I have developed a tendency to do year-end wrap-up posts in mid-December. I am not good with delayed gratification.
2024 wrap-up | 2023 wrap-up | 2022 wrap-up | 2021 wrap-up | 2020 wrap-up | Before then, I accidentally erased this whole site, but that’s plenty of comparisons.
In a first for me, I’m going to follow the format I used last year before going freestyle on the commentary.
Context:
- Still what I consider a small-time indie author (and I don’t even like using that word!). I have a modest backlog now across two and a half series, and average about a sale a day outside of group promotions (more on that in a bit).
- I have been self-publishing for 11 years as of this past October.
Releases:
- Herbs and Harmonies: How I Became a Therapist in Another World Omnibus 2, March (compilation of 3 novellas released in 2023-24)
- “The Shopkeeper Who Captured a Swordmaster,” short story, July (newsletter exclusive)
- The Strangers’ Sanctuary, September
- 12 newsletter issues, including a redesign in July, and a couple of extra announcements
Other Milestones:
- Went wide (released outside Amazon) with all books up to that point, except for the individual novellas. This includes distribution through Draft2Digital to stores like Kobo, as well as, eventually, sales through itch.io and Ko-fi.
- Experimented with some editing/rewriting techniques that are working well for me. (Not that unique, just reverse outlining plus a lot of rereading.)
- First time trying a preorder, with Strangers.
- Wrote drafts of Therapist novellas 9 and 10 (Evil Overlord for Hire [Authenticity Not Guaranteed] and On the Care and Feeding of an Evil Army)
- Tried out an in-person social/accountability writing group.
Sales and Bundles:
- Spring Resilience Bundle (May, itch, Healers’ Road and Therapist Omnibus 1)
- Mental Health Month Bundle (Fantasy, Non-Spicy) (May, itch, Therapist Omnibus 1)
- Cozy the Day Away (May, all stores, Therapist Omnibus 1)
- Pride Book Fair (June, itch, Therapist Omnibus 1)
- Cozy Up with Fantasy (July, all stores, Therapist Omnibus 1)
- Narratess Indie Book Sale (August, all stores, Therapist Omnibus 1)
- Cozy the Day Away (October, all stores, Therapist Omnibus 1 and all 3 Healers books)
- Trans People Take On the World (November, itch, Strangers’ Sanctuary)
- Cozy Up with Fantasy (December, all stores, Therapist Omnibus 1)
This was a sharp increase from last year, when I only took part in Cozy the Day Away (which was, in turn, the first time I’d participated in a group sale at all). Honestly, I think I threw a bit too much energy into them — I worried too much about where to apply, whether I was trying hard enough to promote, and whether my book was underperforming compared to the other books in the sale.
I do find group sales to be very useful, much more effective for me than paid promotion, but I want to spread them out more next year.
Sales (and a prologue about KU)
This time last year, I said I was staying put in KU. By March this year, I was out. What happened?
Look. Every author’s situation is different. This does not reflect upon anyone but myself. But in short, I did not agree with Amazon’s management’s political affiliations, and I decided I’d rather get out now than feel gross about hitching my hopes and dreams solely to their platform. Since all of my books were due to expire or renew with KU in February and March, I planned my exit strategy, pulled them as they expired, and put them up for sale at other stores.
This was risky, and I understand entirely why a lot of authors don’t do it. This was a personal decision based on my own views, and, more to the point, based on my ability to leave money on the table. I have a day job that pays my living expenses. If leaving KU had collapsed my sales, as it seems to do for some books, then I wouldn’t starve. This is a freedom that not everyone has, and I don’t take it for granted.
That said? Leaving KU did not collapse my sales. It’s about even with last year, all things considered.
** Draft2Digital is rather slow to report sales totals — as in, right now I only have complete numbers up to the end of October, not including the sale that just concluded — so this is not final.
Store by store, based on royalties:
- Amazon: 63%
- Itch.io: 18%
- Kobo: 7%
- Ko-fi: 5%
- All Others: 7%
[I’ll note that Ko-fi is not a good platform for everyone: it disallows any hint of NSFW content, for one thing. Again, everyone’s situation is different.]
To break out that “All Others” section a bit, I had sales/borrows via, from most to least: D2D Print (i.e. IngramSpark, i.e. print copies), Smashwords, Apple Books, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Libby/OverDrive, and Libri/Tolino.
Overall, it’s interesting to me that after ~9 months of selling wide, ~40% of my sales are coming from outside Amazon. That’s hard to compare apples-to-apples with other books and authors, but it does help me feel more secure in my decision to move out of KU. Especially since the overall totals have held steady from last year.
Book by book:
| Title | Copies | Royalties |
|---|---|---|
| The Healers’ Road | 196 | $435.54 |
| The Healers’ Home | 60 | $116.20 |
| The Healers’ Purpose | 66 | $124.41 |
| Therapist Novella 1 * | 18 | $19.01 |
| Therapist Novella 2 | 6 | $5.59 |
| Therapist Novella 3 | 4 | $3.45 |
| Therapist Novella 4 | 4 | $3.68 |
| Therapist Novella 5 (Herald) | 6 | $4.92 |
| Therapist Novella 6 (Level) | 5 | $4.20 |
| Therapist Novella 7 (Salty) | 15 | $11.46 |
| Therapist Novella 8 (Bardbarian) | 5 | $5.65 |
| Therapist Omnibus 1 | 340 | $392.80 |
| Therapist Omnibus 2 (Herbs) | 33 | $96.96 |
| Strangers’ Sanctuary | 70 | $225.32 |
| Mixed/Early Bundles** | n/a | $47.67 |
| Totals | 828 | $1,496.86 |
* The novellas are only available individually through Amazon. This is because it’s annoying to have to maintain/update that many listings, and because I plan to stop offering individual novellas after Bardbarian.
** Itch.io bundles are tricky to calculate: the payout is based on a split between all authors (usually; authors can waive their share) and the books may or may not be downloaded by those buying the bundle. For the last bundle, which I had The Strangers’ Sanctuary in, I decided to chalk that up to that book specifically, basing the “sales” on download numbers. For the others before that, some of which I had multiple books in, I did not even try to parse it out. Most of that went to Omnibus 1, and I don’t know what the download numbers were.
Expenses
- $100 for website hosting
- $100 for a PO box
- $100 for StoryOrigin subscription (newsletter extras hosting and newsletter swaps)
- ~$35 for an ad on Fussy Librarian
- ~$300 for Omnibus 2’s cover
- $255 for Strangers’ cover
- ~$2200 for Strangers’ light developmental edit
- Not sure I’ll count this, but $65 for each novel-length book to file for copyright (finally, it was my mistake not to file sooner. However, I never heard back from the good ol’ US gov about that, so… that’s $390 flushed, I guess.)
Rough total: $3,090 not including the filings
Now, the Strangers edit will put me in the red for a very long time. I was aware of that from the beginning. But I’ve always been self-conscious / racked with overwhelming shame at the fact that I could not afford editing when I started self-publishing. The worst stereotype of self-publishers, etc., etc. As soon as I could afford an edit — thanks to a windfall unrelated to writing — I got one. Still, very much worth it.
Takeaways
Leaving KU did not destroy me. However, this is very dependent upon genre, audience, luck, etc. I consider myself lucky, although I would not have gone back even if my numbers had dropped. See my intro above: this was my own choice.
While I was in KU up to 2019 and in 2024, it made up about 40% of my overall royalties. Other stores have “made up for” that lost revenue in 2025, but I chalk this up to luck and to throwing my focus into other stores this year, especially itch.io early on. After going wide, I decided to stay on Amazon but to put my focus/energy into the other stores as much as possible. Amazon is still there, for those who want to use it. That’s fine. I want to make sure there are other options as well.
I’ve talked about this a lot on my newsletter, but as a reader, I stopped buying books from Amazon in March. For someone who once spent much of their disposable income there, this was an adjustment, but one I don’t regret. It’s playing into “consumerism as protest” here, I know, but I also get to decide where my spending goes and what I choose to support. I don’t buy Amazon-exclusive books. Those authors chose to be exclusive, and I will never hector them for that. I understand their decision. I just won’t buy their books while they’re exclusive. We all make choices.
(Where else do I buy books? My usual decision-making flow is: direct > itch.io > B&N for indies, or Bookshop.org for traditional publishing or paperbacks. I have also bought a bundle or two from Storybundle or Humble Bundle. I mostly read in ebook form, either on my phone [not good for my old eyes] or on a nondenominational ereader I bought in July, a Boox Go Color 7. I’m not much of a fan of color e-ink after all, but I get a lot of use out of regular black & white.)
Itch.io has gone through a roller coaster this year, from its adoption as a platform for fiction (especially in some genres/audiences) to its shadowbanning of NSFW content to its failure to pay some authors on time for mysterious reasons. I was enthusiastic about it at first – I like it as a reader, it has a lot of flexibility for creators, and it’s great for group sales/bundles. But the non-payment/shadow-banning fracas in July/August soured me on it somewhat. And to be honest, I never got a huge number of sales there, so it was easier to back off from it.
I still wish there were a solid indie alternative, and have since seen a new platform form for sapphic NSFW authors; I applaud their efforts. My work is still up on itch.io, and I still buy from it – it has advantages for a reader that I still enjoy. But it’s lost its shine as a one-stop-shop alternative.
This year was pretty good overall, “despite” pulling out of KU. Some guesses about why this is, besides luck:
- Even though the absolute number of sales on itch.io and the late arrival (for me) Ko-fi are small, they have better rates than any other platform, and so they pull more than their weight in terms of royalties.
- Compared to past years, I’ve entered many more group promotions and sales. I’ve tracked my books’ performance in those as a means of figuring out which choices work the best for me, hoping to iterate and refine year by year. Overall, they have been very helpful.
- Though I didn’t have a huge number of releases this year, I’m still slowly building up a catalog. Looking back on the years when I only had 1 or 2 books in the world, it makes a difference.
The launch of Strangers was disappointing in sales terms, but personally gratifying. Since Healers 3 had gotten a huge-for-me bump on release (still one of my best sales months of all time), I’d hoped the next release on that pen name would do well too. That was not the case. Maybe the world has moved on, or maybe being a spinoff rather than a direct sequel was a hindrance and not a help, as I’d hoped it might be. In any case, my concept of a new onramp to that world did not pan out.
All that said, though, I am proud of my work on that book, and it meant a lot to me to write and release it. I learned a lot in the editing process, I faced my fears and sought professional help with it, and I feel it’s the best story I’m capable of at this point in time. Whether or not it ever sells, I’m glad I wrote it. It was an opportunity for growth.
Pivots for the Future:
Of course, anything can continue to change, based on how these situations pan out.
- Moving to omnibus-only releases for Therapist. Pricing novellas is frustrating, and commissioning covers is fun (I do love throwing money at artists!) but it more than devours the proceeds of each individual book. As such, book 8 / The Ballad of the Bardbarian will be the last individual novella, at least at this stage. Omnibus 3 will include books 9 and 10 along with the previously released book 7, and we’ll continue in sets of 3-4 from there.
- Shelving Healers in my plans, if not in my heart. I want to write at least one follow-up to Strangers before I consider going back to my firstborn.
- I will continue to offer my books wide / on multiple platforms.
- Next year, I plan to release Therapist novella 1 (just the first individual story) as a free newsletter extra, as well as paid on Amazon. $1.99 or a signup, in other words. It’s been out for three years as of last month, which is old enough to drive/vote/drink in indie book terms. So while I don’t mean to undercut anyone who paid for it, I’m trying the “first one’s free” strategy to see how it goes.
Looking back at my recaps from the early years, it is pretty staggering to consider how my approach has evolved. I still struggle constantly with inferiority complexes, but I took a leap on a different direction and brought new energy and joy into my work. I have worked on some aspect of writing — drafting, editing, beta reading, journaling, or newsletter writing — every single day since Christmas Eve 2022. Sometimes I track word count, sometimes not, but I have not skipped a day yet.
I consider myself immensely lucky to be able to do this. I am not a grindset type at all, but if I can stay in touch with my work, it’s less likely that I’ll set it down and let it languish, waiting for some kind of unusual inspiration to strike. It’s watering the garden instead of waiting for rain.
I wish everyone a better 2026.