My Tenth Year in Publishing - The Numbers

 

The mission of Celanda House is to publish the fiction of C. Litka as widely as possible - without having to work at doing so. Celanda House has no mandate to make money - It just can't lose money. To accomplish its stated mission within the assigned parameters, Celanda House, whenever possible, prices ebooks and audiobooks at cost. In most instances this is free. 

After ten years in business, how successful has Celanda House been in its mission of getting the works of C. Litka into the hands of the eager reading public? Below are the numbers.

This year I have simplified the chart, combining all sales per book into one number. I have broken out the ebook to audiobook ratio per store.

Book Title/ Release Date	Year 10 Sales	Total to Date
SALES PERIOD May 2024 – April 2025	Ebooks, Audiobooks & Paperback combined	Ebooks, Audiobooks & Paperback combined
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015	926	11,029
Some Day Days 9 July 2015	692	7,267
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015	1,861	20,092
Castaways of the Lost Star (Initial Release -withdrawn) 4 Aug 2016		2,176(one year)
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017	1,009	11,651
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018	717	6,139
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019	838	5,824
Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020	701	4,436
Lines in the Lawn (short story) 8 June 2020 Widthdrawn		174
Keiree 18 Sept 2020	709	4,032
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon 11 Nov 2020	1.036	5,519
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021	984	4,623
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom 15 July 2021	1.502	5,837
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince 29 Sept 2022	950	3,018
The Girl on the Kerb 6 April 2023	1,296	7,000
A Night on Isvalar 15 July 2021	824	917
Passage to Jarpara 16 March 2024	795	972
Chateau Clare 17 Oct 2024	1,257	1,257
Glencrow Summer Feb 21 2025	704	704
The Lost Star six book Series Aug-Sep 2024	149	149
Omnibus Editions (withdrawn)		30
TOTALS THIS PERIOD	16,950  Year Ten	102,835 Grand Total

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

Draft2Digital*   2,257 ebooks   1,403 Audio books (38%)   3,660 Total   21.5%

Kobo                   82 ebooks              n/a                                82 Total       .5%

Amazon              780 ebooks   26 Audiobooks  (3%) 21 Paper   827 Total     5%

Google            5,393 ebooks     6,954 Audiobooks (56%)     12,347 Total   73%

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

(Note: the totals between the chart and these listings differ by 34, well within my margin of error.)

Revenue: $379.21  

Expenses: Books & Postage for Beta Readers $80 (est.)

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)

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

My Thoughts On the Data 

Surprisingly my tenth year proved to be my second best in sales. In last year's yearly report I said that I hoped this year would be like last year, and, as it turned out, my sales exceeded last year by almost 2,500 copies. Revenue up $200 as well. It was a very good year. There is likely no secret reason for this; new releases, like the tide, raise the sale of all books. So with two new novels released this year both of which sold well, likely explains the better than expected sales.

The most important reading of the data above is that across all of my books, my back catalog books continue to sell at roughly the same rate as my newest titles. This would seem to suggest that I am attracting new readers every year, who then go on to read the stories I published before they discovered my books. Also it is interesting how relatively close in numbers most books are, with my space opera continuing to be my best seller, followed by its direct sequel and the four adventure/mysteries set in that same locale. Why the third book in the series, Shadows of an Iron Kingdom outsells all the other titles in that series is a mystery. There is a role playing game by the name of Iron Kingdoms which might explain it. Or readers simply like Gothic themed stories.

As I said in an earlier post, I think these sales are earned by the number of words I've written and number of books I've published. As well as the frequency of releases. More books, more often, more sales. Econ. 101. 

Audiobooks accounted for 49.5% of my sales this year. I suspect that audio books account for close to half of my Apple sales as well, since that 38% includes Smashwords, B & N et. al. Clearly, by adopting audiobooks, even auto-narrated ones, I have doubled my sales. Best publishing decision I made. And it was a no-brainer.

Google continues to dominate my sales. I think the reason is simple; young people use their smart phones as their computer, social media platform, and entertainment center. Offering my entertainment on phones via the Play Store, Apple Books, or on the Kindle App, as both text and voice is a doorway to the younger readers. As is making my work affordable to anyone who has a smart phone, i.e. just about everyone.

Looking Ahead

My next novel, The Darval-Mers Dossier, a 53K word mystery novel set in the same world as Chateau Clare and Glencrow Summer, is set to be released on 5 June 2025. Ideally I would like to release a second novel early in 2026, even though my stated goal is one novel a year. We'll see.

Earlier this year, I had toyed with the idea of making big changes after reaching the 100,000 sales mark and my 10th year. I considered going all in on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited for a year or two, just to see what I could do to capture the paying market. However, I sobered up and decided not to pursue that avenue. First, the sales of my books on Amazon and Kobe have inspired little confidence that I could sell enough books to justify spending the money I'd have to spend to get them in front of enough readers to have a chance of success. Together with the likelihood of losing most of that money, since my books are out of the mainstream of bestsellers I sighed and thought, no. And perhaps more importantly, I feel good about simply sharing my stories with readers. It just seems to feel right. I lose nothing by doing so and gain a pleasant felling of satisfaction by doing it. Plus, I like looking at my sales figures each month. Why turn fun into work? 

So, going forward, there may be new sales venues opening up this summer. I've seen reports suggesting that bookstore.org will be adding self-published books to their offering, somehow, which, if true would bear looking into. And I believe Kobo is in the early stages of some sort of audiobook move as well. Currently invite only. Otherwise, I'm staying the course. We'll see what the next year brings. Fingers crossed, something good.

Stay tuned for it's other than Amazon release day!

The 8 1/2 Years in Publishing Report

It is time once again for the semi-annual report of my publishing venture. As an author/publisher I wear two hats. As an author, I consider myself an amateur, which is to say that I write for the joy of creating. I don't need to be paid for this effort, it's its own reward. However, I take a more business-like approach in my role as a publisher.

As a publisher, my "mission statement" would read something like this; Cealanda Press's goal is to sell as many C Litka books as possible, as efficiently as possible, without loosing money in doing so. Since C Litka books are not mainstream Amazon ebooks, the likelihood of making enough money to make a financial difference in my life is nil. Thus, making money is not a priority in my publishing business. That said, not losing money is a priority, even if it could be justified as "spending" money on my "hobby." My business model is designed to meet these criteria.

With the exception of beta reading by outside volunteers, the production of my ebooks, paper books, and audiobooks is done inhouse, and as such, it involves only a minimum amount of expenditures, namely author copies of my paper books for my beta readers and postage to send it to them. This minor expense is covered by my non-free sales on Amazon. In order to achieve the widest possible sales, with the greatest efficiency, which is to say, with the least amount of effort on my part, I price my books at my cost and let their low price do all my promotional work. 

In the chart below, you can see how my publishing business is doing. The first two columns compare my sales for the first half of this fiscal year year, May thru October 2023-24 to the same period last year, the last column reports total sales of each of my books to date.

I sell my ebooks for free via Smashwords, whose sales totals includes sales from Apple. Sales on Barnes & Noble (via Smashwords) is a rounding error, that I just add to the total number of books sold to the sales total. Kobo (also via Smashwords) does not report free book sales, so they are not included in these totals. I also sell ebooks and paper books via Amazon. Most, but not all, of my ebooks on Amazon.com are free, most, but not all of my ebooks are full price on Amazon stores outside of the U.S. Those sales, and the odd paper book sold account for all my revenue. In addition, I sell ebooks and audiobooks via the Google Play Store, both are sold for free. My books also are available from several other non-U.S. bookstores and libraries via Draft2Digital.

For reference, my last report, my full 8th Year report can be found here.

The Sales Chart of the first half 2022-2023 vs 2023-2024

Book Title / Release Date	1H 2022 Sales	1 H 2023 Sales	Total Sales To date ebook & audiobooks total sales
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015	244 244 Audio	289 231 Audio	Total 9,683
Some Day Days 9 July 2015	221 331 Audio	321 201 Audio	Total 6,199
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015	925 520 Audio	397 306 Audio	Total 17,753
Castaways of the Lost Star 4 Aug 2016	Withdrawn	Withdrawn	Total 2,176
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017	423 433 Audio	371 306 Audio	Total 10,156
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018	299 377Audio	296 215 Audio	Total 5,160
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019	344 299 Audio	304 196  Audio	Total 4,858
Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020	310 359 Audio	286  230 Audio	Total 3,380
Lines in the Lawn 8 June 2020	17	24	Total 169
Keiree 18 Sept 2020	331 349 Audio	339 234 Audio	Total 2,987
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon 11 Nov 2020	428 255 Audio	357  214 Audio	Total 4,143
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021	290 382 Audio	265 251 Audio	Total 3,225
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom 15 July 2021	409 989 Audio	351  301 Audio	Total 3,933
A Night on Isvalar 15 July 2021 (Amazon only  @.$.99 & Kindle Unlimited) 9 Star Nebula. Mystery Omnibus ($.99) Lost Star Omnibus ($.99)	19	6 8 2	Total 46 Total 8 Total 2
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince 29 Sept 2022	154 36 Audio	344  222 Audio	Total 1,594
The Girl on the Kerb 6 April 2023

Eight Years as an Author/publisher -- a Report

 

It was a very good year.

My eighth year as an author/publisher was my best ever. And there's no mystery why. However, let’s start with a glance at the sales numbers for each book. Audiobook sales in parentheses, total sales in bold. And then we'll talk about the whys.

Sales for the year from May 2022 to April 2023

Book Title / Release Date	Year 7 Sales	Year 8 Sales	Total Sale To Date
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015	407	452      (488)  940	9,163
Some Day Days 9 July 2015	371	468      (598) 1,066	5,677
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015	979	1,360   (895) 2,255	17,050
Castaways of the Lost Star 4 Aug 2016	Withdrawn	Withdrawn	2,176
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017	947	783      (780) 1,563	9,479
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018	754	431      (672) 1,103	4,649
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019	858	625     (543) 1,168	4,358
Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020	728	581      (678) 1,259	2,864
Lines in the Lawn 8 June 2020	30	32	145
Keiree 18 Sept 2020	611	637      (583) 1,220	2,414
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon 19 Nov. 2020	1,056	782      (634) 1,416	3,572
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021	858	894      (692) 1,586	2,709
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom 15 July 2021	1,231	751    (1,299) 2,050	3,281
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince* 29 Sept 2022		737      (291) 1,028	1,028
The Girl on the Kerb* 30 March 2023		2,745     (45) 2,790	2,790
A Night on Isvalar (Amazon exclusive – all $ sales only)	23 sold	18 sold	41
Total Year Sales * New releases.	8,853 Year 7 Total: 51,902	19,524  of which were 8,198 audio	71,396

Revenue: Amazon: $128.24  Overdrive: $2.67    Total $130.91    Expenses: $90 (approx.)

For Comparison, Past Yearly 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)

19,396 Year Eight 2022/23 (1 short novel, 1 novel)

The Complete Yearly Reports

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

Sales % by Venue

Comparing the sales split between Amazon, Google, and Smashwords (including Apple and B & N)

                     Year 5 (2019/20) Year 6 (2020/21) Year 7 (2021/22) Year 8 (2022/23)

Amazon                40%                     35%                    21.5%                 24%

Smashwords         40%                     39%                    18%                     9%

Google                  20%                     26%                    60.5%                 67%

My Publishing Business

As always, I should note that I am an amateur writer. I write for the pleasure of it. I am, however, a professional publisher. As a publisher my focus is readership, rather than revenue. Nevertheless, I have shown a profit every year. To avoid the expense, risk, work and bother of advertising, I price my ebooks and audiobooks at cost,($0) whenever possible, and rely on Amazon's non-U.S. markets for my profit. The results of this approach speak for themselves.

This Year's Highlights

Google continues to be my dominate sales channel and would have been even without adding audiobooks last April to the mix. I'm very glad I jumped in when I did, even though at the time Google suggested that the tech was best suited to non-fiction. Google has since added the option of having different characters speak in different voices, a feature clearly aimed at fiction, so their auto-narration tech has likely improved in the past year. In any event, I’m happy to report that the ratings for all my auto-narrated audiobooks are every bit as good as their ebook version. 

Besides adding audiobooks, I think Google dominates my sales as a result of my world-wide affordable price and the fact that many people read ebooks and listen to audiobooks on their phones. The Google Play Store is the app, game, ebook, and audiobook store built into several billion Android phones, and it's likely the first stop for many ebook and audiobook readers using Android phones.

The surprising success of my 2023 novel, The Girl on the Kerb was the icing  on the cake this year. It had been sitting around for nine months while on submission to Gollancz, a U.K. SF publisher. When they passed on it I released myself it in late March and early April. It did fine, but nothing special on Smashwords and Google, but after selling 16 copies at $3.99 on Amazon, Amazon price-matched the free price in its U.S. store, a mere 5 days after it was released. With that price cut, its sales started to take off, selling something like 240 copies in the following week, a rate I haven't seen in years. I have no explanation for this, save that I released as a thriller-espionage and a thriller-adventure novel rather than as SF novel. It seems to have sold well enough for Amazon’s legendary algorithms to kick in and they began to promote it on Amazon in some manner all on their own, the result of which was two or three years worth of sales in a month. Without The Girl on the Kerb, Amazon sales would have closely matched Smashwords sales as they have for most years. Ideally I hope the success of the book will bring in some new readers for all my books, but I don’t expect it to fundamentally alter my business.

This year's other release, in September 2022, was The Aerie of a Pirate Prince, the fourth book in the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure series. It is doing just fine. That series has been selling well for me, with Shadows of an Iron Kingdom doing strangely well in Japan for a time. With it and The Girl on the Kerb, I released two books within a year, making it a very good year on that front as well.

As I mentioned in last year’s report, I had entered a book in the Self Publishing Science Fiction Contest. It yielded one nice review and no appreciable sales. I will not be continuing that venture, though, having missed the deadline for thefar  more popular fantasy version of this contest last year, I will try again to get Beneath the Lanterns entered into it next week.

All thoughts of getting traditionally published are gone. I had fun exploring the experience, but it simply confirmed that I like publishing - and owning - my own work too much to sell anything down the river, like you must in traditional publishing.

I've also abandoned any idea of getting my books into bookshops, as I realized that I would likely have to become a warehouse/distributor of my books if I wanted to go that route. I don’t see any profit for the expense and bother that would involve.

Looking Ahead to Year Nine

On 1 May I released the first of four omnibus versions, this one featuring the four novels of my Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventures into one ebook to be sold exclusively on Amazon. I am targeted these omnibus versions primarily at the non-U.S. market where Amazon does not price match my free prices. It is a way of offering more affordable books for the foreign market without altering the list price of the standalone books. The initial release price will be $.99 and in the following months settle at $2.99.  Over the next year I plan to bundle and release all my books in a total of five omnibus versions. I'm not expecting a ton of sales, but in the spirit of leaving no stone un-turned, I'll give it a try. 

As for new projects, I am working on the third and final book in the Tropic Sea Stories series, A Passage to Jarpara. It's slow going, but I'm maybe half way done with the first draft. I have it tentatively scheduled as my 2024 novel. I am also toying around with an idea for a portal fantasy novella. I don’t know if that will go anywhere. It hasn't so far. I've nothing else on the creative back burner. I find that story ideas and new plots are hard to come by these days.

I expect to post a new blog post every Friday as has become my custom.

Dave, at http://artifacslibros.vzpla.net/index.html?i=1 has offered to translate into Spanish The Bright Black Sea, The Lost Star Sea and the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventures. If all goes well, they will likely be available on his website in late Summer 2023. Having my work available in Spanish is rather exciting.

Since this was clearly an exceptional year. I don’t expect my ninth year to come close to equaling it. Sales will certainly fade. They always do. In any event, I expect audiobooks will make up close to half of my sales, whatever it is. But this assessment is nothing new. Rereading my seven other reports, it seems that every year ahead looks grim for one reason or another, but we continue to plug along. I expect to do that for my ninth year in the business as well. In short, stay the course.