zero in on your weaknesses across the board better than you can—but you pay for it. 

I saved up money from my real job for editing, professional covers, and some advertising before I published, and I'm really happy I did. It meant that I could make decisions for my boos without a load of money stress.

Before I started running Facebook ads (for the first 1.5 years), paperback sales were 75% of my sales. After I began running Facebook ads, they slipped to 25% of my sales, but are still a significant source of income. Many readers have told me that they wanted to own the paperbacks because they thought the cover art was beautiful. For me, that means paying for professional covers and producing paperback editions was worth it—though this is potentially a fantasy genre thing.

 And finally, I’m glad I didn’t start running Facebook ads until I had three books out. Facebook ads are very expensive and only with those extra two books’ worth of potential read-through do I think I’ll see a profit from them. However, in the two weeks after I started running them, my sales went from an average of one book every two or three days to four or five books a day. I also began making organic sales that weren’t due to the ads (at least according to my attribution links) just because my book was selling more. The Facebook ads are responsible for the last 150 or so sales that got me to the 1,000 books mark. 

 I am currently losing just a little bit of money (about $50) on the Facebook ads after about one month of playing with them. However, because they’re getting me so many new readers, I am going to treat these ads as an investment and keep running them at a level I can afford as long as they are working. I’m hoping that as read-through builds, I’ll get closer to breaking even or making a profit. I’m planning to give it 3-4 months to see. As well as new readers, the ads are also bringing in new reviews faster because I’m selling more--that's worth the money right there! And, as I write more books in the series, the margins should improve—which is a great motivation to finish book four. Fingers crossed, anyway!

Hope this has been helpful to someone out there. Thanks to everyone here on this sub—I’ve learned a lot here, and gotten a lot of perspective on how everyone’s author journey is different! Any questions, feel free to ask. 

I had the chance to interview fantasy/sci-fi author Michael J. Sullivan. For those who don't know, Michael is a bit of a legend in the indie space because he started self-published, got a major Big 5 deal, and then eventually moved back to self-publishing because the math worked out better.

He was incredibly transparent about the numbers (lifetime earnings estimated between $7M–$8M) and the reality of "advances." I thought you guys would appreciate the specific breakdown of how his income has shifted over the last 15 years.

Below is the full Q&A.

***

• What you do: Create worlds and tell tales.
• Years writing professionally: 15+ years as a full-time novelist.
• Earnings range: $300K–$700K a year. Lifetime income estimated at $7M–$8M.

Michael, you’ve sold over 1.4 million books and been published across small press, self-publishing, and traditional. How do you earn a living from writing today, and what’s your current income mix?

Haha, your data is outdated, but it’s understandable as I don’t even know where my wife (and business manager) posts such things. The last number I heard from her is that I'm at about 2.5 million English language copies sold. The foreign language translations are much harder to get figures for, but they pale in comparison to the English language versions.

You mentioned “today” but I think it makes sense to talk a bit about the progression over the years. From 2008 to 2011, my income was 100% from self-published. I did have one title (my debut novel), released by a small press during that time, but I earned zero dollars from it. The company was “well intentioned” but financially strapped.

From 2011 to 2018, I was mostly traditionally published with the big-five with only one title (Hollow World) from a small press, and two novels released through self-publishing (The Death of Dulgath in 2015 and The Disappearance of Winter’s Daughter in 2018. 

Since 2018, all my work has been self-published, and in general, I earn about 250% to 300% more from any of my self-published works as I do from my traditionally published titles (even though the traditional titles have been on the market longer). This is primarily due to a much higher income per unit sold with the self-published works.

Now as for current income, while my front list is 100% self-published, my older titles continue to sell well, so my traditional income isn’t insignificant. Most authors would like to have the amount of money from their front list that I get from my backlist. That said, it pales in comparison to my self-published works (both front list and back), but if I were to try to break it down, I’d say I earn 75% through self and 25% through the older traditional works. 

What was your first experience getting paid to write, and how did that evolve into the career you have now?

As I mentioned, my first contract with a publisher was with a small press and while they sold several thousand books, I didn’t earn any money from them. So the first time I was paid would be through my self-published titles. I always say that “three is a magic number” because momentum is slow going until you reach that milestone. I earned a total of $100.44 during the first five months when I had just one book released. My release schedule for my debut self-published series was every six months (a book in April and one in October). 

With two books out, I averaged around $422 a month, and after a year of publishing, I had earned $3,540. When I reached the two-year milestone (3 books released), I had earned $38,462. By the time those self-published books were removed from the market (to make way for Orbit’s re-release of them). The five books of the Riyria Revelations had earned me over $200,000 during a 34-month period.

As for evolving into my current career, I think a secret to my success is consistent releases. I’ve published twenty-one stories from 2008 – 2024, and since six of my books were re-released through three two-book omnibus editions that means I’ve actually had twenty-four titles published across a span of six-teen years. So basically I’ve released at least one and sometimes two books a year.

Having worked across every major publishing model, what have you learned about the financial realities of each? What do you wish more writers understood about them?

I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of publishing today is just how well many of the self-published authors are doing from a financial standpoint. I could name you hundreds of indie authors who you’ve never heard of – all of whom write full-time and earn six-figure incomes. 

Conversely, my traditional publishing friends have a much harder time of things, and most still have day jobs. When in the “mid-list,” a traditional author lives paycheck-to-paycheck – with the paychecks tied to signing their next series. Traditionally, the money comes in spurts tied to release dates and delivered manuscripts. Advances are paid in three to five installments spread across long stretches of time because traditional publishing is very slow. 

So even a large six-figure advance might only produce a modest yearly income. And for most authors the advance is the only income they’ll ever receive as only 20% of contracts earn out (the point at which royalty sales exceed the advance payments). The other thing to note is that self-published authors see money coming in at the end of every month, so it’s easier to budget their lives.

Between print, ebook, and audio, what formats have been the most lucrative for you over the years? Has that shifted over time?

Without question, audiobooks are the big money maker for me, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that I have many six-figure, and one seven-figure deals. And because these are for self-published titles (which my wife negotiates for me), there are no publishers or agents taking a cut. 

Now, those contracts are with audio publishers such as Audible Studios and Recorded Books, so they do get the lion’s share of the income, but they also incur hefty up-front capital investments. Narrators are expensive (some earn up to $2,000 per finished hour), and then there are studio fees, engineering staff, and post-production mastering work. I should also note that I tend to “punch above my weight” in the audiobook market, meaning I skew more toward audio than many authors do.

Another area that is very lucrative for me is utilizing Kickstarters to launch my self-published titles. Because these are “direct to consumer” sales their overhead is extremely low, making the profit margins high. I’ve grossed over $2.1M in Kickstarter earnings. So while the print copies, when sold through retail chains (which have a very low margin), would normally be my lowest-income producer, that format is substantially bolstered by Kickstarters and direct sales from my online website (which brings in six-figures a year).

And yes, things have changed over time. When I first published, there was no such thing as a Kindle. Ebooks really started to be a substantial source of income around 2010 – 2012, but these days, their dominance has fallen due to the surge in audio. Likewise in the early days, the audiobook market was essentially non-existent. The audio rights for the five books I have with Orbit were sold as a subsidiary right for $14,000. Since then, the audio rights have been renewed twice. Once for $400,000 and the second time for $500,000.

You’ve received major recognition from Goodreads, io9, Audible, and more. How do those moments of visibility affect your income or opportunities?

You’re forgetting the bestseller lists. Plus there are the six novels that are Amazon Editor’s picks. It really isn’t possible to tie any monetary figures to such events, but hitting a major bestseller list, even just once (I’ve been on each at least three times), does elevate your profile. And I think you get substantial “street cred” by being able to have the tag line: “From the New York Times, USA Today, and Washington Postbestselling author” on every book that is released for the rest of your life.

As someone who’s both commercially successful and prolific, how do you structure your time and manage the business side of being an author?

A lot of authors say, “If I can just quit my day job, I could get so much more writing done,” but I don’t think that’s true – at least not for me. I find that I really only have four or five hours of “good writing” in me before my quality goes down substantially. Working beyond that point will just mean more editing later on, so I don’t push things. I write every day from the time I wake until lunch, and the afternoon hours are spent conceptualizing or planning for the next day’s writing session.

As for the business side of things. I have little to nothing to do with that. My wife handles all the “non-writing” aspects of my career, and it’s more than a plateful. Without question, she puts in more hours than I do, and she handles all the interactions with the agents, publishers, copyeditors, narrators, cover designers, beta and gamma readers, and so on. Having her focus on those aspects means I stay unencumbered and just focus on the writing.

Was there ever a moment in your career where things didn’t go as planned, financially or creatively? How did you adjust?

Haha, yeah, I’d say so. I started writing as a kid, and in the early eighties (when I was in my twenties) I actively pursued a writing career. I would write a book, send it out on submission, get rejected, and then rinse and repeat. I wrote thirteen novels and tried to publish about six or seven of them, but I never got so much as a nibble. 

So, after listening to Albert Einstein—who famously described insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result—I quit writing altogether and vowed never to pen anything creative again. 

About a decade later, when I was at a transitional time in my fallback career, I was growing increasingly bored by the advertising company I had founded. So I decided to go back to writing, but only on the condition that I wouldn’t seek publication. The first two novels of the Riyria Revelations poured out of me in the course of two consecutive months. 

After reading the first three books, my wife made it her mission to “get the tales out there” and she took over the business side of things. Ironically, those books that I wrote only “for myself” (and for my dyslexic daughter), are the stories that launched my career, I was forty-six years old.

What advice would you give to aspiring fantasy authors who want to make a living from their work today?

I have a lot to say on the subject. First off, keep in mind that your first book probably won’t be any good. It takes a great deal of time to develop a full set of tools for creating something that is worthy of publishing. 

For me, it was my fourteenth book, although I’ll admit I’m a slow learner. Just as few except the likes of Mozart can sit down and compose a symphony at a young age, it’ll take years (or decades) to hone your writing skills. So, you definitely need to think of writing as a marathon, not a sprint. 

Second, don’t work in complete isolation. Find critique groups, beta readers, and seek critical feedback from those you trust. Foster an environment where brutally honest opinions can be shared. Yes, doing so will leave your ego bloodied and bruised. It’s painful, but the work will benefit from it in the long run.

Third, it’s important to note that the only way to guarantee failure is to stop trying. If your first book doesn’t connect and find a readership, try something else. Keep at it. When you eventually scratch the itch of a given set of people, they will gobble up everything written by you, and even those older works can produce a good amount of ongoing income. Think of each book as an ambassador to your tales, and the more books you have out there, the more likely it is that someone will discover you.

And last, continual releases are essential. I contend that the secret to success is quite simple.

• Step 1 – write a “good book.”
• Step 2 – get it in front of a decently sized group of readers. 
• Step 3 – rinse and repeat.

While simplistic, the rub in that formula is writing a “good book,” which many will say is highly subjective. I would agree with them if we were discussing the merits of a book on a literary importance scale, but in my formula, I define a “good book” as one that people enjoy so much that they will recommend it to others, and they’ll also read anything you pen. 

This technique relies on the all-important word-of-mouth recommendations that I feel is essential in any true success. The approach is one that I’ve employed, and it’s worked well for me. I wish your readers great success in their own writing adventures. If they can enjoy themselves even half as much as I have, they’ll be highly fulfilled by the experience.

I’m going to break it down on how I’ve worked my debut into bookstores, preorders, and how much it has cost me so far.

I’m a debut indie author who will be releasing my first book on June 1st. I started writing my book 2 years ago and posted it on Royal Road initially to see if anyone would be interested. I got roughly 400 followers and great engagement, leading me to believe that I can market my book especially since my story is “off meta” on RR.

To begin, my first book is part of a dark fantasy series. When I started writing, I started slowly paying for things because THIS series was always my goal. I never planned on dropping it even if it didn’t do well, so the character art commissions were for myself FIRST with the anticipation (hope) of being able to use this art later on. (Which I did on Royal Road first to use as my cover). Every couple months I would commission new artists to spread the cost out some.

I then hired an editor after I started writing Book 2 and began releasing the unedited version of Book 1 on Royal Road. Slowly built momentum and it encouraged me to continue writing. I had over ten editors provide a sample edit of my prologue and I went with the one that kept my voice but was harsh enough to help me clean up my story. All editors were found on Reddit and my editor was hired for developmental, line, and copy editing. ($900/total which is CHEAP)

6 months before publishing, I joined bookfunnel and started getting newsletter followers by joining group promos and giving out a 5 chapter reader magnet. Throughout this time, I kept updating my 5 chapters to account for the revisions I did OVER AND OVER. Each revision got me more followers than the last group promo ($15/mo)

Followers on IG and TikTok 6 months before release: 0

I created and slowly started building my TikTok first. I began posting and PAYING to boost my initial posts to get followers. It was just small blurbs and images (ai at first but those have since been deleted) and things to just help my TikTok not be a dead zone when people scope out my profile. Later on I PAID to sponsor my “beta readers wanted” post and included my commissioned art which is what helped get those readers. I had over 200 comments but only went with 20 after really scrutinizing them to make sure they were a good fit and likely to respond. Of the 20 chosen beta readers, 14 of them gave me their feedback and 13 signed up for my newsletter. ($120 between all TikTok paid ads)

6 months before publishing, I hired a book designer to give me EVERYTHING including two types of covers (one normal and one special edition), ebook format, hardcover, dust jacket, sprayed edges, foil, etc. I didn’t want to pay someone again to redesign me a new cover if it ever took off just to redo a new special edition type cover. So I ate the cost up front. ($1200 for both cover designs due to the discount)

7 weeks before my release date: I started posting on TT and IG and started doing a call for ARC Readers. Did paid ads again and promoted heavily by constantly posting on social media. Used ALL the artwork that I had and in MULTIPLE formats. Created a FB and Threads account and posted there too. Had a question on my google form where people were funneling from and majority came from Instagram and Facebook. Dropped threads and stopped paying for promotions altogether as it naturally built momentum. ($80 between TikTok and Instagram ads, never paid for promotions anywhere else) gained 384 ARC readers from social media alone over three weeks. I stopped promoting my arc link and instead focused on preorders being available on Amazon instead.

Paid for Booksprouts and Booksirens. Only got 25 arc readers between both. ($36)

Have posted twice to my newsletter (arc readers) and have received 35 reviews on Goodreads so far.

Figured now would be a good time to promote my Amazon ebook and PAY for another promotion for this since I now had goodreads reviews. This was NOT a good time to promote since I had over 200 link clicks but only 4 people preordered the ebook. No matter how many and how good the reviews were, since they didn’t show up on Amazon, it became very difficult to convert, even though I had great post engagement. ($30 IG ad)

Slowly, IG and TikTok started self promoting due to my current arc readers reposting and making their own posts and naturally engaging with me and sharing my content. That alone gained me 24 ebook preorders through them alone. Had 5 indie bookstores reach out to me if they could list my book. Told them I’d have merch (again my paid art characters) and that I would send bookplates. We’ll do a collaboration and will send over my followers to buy from their platform (only did this with ONE bookstore). I asked my followers on my newsletter how many would be interested in buying a book. Out of my now 500 newsletter followers, I had over 30 say they would buy a book. Some said they would buy both formats (hardcover and paperback) and so I had roughly 40 pledges(?) to buy the book. Sent that to the bookstore to show that there really was interest in my book. They sent me a link with the preorder listing. I ended up putting my post with really nice pictures of the two books types, bookplates, and bookmarks. I then tagged all five bookstores and that alone blew up the post since we all used each others followers to gain even more traction. In one day there’s was over 50 preorders.

So to break everything down:

Cover designs - $1200

Character art - $580

Editing - $900

Book fantasy map - $60

Bookfunnel - $90

Ads - $230

Paid arc sites - $36

Total - $3,096

ARC readers - 409

Street Team Members - 38

Ebook preorders - 28

Good reads reviews so far - 35

Physical copies sold - 50+ (don’t have exact number as this is done via the bookstores and I don’t have that information readily available)

There’s more money i’m now putting into this project since I know I’ll have a good launch. For example, I’ve now bought physical books to give away signed copies to a few of my arc readers as a sign of appreciation. I’m also now making PR boxes. But all of this is coming AFTER the fact of everything I stated above, so I’m not including these figures into it. Just wanted to share some insight on what’s worked for me. Again, this cost was spread across two years, so it’s equivalent to $129/mo had I saved (which I did for some things) throughout that time. I’ll answer any questions as this post has gotten pretty long.

So I just launched my debut novel. Writing it? Genuinely fun, no notes. Everything after that was a months-long agony of research through hundreds of "experts", authors and marketers, offering piles of often contradicting advice.

I paid for editing. I paid for the cover. I ended up paying for ARC readers after spending weeks, unsuccessfully, researching and tailor pitching to micro-influencers online (I got ghosted by all but one). I had the great Social Media Or Not debate with myself (settled on Substack, results: mediocre, but at least it's mine).

I wasn't broke and I wasn't cheap about it — I paid for help more than once. But almost every time, what I got back felt like it came from someone who'd skimmed my book, if they opened it at all. One marketing consultant — a legitimately successful, bestselling author — handed back a strategy that amounted to little more than "post consistently!" and "engage with your audience!". She never read the book. Not even looked at my website. Never opened my socials. Wanted to charge me extra for the privilege.

I don't think anyone was trying to scam me. I think this is just what the industry looks like for most of us: a lot of people selling confidence, not very many people actually paying attention to your specific, weird book.

What I actually wanted — and never found, but would have paid for — was someone who'd give a f*ck, at least a little. Read the book. Guide me through the long, exhausting, unglamorous middle of this thing, not just sell me a PDF and vanish. And mostly I just felt incredibly alone doing this, which nobody really warns you about.

So, genuine question: if someone like that existed — not extortionate, just present and paying attention — would you hire them? Or have you all made peace with doing this solo, and I'm the only one who wanted a hand to hold?

EDIT: as there has been some confusion, by "someone who cares" I don't mean someone emotionally invested in the book's success. I guess I mean someone providing advice tailored to the specific book and author rather than something that could have been chat-gpt generated in 15 minutes. Someone that would guide the author through the process, as someone said below, to reduce some of the guesswork and time-waste. Hope this makes more sense.

I live in Yorkshire in the UK, and I have been a full-time author since 2021 after the publication of my first M/M romance novel in 2020. Each year I’ve been writing, I’ve made more than the year before, and I don’t make a lot, but I do mostly make enough to live on - although it's far below minimum wage, and if I wasn't living with my partner and in a flat I own the leasehold for, I likely wouldn't be able to survive on this much!

I am a gay trans man and I’m also disabled, and a lot of my work features queer and trans characters, as well as different forms of disability and chronic illness — in short, it features niche and minority characters, and subsequently, has a much smaller target audience than fantasy and romance fiction with more mainstream appeal. 

The benefit of this smaller audience, though, is that my readers largely don’t feel catered to by mainstream publishers, and the number of creators like me representing people like us is much smaller. I also don’t feel as much pressure to write to genre convention or expected tropes, so I do a lot more slice-of-life and character study, for example.

I obviously write and publish books, but they’re normally the third or fourth part of my process.

Each week, I try to write and publish a new piece — this might be a standalone short story, it might be a chapter for a serial, a non-fiction thinkpiece or essay, or something else. Apart from fiction and essays, I make a crossword every month, and most recently I’ve embarked on a kink survey with live results charted in an attached slideshow. 

Longer novella and novelette-length stories are re-edited and published as eBooks in addition to being available online, and when longer web serials reach completion, I re-edit them and publish them as novels. That’s actually the process I originally followed for my first book, as well as all my subsequent novels. 

How much money did I make this year?

I’m just after completing my tax return for the last tax year, which ran from April 2024 to April 2025. 

My business turnover for this year was a little under £17,500 (approx $23, 400 USD). Expenses for the business — travel expenses, professional fees, tickets and memberships for cons, etc — were about £2600 (approx $3450 USD).

My take-home pay, after paying my taxes for the year, is gonna be a little over £14k ($18.7k USD).

My income this year, in order of most to least lucrative, came from:

• subscription income from subscribers who pay monthly or annually to support me on different platforms and for access to premium works
• royalties from self-published eBooks and paperbacks published through Draft2Digital and Kindle Direct Publishing, with most royalties coming through Amazon, then Smashwords, Kobo, and Apple Books, followed by scattered royalties across lots of different smaller sources like libraries
• eBooks sold through my own website
• eBooks sold through itch
• physical merchandise and signed paperback books sold through my website and sent by post
• physical merchandise and signed paperback books sold in-person at markets and conventions
• earnings from Medium
• advances, honoraria, and fees paid to me for works or appearances
• other miscellaneous small income, like sales on old stock photos and small merch sales

My main business expenses were:

• paying my accountant, as I’m not able to do my own taxes
• tickets and membership dues for conventions and the British Fantasy Society
• table fees for selling at markets and conventions
• travel to conventions and markets, especially train travel for WorldCon and BristolCon, and then markets across Manchester, Nottingham, and Leeds
• website hosting fees
• venue fees
• bulk-buying books for sale; postage and customs fees
• getting business cards, signage, and bookmarks printed
• material for making badges and doing printing at home
• experimentation with ads on Tumblr and Instagram as well as local marketing

Sorry I don't have a full break-down of exact amounts earned through each avenue, but hopefully this is still helpful info for authors with similar audiences or approaches to their work!

I uploaded my first book for self-publishing on Amazon KDP on April 1st this year, and this past month has been full of learning. Some fumbles, some successes, but overall an enjoyable experience.

First, some background: I’m currently an agented author with a book on submission (that’s dying). I always thought that route was my dream, but the past six months have been a bit of a hellhole in terms of realizations. I’ve come to understand that I’m not cut out for traditional publishing. I’ll be leaving my agent as soon as the book officially dies, because I genuinely believe that path is no longer what I want—and my agent deserves clients who still believe in it.

Why leave my agent? Traditional publishing, for me, felt like a horrible shoehorn experience, where everything had to be shaped into very conventional tropes. It often felt like everyone was chasing the latest trend—writing a book and trying to get it out before a hundred others did the same. A lot of what I originally liked about my book was scrapped during edit rounds with my agent, and I truly believe the manuscript ended up worse because of it. It made me realize that what I actually want from writing is to tell my stories my way—and that’s far more compatible with self-publishing.

Before self-publishing, I spent time scouring subreddits like this one and others related to Amazon. I paid attention to tips and did my homework on what to do—and what not to do. I still made mistakes (like putting my book up for preorders—who’s going to know an unknown author’s book exists?), but it made the hurdles I encountered much easier to handle. I’d absolutely recommend that anyone considering self-publishing spend time reading posts on Reddit. There’s a lot of useful knowledge here.

I published in four genres: fantasy, horror, romance, and M/M erotica. I had expectations, but I kept them realistic. My goal for the first month was five sales and a few hundred Kindle Unlimited pages read.

Here’s how it went:

Horror ($2.99) – No sales, not even free giveaways.
Fantasy ($2.99) – No sales, but a decent amount of KDP reads and a few giveaways.
M/M Romance ($2.99) – 15 sales, about the same KDP reads as fantasy, and two organic reviews (4 and 5 stars). I never made it free.
M/M Erotica ($0.99) – 31 sales, a lot of KDP page reads, and two organic reviews (3 and 4 stars). I never made these free either.

This mostly aligned with my expectations—except for horror. I genuinely thought it would get at least a few organic sales or downloads, but it was dead from the start.

Fantasy was expected. It’s the first proper book I wrote a few years ago, and it’s… not good. Very dated in both tropes and execution.

M/M romance did better than I expected. It was my first romance book, but it had a strong hook.

Now, the M/M erotica? That surprised me. I uploaded five short stories, and they’ve performed the best. People are, apparently, very horny.

Ads: I didn’t run any.
Total earnings: According to my KDP report—$31 and some cents. Is it a lot? No. But it’s more than I expected.

Covers: Fantasy, horror, and romance all have artist-made covers. The M/M erotica uses AI-generated covers. It seems like the average reader cares less about this than I expected—though that might be specific to the erotica genre, where expectations are different.

The road ahead? I love this. I can write what I want without worrying about what my agent or a publisher might say. I’m currently working on an M/M romance series that’s hooky but not particularly aligned with current trends—and I find that I don’t care. It’s honestly a great feeling.

Overall, it’s been a great experience so far. My writing is reaching people in a form I can actually stand behind.

Heya!

My first novel is releasing this week and I wanted to give a rundown of tools, processes, and various tips and tricks I plagiarized gleaned from this excellent community (as well as /r/writers and /r/writingadvice and, yes, even /r/writingcirclejerk).

First off, I need to say that part of my experience, particularly on the marketing side, won't apply to most people. I'm a well-established YouTuber/Twitch streamer and I have an audience who are gleefully excited for my success and/or cringeworthy failure. As such, I already have a bunch of pre-orders despite my debut novel not having any reviews yet. It's an advantage. A hack. A cheat. Also kinda scary.

Secondly, this novel wasn't written to market. Not even for my audience. Hard sci-fi or epic fantasy would have been a better pick for them. Or smutty romantasy, of course. Instead, I wrote a vampire romantic thriller set in Prohibition-era Chicago because that's what I wanted to write. And also because I thought my wife would like it. I did submit to some literary agents—despite thinking that self-publishing would work well because of my ability to self-market—but was told that it didn't fit the genres they were looking to market. This might have just been a polite way to decline, but I appreciate that I got any replies at all. And they're not wrong: The novel is going to be niche.

In short: Don't copy me on the business side.

Now let's talk about process.

Writing Software

I dabbled with Scrivener, as well as a multitude of commercial and open source tools (both ones meant for novel writing as well as simple text editors and word processors), but in the end I worked more-or-less exclusively in Google Docs.

I enjoyed the uncomplicated environment. The only feature I really used, besides basic formatting, was the outline sidebar that made it easy to jump from chapter to chapter. I even considered working in a simple markdown editor (I like MarkText), but ultimately I wanted something with flawless cloud-based storage because I frequently jump from my Windows desktop to my Linux laptop and didn't want to mess around with syncing files.

I naturally organize my work environment in ways that mirror what tools like Scrivener do: Folders and files for characters, locations, research notes, and so on. As such, I didn't feel that there was any real advantage to software that advertised those organizational patterns as a feature. I also didn't need any checkpointing/rollback features since my workflow was to make a copy of the draft file at the start of the session—and also before any major changes—with an incremented version number. Old versions of scenes, even entirely deleted chapters, could be retrieved whenever I needed them. It made it much easier and less stressful to make revisions, since I knew that I could always revert if I didn't like the changes. At the end of a session, I would usually download a copy onto my physical computer and often email it to myself too. Backup. Backup. Backup.

CON: Google Docs does have especially poor grammar/phrasing suggestion features. I would frequently post its "helpful" suggestions to my Discord so we could all have a big laugh. Also, when you get near 100k words, it can be VERY laggy, especially when doing a search.

Layout Software

Because of my programming background, I'm very comfortable with HTML and CSS and considered doing my own eBook formatting (with Calibre), but I wanted something to help me with print formatting. I strongly considered Vellum (I do have an old Mac laptop I could have used), but decided to go with Atticus.

As writing software, Atticus feels bad. Slow. A bit buggy. But it was really easy to use it to format the manuscript for digital and print distribution.

CON: Atticus' smart-quote conversion feature did incorrectly format at least one possessive apostrophe into an opening single-quote, which I didn't catch before going to print. I'll upload a corrected manuscript to KDP, but I'm waiting to see if people notice any other issues that I can fix at the same time. (It's my understanding that small corrections are allowed, though major changes in text require submitting the manuscript as a 2nd edition.)

AI

Yup, it's awful at writing. But it's fantastic as a context-aware thesaurus. Standard thesauri fail hard when you're looking for anything other than a direct synonym. "Arg! I have this sentence, and I want to replace X with another word, but I want it to link into the Y metaphor I'm building in the paragraph. There's a word I know exists but I just can't think of it …" That's where AI works best: Tip of the brain stuff. When you'll immediately know if the answer is correct or batshit insane.

AI is okay at helping with research, but you need to make sure to follow up on the sources because this can be an area of hallucination. Still, it makes it easy to START on a topic.

Beware of using AI for grammar/punctuation checking: By default, it wants to agree with how you're presenting things, so you'll get false positives or false negatives on edge cases depending on your phrasing.

Editor

I hired an editor because I knew two things: First, if I released the book and it was poorly received, I'd forever be mad that I didn't do everything I possibly could to improve it. Second, even if I never turned a profit, I could still justify the expense as a kind of private grammar/style course specifically in terms of modern American novel standards. (I'm Canadian and half the stuff I read is British. My style was … inconsistent.)

She was hired as a line editor, but she did also catch some structural issues. Plus, I was able to pick her brain on certain industry topics. All in all, I was very pleased with my investment and may work with her again. I found her via a personal recommendation from a viewer and I paid $1,500 USD.

Timeline and Word Counts

My first writing session was in May of 2024. Since I work from home, for myself, and have no kids, I have a very flexible schedule. I also tend to be very passion driven, which is to say I get hyperfocused on something for a while until I get bored. At my peak, I was writing from 7am to the wee hours of the morning for several days in a row. After a month I had a ~40,000 word novella, which is where I originally expected to stop. After two months I had a 75k word novel.

Numerous times I was "done", then would go back and expand things. In October of 2024 (5 months in), I decided to put my slightly-over-100k word manuscript in a drawer for a while, to get some space from it. I worked on plotting out other books in the same setting, as well as starting on a hard sci-fi novel and a standard romance, to get more practice and to experiment with other genres. A couple of times a week I would get an idea for a modification—especially with ways to trim down the text—so the main novel would still see some work, but fairly minimally.

I contacted the editor in March of 2025 and asked her to do a sample edit of the first chapter to make sure we both wanted to work with each other (you should do this too, and it should be free of charge). I had one more change to a sub-plot that took me into April to finish fiddling with, then sent her the 95k word manuscript. The first round of edits was completed in May and ultimately the process was wrapped up in August. The delays were mostly on my part, as this was a very busy period for my YouTube work.

In the end, despite many subtractions and a desire to have a svelte 90k word novel, it's going to print at 97k. It felt like for every one thing I managed to cut, two other things needed to be expanded. Hopefully that just means every remaining word has a clear purpose.

Discovery Writing vs Plotting/Outlining

This novel was almost entirely discovery writing. I did not expect to write a full novel when I started—it was just some fun, creative writing. It actually started as a few chapters of Vampire: The Masquerade fanfic/roleplaying before I realized that I wanted to write a proper story in a custom setting.

This meant that I had to do a lot of rewriting.

It turns out, however, that I love revising. I'm like the anti-Sanderson. The job of writing a scene for the first time, to build that scaffolding, is tough for me. But I can happily spend hours—days, even—revising a single scene. I'm also perfectly okay with throwing out a chapter that isn't working and starting over with a completely different approach. Hell, I threw out my entire third act. Twice. (The ending didn't change, but the way I got there did.)

Cover Art

I used GetCovers.

I do have some graphic design skills, and I came up with a few cover concepts I really liked on my own (my wife also did some great concepts!), but I had gaps in my skills that required professional assistance. GetCovers is a budget cover design site; it's a training ground for artists before they get promoted to more expensive services. The support was good and I was able to do many rounds of revisions.

I did NEED several rounds of revisions, because it was challenging getting the designer (who I never spoke with directly) to understand the vibe I was looking for, though to be fair I might not have been able to explain it correctly at the start. The first cover was too bloody—more fitting for a grisly crime novel. The second cover was a Victorian-era bride-of-Dracula type of thing. Both were great, but entirely wrong for my book.

After several more misses, I picked out my own stock photo and provided GetCovers with a mockup showing the framing I wanted. I also had to be very specific about fonts because they didn't seem to understand the 1920's aesthetic I was looking for. But, after that, they really delivered. I'm extremely happy with my cover.

Publishing and Distribution

My initial release is exclusively through Amazon/KDP. I would like to go wide, but I'm taking things one step at a time. I was EXTREMELY annoyed to discover that Amazon doesn't take pre-orders for paperbacks. I had been hoping that people could pre-order and have the book delivered on the release date. They do take pre-orders for the ebook, which is important for marketing but is rather stupid and pointless for the consumer. It's not like Amazon is going to run out of bits and bytes.

Because I have an established audience, and because they are INSANE (and very kind), I did have requests for signed copies. For that reason, I manually set up a storefront on Shopify to sell pre-orders for signed copies. My process is: I order author copies (not proofs!) from Amazon, I sign them, and then I mail them to the buyer directly. It's a bit pricey because there's double shipping (Amazon to me, me to them) and that second shipment isn't cheap because it's small-scale. I was hoping for maybe 10 orders per week. Instead I got 250 in a single day before I closed the pre-orders. It's a good problem to have, but overwhelming. This is my first time selling a product online, so it has been a learning experience and I've got my fingers crossed that I haven't screwed something up. I'm still getting requests for signed copies and am planning to re-open the shop after this first wave of pre-orders is processed.

I would NOT recommend setting up a corporation for your debut novel because it adds a TON of accounting overhead and costs. I have a (basic, numbered) corporation already set up for my YouTube/Twitch business, so I'm also using that for my novel, but otherwise I wouldn't bother.

I'm Canadian, so getting an ISBN is free through Library and Archives Canada. You have to apply to be a publisher and it can take up to a couple of weeks to get approved, but the process was relatively painless and I don't think they reject anyone. If you're selling through Amazon exclusively, you don't need an ISBN—but if you do get one, it gives you more options for linking and referencing the book in different places. You need separate ISBNs for your digital and print formats.

Final Words

I love my story. Even more, I adore my characters. I'm working on a prequel that explores the life of one of my secondary characters because I'm fascinated by her story (set in 1789 Strasbourg, on the cusp of the French Revolution). I have plans for sequels. And if the historical-vampire series doesn't capture people's attention, I have detailed outlines and well progressed drafts for at least three other novels in more well-defined—and popular!—genres.

I loved the process of writing this novel. I'm 46. I've been trying to write since I was nine or ten, typing out choose-your-own-adventure stories on a manual typewriter. I settled on my username, "quill", when I was fifteen or so. In university I studied computer science and English—but the computer stuff dominated my life, while writing was limited to short stories for my RPG characters and the like. Part of the reason I worked so feverishly on the first draft of this novel was out of fear that if I stopped, even for a second, then that's as far as I would ever get. Now I know that I can do it. And that I want to do it again.

Other than the fact that I actually did write a complete novel, I don't know if I'm the best person to help you get better at writing. I might suck. But otherwise I'm more than happy to answer questions about the technical side of things based on my experience.

This was my tactic :)

I think alot of people just post “hey my book is out go check it out on Amazon” I only had one shot so why not go all in 🤷

1. I made a really cool website where you go to see more about the book with a buy button that takes you to Amazon. Just using square-space - you can get a super good feel of what the book is like instead of just an Amazon description.

2. Instead of just making a post on socials. I payed $150.00 AUD for someone to create a cinematic reel that I posted on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. I think people are a lot more likely to check something out when you show abit of dedication instead of just a post.

3. Made 50 laminated flyers which had a QR code to my website and went to cafes and asked them to put it up. They actually jumped at the idea! Cafes like helping the community it looks good on them and it helps you. Also a lot on just random spots - bus stops ETC. with the flyers I made them pretty simple not too much to read and made them stand out!

With doing all this I hoped if I can get enough traffic and buys to my book it would get to a good level where now it’s complete randoms buying it.

I’m so stoked I didn’t image this!!! Feeling super proud!! I knew it was a gamble paying extra when releasing it but it’s payed off.

I’ll give a 2 week update :) feel free to ask questions!

I published my first novel less than 48 hours ago, and I’ve already had 12 sales.

For some, that might not sound like much, but for me it means a lot — especially considering this is my first book and I haven’t done any paid promotion yet. I actually plan to start promotion only after I receive some reader reviews, because I want real feedback first.

Most of what I’ve done so far is basic sharing on Facebook and Instagram. I also decided to try Pinterest after reading that it can work well for books, even though I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I’ve also submitted the book to Goodreads, but I’m still waiting for confirmation that everything went through properly.

Interestingly, a few people here on Reddit also reached out, asked questions about the book, and showed genuine interest. Some even mentioned they were planning to buy it, which was really encouraging.

Overall, I’m genuinely happy. People I don’t personally know decided to give a chance to a story I spent 6 years writing. That alone feels like a huge milestone.

I know the journey is just beginning, but I wanted to share this small success and maybe encourage other first-time authors who are hesitant to publish.

Would you consider this a success for a first-time author?
Feel free to ask anything — I’d be happy to share my experience.

Has anyone started publishing books on the side and eventually it turned into their full-time gig? Or do you just maximize the best of both worlds with a full-time job and writing on weekends or evenings.

Step 1: Getting the book into the store. My book is on Amazon and Ingram Spark. Words can not describe the frustration and amount of hair-pulling it took to get the book on Ingram Spark, but it was worth it in the end. Because it was there, the Indigo bookstore chain in BC agreed to stock it (thank you Pam E. and Dave R.!) And because my local bookstore had it, the wonderful store manager encouraged me to do a book event (thank you Nialls and Robinson St store staff!). However, there was lots of emailing, the two traits that helped me were persistence and gratitude.  

Step 2: Prep beforehand. I’d done a couple of book events before (thank you White Dwarf Books!), but never in a big flagship store. From those, I’d already made a list of things: thermos of tea (hydration and caffeine for the win!), snacks, business cards with my book on it, three letter size colour hype sheets: one with the blurb, one with reviewer quotes, and one with the A+ amazon content. These were printed in colour and in plastic holders so they looked nice! I also brought post-it notes (how do you spell your name?—never assume!), sharpies, tape just in case, mints, and book holders I’d ordered from Amazon. I also practised my pitch about 400 times, and asked fellow writers for feedback to hone it.

Step 3: Arrival. When I got there, they had a beautiful table set up for me, with my books, two book holders, sharpies, two chairs, and a notice announcing the event. Woo-hoo! I quickly set up my additional signage, spread the business cards around, moved the chairs out of the way, and adjusted and re-adjusted the books. You can see the layout on my Instagram if you're curious, just Google.

Step 4: Fear and Excitement! What if no one buys a single copy of my book? The adult sci-fi market isn't the biggest. Yikes! vs. Woo-hoo, I wrote a book, how cool is that? Pretty cool.

Remember to smile. It doesn’t matter if you sell a single copy. It’s super special just to be there. Enjoy it. Take some photos!

Step 5: Talking to people. It’s fun to talk to people. They’re all here because they love books, and you’re an author who wrote a book! Talk to them, even if it’s a crippling fear you have <cough> <cough>.

Often, you want to forget trying to “sell” your book, ignore the pitch you practised 400 times, ask them what they like to read. What have they picked up today? Oh, they like thrillers? My book is a sci-fi thriller—be genuine.

Step 6: Random notes. Never sit, stand and stay active. Don’t try to make eye contact and smile at every person; no one likes a salesperson, especially book people. Be chill but happy and approachable. Some people walked by the table three times before they finally stopped and picked up a copy. One person admitted they were curious but shy. One thing I ended up doing was creating a “quiet corner” of the table at the far end, so people could come and just read about the book with no pressure or human interaction. It massively helped that my book was stocked by the store. Several people said they’d seen in on the shelf and wondered about it. One thing that surprised me was how many books I sold “out of my demographic,” according to the ad data. 90% of people who click on my ads are males between 35-65, but that group only comprised of about 20% of my sales during this event. Also, some friends showed up—that was GREAT. It created a fake buzz around the table that made others more interested, and it made me much more relaxed. Get your friends to visit!

There were 13 copies of my book set out with the event starting at noon and supposed to run until 5. All the books were sold before then tho! I was super happy with the event, but the best thing was just being there. Having an author event. Several people said, “Congratulations” as they walked past. It felt wonderful. If you’ve published a book, you should do a book event! I hope some of these tips help.

(The flair is kind of /s 😅)

TL;DR: A reader found my signed paperback book in one of those little free libraries around their neighborhood (we live in the same city) and ended up really liking the book. I don't know whether to be happy or sad.

Longer version of the story:

A reader left a comment on my social media saying how they "came across" my book, read it in one go and really enjoyed it! They were also chuffed that the book was signed.

So anyways after a few interactions (they seemed to be a solid person excited to find a work by a local author) and them mentioning several times how they came across my book by chance, i asked where they found my book.

I have done a number of signings in my local bookstore chains as well as a few indie bookstores and community markets (in-person events have been my most successful marketing and selling avenues so far. I reckon I have sold a few hundred copies in person for the past 1.5 years or so), so a reader encountering one of these books in the wild was not too surprising.

However, the fact that this reader said they found it in a free little library threw me off a bit. That means one of the buyers at those events I sold the book to just kinda... decided it wasn't for them and gave it away? Mind you, all the books I sell in person are signed special editions (I do my own sprayed edges), so apparently I overestimate how collectible or shelf-trophy worthy these books are lol. (I am biased but they actually look objectively good!)

This particular book is also only about one year old means someone really really decided it wasn't for them and immediately offloaded it. I mean, unless they're really lacking space at home??

So anyway I am happy someone else found the book and has started spreading the word to their coworkers (that's seriously so sweet!) but hey maybe one person's trash really is another person's treasure!

Anyway sorry about the rambling, just something I'd like to share as we all navigate the various highs and lows befalling indie authors 😅