Eleven Years as a Publisher

 

It was a good year, my best year for sales, with total sales with 24,774 books sold, handily beating 2022-2023's 19,524 books sold. Revenue came in at $221.75, down from $379.21 for my 10th year in publishing. Heads will roll at Celanda Publishing for that result! Still, I have nothing to complain about.

It hasn't gotten any easier over the years to sell books, even free books. In fact, it's a lot harder in 2026 than it was in 2015. If I was only selling my books in the stores I was in 2015, when I launched my publishing business, i.e. Amazon and the stores Smashwords distributed to, and only selling ebooks, my sales-per-title-per-year would be down 93%. Though to be fair, Amazon listed my books for free until a couple of years ago, which explains perhaps half of that drop. Luckily I added Google in 2018, and then auto-narrated audiobooks from Google in 2021, so my sales-per-title-per-year is now down only 50% from 2015. Because I am now offering seven times as many titles as I did in 2015,  I can ignore that sad statistic and just gaze with great satisfaction at the total sales numbers per year.

Sales by book for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year

Book Title/ Release Date	Year 2025-2026 Sales #11	Total Sales to Date
SALES PERIOD May 2025 – April 2026	Ebooks, Audiobooks & Paperback combined	Ebooks, Audiobooks & Paperback combined
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015	961	11,990
Some Day Days 9 July 2015	801	8,068
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015	1,971	22,063
Castaways of the Lost Star (initial Release – withdrawn) 4 Aug 2016	0	2,176
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017	1,247	12,898
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018	1,006	7,145
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019	1,110	9,934
The Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020	956	5,392
Lines in the Lawn (Short story) 8 June 2020 (withdrawn)	0	174
Keiree 18 Sept 2020	888	4,920
The Secret of the Tzarista Moon 11 Nov 2020	1,162	6,681
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021	1,054	5,677
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom 15 July 2021	1,650	7,487
A Night on Isvalar 11 Aug 2021	929	1,846
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince 29 Sept 2022	1,114	4,132
The Girl on the Kerb 6 April 2023	1,618	8,618
Passage to Jarpara 6 March 2024	1,032	2,004
Chateau Clare 17 Oct 2024	1,030	2,287
Glencrow Summer 21 Feb 2025	1,987	2,691
Lost Star 6-book series Aug- Sept 2024	73	222
Omnibus Editions (Withdrawn)	0	30
The Darval-Mers Dossier 6 June 2025	1,811	1,811
The Founders’ Tribunal Oct 2025	1,087	1,087
The Isle House Ghost 5 Feb 2026	925	925
The Red Wine Dossiers (paper back only) May 2026
The Poison-Pill Will June 2026
Total Sales Year 11 (According to retailer figures*)	24,774	128,490
Revenue  $221.75

*I'm using sales figures from the retailers. I've not bothered adding up all the books from my individual sales figures taken from my monthly sales records. I would only end up pulling out whatever hair I have. So, they may add up slightly differently. I'm too careless to be an accountant.

Sales by Store ( ebook/audiobook, store sales, and store % of total sales)

Draft2Digital*   2,475 ebooks   1,091 Audio books (11.7%)   3,566 Total    14.4%

Kobo                    229 ebooks              n/a                              229 Total    .9%  

Amazon               550 ebooks   0 Audiobooks (0%)   7 Paper     557 Total     2.3%

Google           12,203 ebooks   8,226 Audiobooks (88.3%)   20,429 Total     82.4%

Ebooks 62.4%  Audiobooks 37.6% of total sales

* D2D includes sales via Smashwords, B & N, Apple, & a few European stores. Audiobook sales from Apple.

A Table of Yearly Sales Results

6,537 Year One, 2015/16 (3 novels released)

6,137 Year Two, 2016/17 (1 novel released)

6,385 Year Three, 2017/18 (1 novel released)

8,225* Year Four, 2018/19: (2 novels released) * includes a strange 1950 books sold in one day on Amazon that they say is correct. It would be 6,275 without that strange day's sales.

8,530 Year Five, 2019/20 (1 novel released)

7,484 Year Six, 2020/21 (2 novels released, 1 novella, 1 children's short story)

8,853 Year Seven 2021/22 (1 novel, 1 novella)

19,524 Year Eight 2022/23 (1 short novel, 1 novel  Audiobooks)

14,468 Year Nine 2023/24 (1 sequel novel, 1 novella release wide in late April)

16,950 Year Ten 2024/2025 (2 novels)

24,774 Year Eleven 2025/2026 (2 novels, 2 Novellas)

The Complete Yearly Reports on this Blog

Year 1: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-window-to-self-publishing.html

Year 2: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2017/05/two-years-of-free-books.html

Year 3: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2018/05/3-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year 4: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2019/05/four-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year 5: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2020/05/five-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year 6:https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2021/05/six-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year 7: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2022/05/7-years-in-self-publishing-report.html

Year 8: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2023/05/eight-years-as-authorpublisher-report.html

Year 9: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2024/05/nine-years-as-authorpublisher-part-2.html

Year 10 https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2025/05/my-tenth-year-in-publishing-numbers.html

The Takeaway

First, offering 20 titles in three formats makes a vast difference. Especially since sales for even for my early releases continue to hold up. All titles come in at an average of 1000 books sold per year.

Next: new releases drive sales of both new releases and my back catalog, and with four releases in this fiscal year, they drove sales to new heights. The fact that two of the releases were just novellas, and one of the novels, was a short novel by my standard, did not seem to matter. Novellas take less time to write, and so can written and released more often while delivering the same boost to sales that a new novel brings. That said, I wasn't writing novellas to goose sales. I write the story as long as it needs to be, well, usually longer.. and I just had little stories to tell.

Otherwise, the numbers above speak for themselves. My books, both ebooks and audiobooks, do extremely well on the Google Play store. I think this may be due to the fact that affordable everywhere and reaching the entire English reading world on a device that billions use everyday, the smart phone. Though my books are also free world wide on the iPhone, I think that's a more an upscale, US-centered platform where free has less appeal. Still, while my sales don't approach Google's, it's my second largest market. Selling books at any price other than free, as I do on Amazon, with out promoting them, simply doesn't work in 2026. Finally, audiobooks continue to do well, even if they are vanilla-plain auto-narrated audiobooks. They may not work for hard-core, deep pocket audiobook fans, but they offer the experience to readers who aren't that fussy or can't afford the fancy-pants audiobook experience.

And let us not forget, every book doesn't have to be a hit with every reader. When you have a back catalog of twenty-some books for readers to explore, if you can capture a reader, at even a 5% success rate, they may go on to read all your books - you've sold 19 more books. Scale counts. As does genre, as you can see above with my space opera The Bright Black Sea. It has always been my best seller. It sequel sells less, though these days not 50% less, as it would appear by total sales column. But then, it's not a space opera, despite having the same characters. It's a planetary romance. You just never know. Take, Shadows of an Iron Kingdom. It out sells all the other books in that series, even though it's the third book in the series. What gives? It probably isn't its cover. And why is Glencrow Summer outselling Chateau Clare these days? I have no idea.

Looking Ahead

I just released. on 4 May 2026,  The Red Wine Dossier as a paperback omnibus that includes all the Red Hu/Red Wine novellas and short stories. I create paper books for my shelves and for those of my beta readers who want a paper copy. I sell one or two every-so-often, as you can see from the table above.

More significantly, I'm planning to release one more novella-and-short story ebook/audiobook in the Red Wine prequel series. The Poison-Pill Will & The Pawns' Game in the June. It's completed, cover and all and ready to go.  I'll upload it to Amazon for pre-sale shortly.

Looking further ahead, I'm hoping to complete and release a full novel this fiscal year, likely in the Feb-March time frame. I have one "on the stocks", as it were, that, if it is ever completed, will be my most boring story yet. But then again, it's been in the works for more than a year already, and I'm maybe half way done with it, but the going is slow, so don't hold your breath. Instead, I'm hoping to dream up and start on a new novel this fall, possibly writing it alongside the boring story. But again, that's just a bird in the bush, which could fly away at any moment. 

With new releases driving sales, and only two releases likely, at best, I don't expect year 12 to match or exceed year 11 sales. But anything is possible. 

And once again, I'd like to thank all of you, dear readers, who make not only these numbers possible, but make me happy and content. And motivated to write another story or two.

The Saturday Moring Post ( No. 183)

 

Back to historical mysteries again this week.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Death in Delft by Graham Brack  B

I'm going to address the elephant in the room right from the get-go. The cover of this book will likely trigger a feeling of Deja vu in regular readers of this series of book reviews. This would be due to the fact that in my Saturday Morning Post No. 176  I reviewed another historical mystery book, Men of Bone by David Penny, who's book cover bears a striking resemblance to this cover, at least in design and colors. So you're no doubt wondering, as I did, what book copied the other? Well, rest easy, I've done the research for you. I can state that this book was copyrighted in 2020, while Men of Bone was copyrighted in 2021. This book cover is the OG.  Q.E.D.

With that burning question out of the way, let's get down to the review. As keen observers will note, we have, this week, a book that is solidly above average, with a grade of "B". Thank goodness. As one might deduce from the cover, this is a historical mystery set in the city of Delft in Holland during the year of 1671. The narrator, the 33 year old Master Mercurius, is a scholar at the University of Leiden. He is an ordained Protestant cleric and secretly, an ordained Catholic priest as well. The Reformation had made being a Catholic rather iffy in Holland, plus he could not be a scholar as a Catholic, so, with permission from his bishop, he takes orders as a Protestant minister as well, while keeping his ordination as a Catholic priest a secret. 

In this story, he is given the task of assisting the Mayor and officials of the city of Delft in solving a mystery involving three young girls who have gone missing, one of whom has been found dead already. In Delft he meets two of the most famous residents of that city, the painter Vermeer, and the scientist Von Leeuwenhoek, who help him solve the mystery. There's plenty of history and period atmosphere in the telling of the story, though the telling of it, especially since it's a first person narrative, "feels" a little modern, but not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the story.

I will say this, I would've given my kingdom for a period map of Delft, as there is a lot of going here and going there, walking along this canal and that canal. It really would've been nice to have some sort of sketch map of the city in order to follow what was going on. As to the mystery itself, I don't want to say too much. Suffice to say I found it interesting, more from the setting and characters than the mystery itself. This is not really a who-done-it with a selection of suspects to choose from. You're along for the ride as Master Mercurius slowly unravels the threads that tie the missing girls together.

I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the character, and the setting, enough to have downloaded the second book in this series, of which I think there are nine books to date. I still have a couple of weeks of KU, so hopefully I will be able to get to it.

The Herds of Readers

There are tens of millions of readers of literature in the English language, even if, as an author, you would be forgiven for being completely unaware of this fact when looking at your sales. The reason, well, one of the reasons, why you can be forgiven for being unaware of just how many potential readers there are out there, is because readers are divided into, markets. Or as I prefer to view them; into herds. Herds that roam their own regions of the sprawling book savanna, consuming only the books whose flavor pleases them, leaving those other, the unpleasant tasting books, the "weeds", untouched.

Here, I'm going to talk about the herds of readers of fiction, ignoring all the varieties of non-fiction, from histories to self-help to plumbing and beyond.

Fiction readers can be first divided into two large herds; readers of traditionally published books, and readers of indie published ebooks. This is a very important, and I believe, often overlooked, distinction, for while there is some overlapping of herds and the books they consume, the two herds are significantly different.

The herd of traditionally published readers are mostly composed of what I like to think of as "book people", which is to say, people who appreciate both the story and the paper machine that delivers that story: books. Book people like books, as books, perhaps as much as the story the books deliver. In some cases, it seems more so, given how popular very expensive special edition books are these days, and how many different editions of a single story some people own. There are even people who collect books! This herd likes to talk about books on social media, write long reviews of books on Goodreads, attend conferences, book signings, and even shop in actual bookstores. Some have their own YouTube channels devoted to books for people like them.

The other large herd are "the readers". These readers don't give a hoot about books as books. They want the stories that books deliver. They borrow books from the library in paper and ebooks. Sometimes they buy cheap, second hand books, if necessary. They buy, though more often borrow stories in intangible electronic files from on-line retailers to just read stories. And they usually read a lot of stories. Most commonly romances, along with thrillers, fantasy, SF, litRPG, and erotica. To them, books are just the medium, the story is what they want. They are the 21st century readers of pulp fiction. In general, they are less likely to write reviews, watch YouTube videos on books, but they may be as active in social media as book people.

There is also a growing herd of people who dispense with both paper, and the written word. They want to be simply told stories. Audiobook readers is the fastest growing herd on the vast savanna of books. Like the ebook readers, they don't need physical medium, and then go one step further; they don't need written words either, just someone reading the words to them.

These large herds are further divided by the types of books they read. Very often what they read is rather limited. Like fussy eaters, they read only a narrow range of books, one or two genre, or subdivisions within a single genre. This is especially the case with the ebook herd. While they are often avid readers, they're diet of books is often limited to what they know and like. Both herds travel as herds with a similar taste in stories. Book people can be, though not always, more omnivores when it comes to stories, so there are more smaller herds, stragglers, on their range of the savanna. 

While all this seems pretty basic, authors who aspire to sell books in any numbers above two digits, need to understand that they are going to have to create books for a specific herd. Usually, a very specific herd, by knowing its very specific literary diet. And realize that the large herds have more than enough to eat, while smaller, but hungry herds may be (relatively) starved for books. There are even, a few free roaming readers that will consume anything, and often look for something different, but these readers are mostly found on the range of the savanna roamed by the traditional published book herds. To write books that have the potential to sell, a writer has to write a book that meets the specific dietary requirements of their target herd, be it the slush-pile readers of agents and editors, or the avid readers of reverse harem stories. 

Still, you can, of course, write the stories you want and tell them in your way. Which is what I do. But you shouldn't expect to sell more than a few dozen copies, unless you're very lucky because the stories you want to write happen to match the reading diet of one of the large herds. Or, as in my case, blindly stumble into a herd that you hadn't really known existed. 

In my case, my herd is the readers of free books. Obviously not as lucrative herd, nor is it the largest. Still, it has proven to be a herd large and broad enough to allow me to write a variety of stories in the style I want and without having to tailor the stories to fit one of the more specific herds. Plus, it is one of the more "starved" herds grazing on a much smaller range, and with less books to choose from my books stand out more, and they are more willing to give them a try, as they are also voracious readers.

I firmly believe that if, eleven years ago, I had not stumbled into this herd I would have sold over the last eleven years, maybe a couple of hundred books and probably less, as I don't think, and didn't think then, my books would be eager fare for the large science fiction consuming herd. Discouragement would've taken its toll, and I would've never written twenty some books. 

You need to find your herd, and then they need to find you to sell more than a few dozen books. That last part is the hardest part. Luckily for me, the free books are not too numerous and the herd is composed of avid readers, so that I've been able to rely on them finding my books, instead of me searching for them.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 182)

 

Another KU pick this week. This time a Regency romance from a contemporary self-published author.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

Guinea-Gold Hair by Florrie Boleyn (Jane Page Walton)  C+

This was a nice, pleasant book. All the characters were nice and pleasant. The story was nice and pleasant, not challenging at all. It moved along at a pleasant pace. I had no issues with the quality of writing. It was hardly spicy at all. And I dare say that if I was in the target audience, I would've likely rated it higher.

The story concerns Jenny, the seventeen daughter of a miller whose financial position is perilous due to the economic conditions of the time. Jenny is offered a chance to work in the big house of a local gentry as a nursery maid by the steward at that house who is her late mother's brother. She takes it. Jenny is a hard worker, whose job includes not only looking after the children, but washing the dirty cloths of the baby of the family. When she gets a chance to do up the hair of the bright sixteen year old young lady of the family, Marianne, hey become friends, despite their different statuses in life.  Then, for various reasons, Jenny becomes her maid when the family goes up to London for the season, where Marianne is expected to land a suitable husband. The bulk of the story takes place in London as Jenny gets involved in Marianne's prospects for marriage.

Boleyn has written four books in this series, and clearly has done her research, though the story presents the life and times of the period at a pretty basic level, so says I, an old hand at reading the Regency romances of the writer who is considered the originator of the genre, Georgette Heyer. The difference in the details of the period and the characters and their depths is quite noticeable. I don't know if this reflects the extent of the author's research, or if it represents  the level of accessibility to the intricacies of the period that she expects her readers desire. I have to wonder if she has ever read a Heyer Regency romance.

For me, it read to read like a middle grade book version of a Heyer Regency romance. It lacks the fine details of that time and social order, the language of the time, the depth of characters, as well as the clever and witty writing of Heyer, which are all the things that I read Heyer for, rather than the romance, which is the focus of this story. But, as I said, this may be a feature rather that a flaw, since I am not familiar with the expectations of contemporary Regency romance readers, and thus, this is not a criticism of the book, simply an observation.

As I implied at the start, this is a nice, harmless story where even the villains have a heart of gold. I like pleasant stories, I like peasant characters, I liked this book. But is is not quite my cup of tea. I am not its target audience, and that is reflected in my slightly above average grade. If it sounds like your cup of tea, you will probably grade it higher.

The author has written three other books in this Walcott Manor series, and a series of Victorian mysteries as well.

Two New Covers

The Poison-Pill Will and The Pawns' Game are currently out to my beta readers, so I thought I better get on the stick and create a cover for the stories. Since my simple black & white cover didn't seem to hinder the sales of The Isle House Ghost, I decided to go with that style for this one as well, plus convert The Founders' Tribunal cover to the same style, once this story is released. That, however will not be until some time in June or early July. These two stories however will be available in paperback form sometime in May, when I release an anthology of all the Red Hu/Wine novellas and short stories under the title of The Red Wine Dossiers. I still have to paint that cover, though right now, I am planning on using a version of this scene done in paint using colors that will match The Darval-Mers Dossier cover so the two books will share a common look.

I like the way this cover turned out. I could've placed the figures lower so that the title box would not cover up part of the umbrella, or just made the figures a little smaller, but I actually like it better this way. It ties everything together. And I could've moved the image over to the right just slightly so both umbrella tips were equally away from the bordered. But I didn't. Blame that on laziness. And well, who wants perfect symmetry, anyway? 

Below will probably be the new Founders' Tribunal cover. It's rather stiff, but figure drawing, and dog drawing, are another one of those many things that ain't in my wheelhouse. I should've pulled out my How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way book, but once again, I was too lazy. I don't think my readers are all that concerned about covers. 

Below is the complete set of novellas. I don't think I'm going to change the ebook cover of The Darval-Mers Dossier to this style, as not only is it novel, but it has a print edition as well.

Next on my agenda is painting that cover for the paperback version. Stay tuned for that in the coming weeks.