In the spirit of Annie B's post showing us the tale of two approaches to writing, I thought I'd share my story. I will likely pass the $500,000.00 in career income next month, unless Amazon implodes or an asteroid strikes.
(And I'm not really a big seller or big name author in my genre)
Here's my chart, chronicling my income from the start of my self publishing career in June 2012 (data for 2012 and 2013 are combined in the first row, with December 2013 average for comparison, because I didn't start keeping monthly income records until 2014):
How I did it:
1. I started planning in April 2012, when I read JA Konrath's blog and decided to quit submitting to agents because no one wanted to represent me with my vampire romance novels. So, I read several books and blogs on self-publishing and researched book blogs that reviewed and promoted paranormal romance novels.
2. I started working on my social media platform, creating a Twitter and Facebook account under my future pen name. I cultivated readers and authors who were in my genre, and spent most of my time talking about television shows and movies. At the time, I was polishing my first novel and finishing my second.
3. I hired a cover designer and got two covers for $99 each, plus two $5 stock photos, so $104 each.
4. I had someone edit my books for typos and obvious grammatical mistakes. I didn't pay my editor until I made serious money and then I went back and paid her for her earlier work. I have paid her for each book since, costing between $600 - $1000 per book depending on length.
5. In June 2013, I published the first book on Amazon, listing it for sale for $4.99 and signed up for KDPS.
6. I submitted my book to several book review blogs and lucked out, getting a couple who gave my book decent reviews.
7. I announced that I had released my first book to my several hundred Twitter and Facebook followers and friends and had 6 sales in June and then 26 sales in July.
8. I ran some free days in KDPS and gave away several hundred copies of book 1. I listed my books at Goodreads and created a blog and profile.
9. I released my second book in July, listing it for $4.99 and had 59 sales.
10. I released book 3 in the series in December, listing it for $4.99 and had sales of 2800 books in total for the year and made $9,750.00
11. In 2013, I released 2 more novels in a new contemporary erotic romance series. All were in KDPS.
12. I released the first novel in my contemporary romance series in April 2013, deciding to try my hand at another romance category since my paranormal romance series was selling fairly slowly, at least in my opinion. I had my first 5-figure month that release, earning $17,642. The previous month I had earned under $1,000.
13. I released the second book in the contemporary romance series in September, and had another solid month in sales, selling 12,000+ books.
I FORGOT TO ADD THAT I QUIT MY DAY JOB IN NOVEMBER 2013!!!
14. I had my first 99c Bookbub in November 2013 and broke $20K for the first time. My book hit #5 in the Kindle store and was #2 in Romance. An agent wrote me and offered representation.
15. I wrote book 3 in the contemporary romance series in January 2014, then released the boxed set two months later.
15.5 I went into a 99c boxed set with several other romance authors and hit the USA Today list. My book was the headliner. I was in three other 99c boxed sets in 2014 /2015. This required that I pull out of KDPS with that book and over the summer, I pulled the other books as well and went into wide distribution.
16. I had my second Bookbub for book 2 in the contemporary romance series in February 2014. I hit #12 in the Kindle store and #8 in romance. I ran two more 99c Bookbub promos in 2014 and released a novella and a short story as well as Book 4 in the paranormal romance series.
17. You can check on the graph what happened after Kindle Unlimited 1.0 struck in July 2014. My income dropped considerably and consistently due to loss of visibility. I put my books into KU in response and saw no benefit. In fact, my income kept falling relative to my average monthly income.
18. I pulled out of KU 1.0 at the end of February, went permafree with the first books in my series, and went into wide distribution.
20. I released several books this year and have had 3 Bookbubs so far. I will have 12 full length novels, 3 boxed sets, and 2 novellas and a short story self published in total since I started by the end of the year.
21. I started to advertise on Facebook in April and Apple promoted me in March and again this month.
You can see my income has increased considerably over what it was while I was in KU 1.0.
I made $107,286 in 2012 and 2013 combined. I made $154K in 2014. So far in 2015, I have made $212.406 and am on track for $300,000 for the year.
Glad I found Joe Konrath's blog in April 2012 and followed his advice.
