Thank you !! First of all, you have a voice that is easy to follow, you are articulate. Second, I am one of millions who was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia and everything you shared about your self publishing experience made so much sense to me…in other words I didn’t need a pilot’s license !! Thank you so much 😊
Thanks for making this! I really appreciate learning about this as someone who is considering becoming an indie author. Knowing that you were posting a LOT of tiktoks a day was helpful. This feels like a "doable" goal. I also appreciate your enthusiasm for those numbers. I think sometimes people dream of much higher numbers. But to see your joy and gratitude is really nice and a good perspective. :) I'll add some page-reads and check out your books!
This is fantastic. Congrats to you. Obviously, the more books you have, the more you will sell and more page views read too. You are building momentum. Thanks for sharing full year data.
Published my first book in 2022 and the income has definitely been more of a slow trickle than a rushing river like I expected. I feel like the reality of book writing is that very few have one book go viral. It takes writing a series and publishing over and over to make substantial money. At least that’s what it seems like. But thanks for sharing your numbers!!
love these vidoes thank you!! yes talking about money is so weird in society!! I hate it. And what I hate even more are those clickbait scam like "easy side hustle, sell books on amazon" videos on yt
It's so crazy to me because we all need money! Yesss, the "easy" ones are the worst. And the fact that a lot of people don't differentiate between revenue and profit. Like, maybe you made $5,000 in a month with your "medium content journal" but probably spent $4,500 in ads to get that much traffic. $500 in a month would still be good, but it's that pushing of the "easy" narrative that grinds my gears 😂
Thank you for being so transparent. There is a lot of potential in self-publishing but it is hard to find honest numbers and info about the hard work that goes into it well after you've written the book.
That's great! Very awesome for first full year. As an independent author i think sharing your income on book sales is a wonderful idea, and it shows others what is realistic and achievable. I've only published mainly short stories and one novel so far, started in 2020 and... i don't think i've pulled in 1000 in one year yet. I also haven't really published anything in a while due to family and health reasons. BUT now i'm moving from crime to my original dream, which is high fantasy. So... we'll see where to future takes me.
Have been watching your channel for a while and wanted to drop in and actually say thank you for the transparency (and the books😊). Really enjoy your videos (and books) and find them extremely helpful as a beginner writer. THANK YOU!
Thanks for sharing. Don’t know if you’d be comfortable answering this, but if you are: What’s your realistic evaluation of your book’s quality? The writing, the story, the world building? How do they stack up vs. other writers in your genre? And another ‘if you’re comfortable answering’ question, how many hours did you spend writing these books?
The easier part of the question might be the time spent. I honestly have no idea how many hours, but the first book took me about 8 months from concept to publishing (including rewrites for the second edition). Book 2 was similar, book 3 has taken almost 2 years, but I was writing all 3 congruently for a little while. I think it's important for us to be able to look at our work with a critical lens, but then it's also art, so it's a bit subjective by nature. I've had some really great reviews and messages comparing my writing style/ storytelling/ worldbuilding to other popular traditionally published authors in the genre, which I would like to agree with (earlier reviews on the first edition of book 1 were kind of rough and it was the first book I'd written in years, so I ended up taking a step back and figured out how I could make the story better before really moving onto the other books in the series). With worldbuilding, sometimes it's a question of how much is there vs. how much shows up. I do have about 1,000 years worth of this world's history documented but it's woven into the main story very organically, sometimes in pieces that may not make sense until something else is revealed. I do put a lot of time and care into how things are worded and show up on-page, so I would hope that comes through in the quality of the story. Haha this answer could've been a video itself, hopefully I answered your questions well enough!
@@itslindseeey thanks for sharing all that. I think it would make a great episode. I haven’t watched enough of your videos to know if you’ve already done this, but a world building video would be interesting, it’s an area that I’m always fascinated with at least. 8 months is really fast, good job! I don’t know many writers who finished their first book in less than a year, and most take 2-3 years. I average about a year per book…slower now that I’m on RU-vid as well. Still trying to find the right balance between writing and video production.
Of all the books I've sold on Amazon. They take their cut first was it different for you. Paperback $15 Amazon 60% $ 9 Print Cost $ 4.50 (approx, as it varies). You get what's left.
Glad it was helpful! If you're talking career-wise, I initially self published when I was in high school and unpublished those books when I went to college. If you're talking individual book-wise, the first book in the series took about 8 months from first draft to publication. The third book in the series has taken a bit longer lol
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Recalling some of your earlier videos, am I correct that you are relying only on your TikTok videos to advertise your books? My first book was only released on Sept. 7, 2024, so I realize it's early in the game, but I've pretty much exhausted the family and friends sales. Now I need to figure out how to sell to the general romance genre book buyers. It seems daunting.
Yes, as far as marketing, I mostly do TikTok and Instagram Reels videos. Congrats on your debut! It can be a little daunting for sure. I do have a video out about my marketing tactics, but I also do plan to put out another one for people who don't want to dive into the short form video platforms.
I love supporting smaller authors, self-publishers, generally people who are just starting out and are not so known yet. Buying their books, making free fanarts to promote, supporting on social media. They worked so hard to write that book and I know it means a lot when people appreciate you. However I have one rule in that. No Ai. If I see that you are fine with your book covers being ai generated, for me it's a sign that probably your books were made using chat GPT, that they were not fully written by you. No support for Ai from me. And I can already tell you that no matter how good your book is, there is a huuge group of readers who won't read it simply because of the cover. Choosing to go cheap in one aspect, costs you so much more in lost profit. And it's not even that hard to find an artist who would do a cover for you for a resonable price. Just a thought for the future.
I somehow left this comment in the wrong place initially… 😂 Super interesting! As someone who isn’t at all enthused about advertising via TikTok (mayyybe on YT but realistically it wouldn’t pop off there, I’m pretty sure), do you think there’s much hope for someone who isn’t advertising and posting on those social media to drum up interest? You said you were doing up to three TikTok videos in a single day so it sounds like you REALLY leaned into that avenue. Also thanks for outlining the 70% and how that’s off of the book after printing costs. I had no idea it was that high of a royalty! Can you outline how the page reads count affects the price you’re paid again? I always wonder what’s happening when I’m flipping through pages looking for the spot I left off when my devices don’t sync. Is the author making some money off all those page turns? Or only if I spend a particular amount of time on each page, in order? Would love to know! Thank you for your transparency! 😊
Haha! I also do plan to put out another one for people who don't want to dive into the short form video platforms, and I do think there's hope; there are tons of different avenues for marketing! The actually royalties per page read is a fraction of a penny, but somehow KU is usually my main source of income. From my understanding, the page reads are based on how much time is spent on the page, so just quickly flipping through it wouldn't add to the overall total. According to their terms, "Authors are able to earn a maximum of 3,000 Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) Read per title per customer. This means that each time your Kindle eBook is borrowed and read, you can receive credit for up to 3,000 pages." So my books are about 500 KENP, so I would get paid even if the same person read my book 6 times all the way through.
I also do plan to put out another one for people who don't want to dive into the short form video platforms, and I do think there's hope; there are tons of different avenues for marketing!
Amazon can't make a proper hardback, so, did you publish that format on another platform and then just make it available via Amazon? Anyway, great video.
Thanks! Amazon does a hardcover case laminate without the dust jacket, so I use that. I've also been toying with the idea of using Ingram Spark to get a dust jacketed hardcover version and the listing would migrate over to Amazon.
