10 & 1/2 Years of Self Publishing, A Report

The first half of my 11th year as a publisher has been a remarkably good one. My best ever, in fact. The three keys have been 1.) a fairly substantial catalog of books, 2.) relatively frequent releases, and 3.) the elephant in the room: the Google Play Store.

1.) My back catalog now offers 19 to 23 books, depending on the the store. (In some stores, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea have been split into a six book series in order to offer them as audiobooks on Amazon.) 

Even 10 years later, The Bright Black Sea continues to be my best selling book. Between ebooks and audiobook versions it sold between 150 and 337 copies a month over the last six months. This illustrates that genre does matter, since space opera is one of the most popular SF sub-genre. Shadows of an Iron Kingdom is set in the same universe as The Bright Black Sea and it's usually my second most popular title. However, for some strange and unknown reason it outselling the first two books in that series. My best guess is that it has something to do with its title or the Gothic vibe of the story.

Depending on the month, most of my other books sell from 50 to 150+ copies between ebooks and audiobook editions, the bulk of them on Google. With twenty-odd books to sell, sales add up. Plus, as I've mentioned before, for every new reader you sell a book to, they may go on to read more of your books, ideally, all of them. In my case, a single new reader might account for 18 additional sales. 

2.) Since September 2024 up to this week's Nov 6th, 2025 release of The Founders' Tribunal, I have released two novels, and two novellas. I plan to release a third novella with a bonus short story, The Isle House Ghost and Nine Again, in February 2026 to continue this pace. New books generate a bump in monthly sales, not only on account of the sales of the newly released book, but in sales across the board, as new releases have their own less crowded selection on the ebook stores making it is briefly easier to reach new readers and remind past readers you're still around and writing. 

I am not racing to release books for the sales. I write because I enjoy writing every day. When I have shorter stories to tell, I can write more stories, which naturally leads to more releases.

3.) My sales on Google for both ebooks and audiobooks continue to dominate all the other venues combined. In any given month, most of my books on Draft2Digital, Kobo, and Amazon usually sell in only single digits, and many do not sell at all on Amazon. I sell 8x to 10x more books on Google than any other venue. The only way I can explain this is that people read books on their phones, and there are a lot of Android phones out there, with the Google Play Store as the default book store.

I'm going to keep this simple this time around. Here are the sales by month, venue, and book type for the period May 2025 thru Oct 2025.

Monthly Book Sales May - Oct 2025

 Sales           ebooks        audiobooks     percentage ebooks/audiobooks

May 1405     779 ebooks 626 audiobooks   55.4% ebook/44.6% audiobook

June 1707    982 ebooks 725 audiobooks   57.5% ebook/42.5% audiobook

July  2040  1407 ebooks 633 audiobooks   69% ebook/31% audiobook

Aug  2084  1364 ebooks 721 audiobooks   65.4% ebook/34.6% audiobook

Sept 2007  1261 ebooks 746 audiobooks   62.8% ebook/37.2% audiobook

Oct  1796  1121 ebooks 629 audiobooks   63.4% ebooks/36.6% audiobook

                       6 paperback books sold

Total Book Sales 1H 2025  11,039  ebooks 63% audiobooks 37%

For comparison;  1H 2024 7,671  1H 2023 9,177   1H 2022 9,054 

Total Book Sales April 2015 to October 2025  114,503

Sales by Venue/ Percent of Sales. (Year 10:  May2024 - April 2025)

Draft2 Digital* 1,767     16%  (Year 10: 21.5% -5.5% )

Kobo                 118       1%   (Year 10: .5% +.5%) 

Amazon             256       2%  (Year 10: 5% - 3%)

Google           8,888      81%  (Year 10: 73%  + 8%)

*D2D includes Apple, Apple audio, B & N, Smashwords, et al. 

Revenue from Amazon sales

$36.53

The most interesting number in the data is that audiobooks only accounted for 37% of my sales so far this year, compared to 49.5% in my 10 year sales period (May 2024-April 2025) despite selling more total books this half. I have no clue as to why.

The bottom line is that I continue to sell at a midlist author's rate. Enough to keep me from getting discouraged. Of course, it is 100X easier to sell books at $0 than even $.99, so you can discount my sales as much as you care to. However, underselling your competitors is a Business 101 strategy. I sell most of my books at cost, and yet still make a tiny profit doing so, and have been doing that for more than 10 years now. I chose to value readership over pocket money, and laziness over hustling for sales. This low stress approach to writing and publishing has paid off; I'm still writing and publishing new books after 10 1/2 years in the business. Most authors, indie or trad can't say that.

Developmental Editors and Indie-Publishing

I'm going to say it up front. Publishing is a business. A very risky business. So if you're not certain that the revenue from the book you're publishing is likely to pay for a developmental editor, you should not hire one. A developmental editor's value, at least in indie-publishing, is minuscule. Developmental editors are the ones who go through stories and "suggest" what needs to be fixed to make it a "better" story.  Which may be helpful, but considering that they'll likely charge anywhere from $1,000 to more than $3,000 for their work, unless you already have a large established readership, you'll likely never see any return on that investment. This makes spending this sort of money on developmental and/or line editing without a booming self-publishing business, a very poor business decision. In my opinion. As I said, publishing is a very risky business, and investments in it need a thoughtful consideration of facts, not dreams. Any money spent, should be spent very prudently at the scale of expected sales.

Writing, unlike publishing, is an art. Stories are a work of art, created by their author(s). This work of art can be, and almost always is, turned into a product in the hope that it will sell. The job of the editors is use their expertise to re-shape a work of art into the most commercially appealing product possible. In traditional publishing a team of editors work on the cream of the manuscript crop, i.e. manuscripts culled from the thousands submitted to agents, vetted by the agents, and then selected by acquiring editors. Still, they only manage to produce one profitable product out of every three books they work on. And how much of that success might well be attributed to the book's promotional budget is an open question. This is not to say that editors are completely incompetent, it is simply very hard, even for professionals, to know what readers will like. Your own-edited, self-published book is as likely to succeed commercially as a professionally edited self-published book, i.e. statically very unlikely.

A "well edited" book is like a tree that falls in a forest. No one will ever know it is well edited, unless they somehow discover and read it. For this to happen,  thousands of impressions are needed just to get a potential reader to click on the cover, read the blurb, and perhaps, read a sample before buying it. Only if, or when, they get to the sample pages will editing ever have a chance to play a role in making a sale. Thus, money spent on getting the book seen is a far more effective way of making sales than thousands of dollars spent on editors.

Given how late in the sales process any effects of editing might have on influencing sales, there is no compelling case that it is needed at all. Your work, your vision, is just as likely to succeed as an editor's. You just never know what will click with whom.

These days, in traditional publishing, authors usually get only one chance to prove to their publisher that they're potentially a bestselling author. This is not the case in indie-publishing.

The beauty of indie-publishing is that, unlike traditional publishing, you have as many chances as you care to take in chasing commercial success. There's a very simple reason for this; on average, only several dozen to a hundred readers will ever buy and read most indie-published books, be they good or bad. A hundred readers out of a million potential readers gives you a lot of headroom to make mistakes and many chances to get better over time, without coming close to exhausting your potential readership. And the best way to get better is to write, publish, write and publish, again, and again, learning from your mistakes and any feedback you might get along the way. And then, when you reach the point where you can look back and find yourself embarrassed by your first book, you can unpublish it. In the meanwhile, you've been building a back catalog for readers to explore and buy, when the day arrives when your newest book sells more than a hundred copies. When you've made it.

Thus, it's indie-publishing's very long odds of commercial success that allows an author the freedom to write their story the way they want to write it, without compromises to conform to some "professional" editor's opinion. I strongly believe you shouldn't give up that artistic freedom. Who's to say that being different is any less effective than being a copy of last year's successful books? Fashion moves on.

Advocates of using editors often try to make authors feel that they are betraying readers and their fellow indie-authors if they don't get a "professional" editor to polish up their story. Never mind that anyone can set up shop as a "professional freelance editor." There are no bar exams for editors needed to pass in order to put out a professional editor shingle on the internet. Who knows what your "professional editor" knows about editing.

Advocates of professional editors will also point to popular authors who, they say, grew too big for editors and their books suffered for it. Authors like Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson are examples of whom they say produced bloated work as a result. What they don't mention is that while some readers might find this to be the case, there are likely as many or more readers who think those "bloated"  stories are wonderful just as they are. You can never please every reader, and shouldn't try. 

So don't be afraid. It's okay, indeed, desirable, to create your story, your way, no matter how quirky it might be. Remember the abysmal success rate of agents and editors in the traditional space. You really can't do worse by doing it your way. 

Now, by all means produce the best book you can. Get all the feedback on your story that you can from spouses, family, friends, critique partners, and beta readers if you have any doubts about your story. Produce as clean a copy as you can, using the built in spelling and grammar checks, as well as free, or paid (for a month) grammar checkers like Grammarly. But, whatever you do, keep your book uniquely yours. That's its greatest value. Don't let its uniqueness be eroded by someone's idea of making it more marketable. The numbers tell the story; editors have no magic to make a book better and there's no proof they make it more salable. Plus, when it comes to indie-publishing, it's a very different market, with different readers and reader priorities than traditionally published books. Thus,  hiring traditional publishing editors, and mimicking traditional publishing standards is almost certainly a recipe for missing the mark in indie-publishing.

I believe that authors should keep the "self" and "indie" in self-publishing and indie-publishing.

The inspiration for this post came from watching a small publisher/author's YouTube video several weeks ago. In his list of "lies authors tell themselves that will destroy their careers," he listed not hiring a professional developmental editor as one of them. It seems that we're too close to our work to see it's trash. Then last week, he posted another video, where he made the case even stronger - despite the fact that he doesn't feel the need for a developmental himself. (Is he telling himself a lie like the rest of us?) In any event, his advice seems to be a do as I say, not as I do. He then went on to say that cost of editing should be no excuse. Save up for years, if need be. No mention of the steep odds facing success in indie-publishing. And in this video he freely admitted that he was acting as a gatekeeper to keep the riffraff, the "bad" books out of the market - something a holy mission for him. He also admitted that he sees himself and his small press a traditional publisher, so his mission seems to be keeping indie writers out of publishing, or to bankrupt them as quickly as possible, should they take his advice and hire expensive editors. All of which struck me as pretty self-serving. I don't think it is in the best interest of aspiring indie authors to follow his advice, since he never addresses the sad truth of indie-publishing; that tens of thousand books are released every month and only a tiny fraction of them will sell a hundred copies or more. Most will lose most of the money the authors spend on publishing their books.

The New Gatekeepers

I’ve watched a number of videos over the last year where established indie authors urge authors interested in self publishing to go about it in the proper way. Which is to say, the traditional publishing way. By this they mean authors should hire professionals to produce their books, professionals ranging from developmental editors to punch up the story, plus line editors and/or proofreaders, professional cover artists, and even professional cover designers, as well as professionals to format the book, and human narrators to narrate audiobooks. This process costs thousands of dollars. Indeed, I’ve heard $5,000 to $10,000 figures tossed around as the cost of self publishing a book these days, though I have to assume that includes ebooks, paper, and audio versions of the book. While these authors may acknowledge that this may cost more than some authors can readily afford, and may mention in passing, some cheaper alternatives, the thrust of their advice is that authors owe it to their readers to produce as professionally produced book as they can afford to spend. Moreover, they imply that authors owe it to the self publishing industry to produce traditional publishing quality books, in order to raise the perceived level of quality in self published books. To do any less is to let the side down.

Well, yes and no. Yes is likely a given in that most, of not all, self-published authors try to put out the best book they can, if only as it is a reflection of their expertise. However, publishing is a business and should be approached as a business. The chances of making back even $1,000 are statistically very slim. An author would need to sell at least 200 to 270 ebooks at full price to cover every $1,000 they spend on a book. The average self-published book is said to sell a 100 copies. Just say’n. 

Moreover, no matter how much professional help is hired, indie authors can only charge self-published prices for their books, if they expect to sell it. Thus, all these professional services add no tangible financial benefit to the books. Finally, it's not the quality of the book that limits the sale of most self-published books. Its visibility, or rather, the lack of visibility. A developmental editor can't increase the chances of a book being discovered. Even a professionally designed cover can’t pay for itself if the book is rarely or never seen by a receptive audience. Unless we can get our books seen and talked about, these expensive professional services just don’t matter in the end. Money wasted.

There are a number of reasons why this proposed method is wrong. First, look at  the proposed business model. Only one book out of three in traditional publishing ends up making the publisher any money. Indeed, the industry is largely dependent on a relatively small number of bestselling authors and books to make most of their money. Is this really a successful business model that solo authors should imitate in their self-publishing business, especially if their publishing business has yet to start minting money needed to support it? It is a system that works only for best selling authors, traditional or self-published.

Next, let’s look at the market, or rather the markets. While there is some overlap of readers, the traditional publishing market and the ebook/Kindle Unlimited market are very different beasts, in both expectations and priorities. The ebook market is largely made up of avid, story-orientated genre readers who will overlook nondescript writing and a certain amount of typos, if the story is compelling enough. I speak with experience here. On the other hand, the readers of traditional published books are more likely bookish readers who place a greater emphasis on style and writing quality. There are few, if any, grammar connoisseurs reading self-published ebooks, so there’s no need to spend thousands of dollars to please them. Beta readers are sufficient.

So, all in all, I see promoting this expensive method of producing a self published book as the best, and most ethical way of producing a book, as a form of gatekeeping. 

By setting such a very high financial bar for entry into the self publishing market it discourages many would-be author/publishers from even attempting to publish their work, unless they already have the six figure income necessary to spend, and likely lose, on their publishing project. And even if these authors did mentioned less expensive ways, the clear implication was that you needed to spend as much as you could scrape together to publish your book in a manner as close to the right and proper way as possible.

The reason, we are told, that these services are expensive is that these editors, artist, and such need to make a living. Most authors, traditionally published or self-published rarely make a living writing. But now we self-published authors are being told that we need to pay a living wage to these self-employed professionals, before the we ever have a chance to earn any money from our book at all. There is something wrong in the traditional book business where the the very basis of the business - the writer of the book - is paid the least. And so those promoting this unfair system for the self-publishing business, earn my wrath.

I view this message as a subtle method of gatekeeping. A way of keeping self-publishing to an exclusive group of would-be self-published authors - the well heeled and well connected. They want to close the gate behind them. 

There’s always been people selling authors all sorts of schemes and services to sell books. Would-be authors are some of the greatest chumps in the world. It’s like shooting trout in a barrow. So this pitch, in a way, is just the same old thing. But it is also different in that it is being promoted by people who are not trying to make money from selling their secret to success. They might even be well meaning, and believe this is the right way to go about self-publishing a book. Anything is possible.

But still, the cynic in me sees it as a subtle way to discourage the competition in a field were there is way too much competition – at least from an author’s point of view. For the readers, well, it’s a wonderful opportunity. I’m for the readers. The more books there are, the merrier.

Nine-and-a-half Years in Publishing - 6 Month Sales

 

My "2025" Novel

As is tradition around here, I'm posting my sales for the first half of my fiscal year, May thru October. The purpose is to chronical my experiment in publishing. I decided from the onset on three things. First to reach, and hopefully, entertain as many readers as possible. Second to do so without losing money, but also without any concern for making money. And thirdly, to only do the things I enjoyed - writing - and the things I found interesting, challenging, and didn't mind doing like making paperback books, tinkering with covers, and different formats, while avoiding doing all the things I hated, which is to say self-promotion. The key to these goals was, and is, producing my books in-house, with the help of volunteer beta readers, and to then sell the ebook versions at cost, which to say, for free. I let their free price and wide and easy access do my promoting for me. I've published 20 books over the course of the last 9 1/2 years. The sales numbers are below. And according to Amazon, I've made $1002.51 so far. I've spent less that that, mostly on paper books, some of which I send to my beta readers for their efforts. I'll leave it up to you to decide how successful I've been.

Cutting to the chase, the first half of my 10th year in publishing was solid, but not spectacular. Below are my monthly sales totals, including ebooks, print books, and audiobooks. Nearly half of my sales now come from audiobook sales.

May     June     July     August    September    October    Six Month total

1014    844     1637    1544       1356            1,406        7,801*

This total compares to 9,177 in the same period last year, a decline of 16%

Headlines For This First Half of My Fiscal Year

I released my "2025" novel, Chateau Clare, early - on October 17 and the 24th, so it's initial bump in sales is reflected in the October sales. It's 470 copies sold kept sales for October at September's level. I have muted expectations for this title. It represents a different direction in my writing. Still, I can't kick about either its sales or its initial reception. I'm hoping that it will find new readers, but that might take some time.

All but three of my titles have been finally released as Apple audiobooks. The Lost Star's Sea shows it was accepted, but it's not currently available for some reason. Who knowns with Apple? A possible explanation for the unreleased three is that they did not have a proper table of contents. That was fixed a month ago, but they've yet to make their appearance. That said, Apple's audiobook version of Chateau Clare appeared only a week after the ebook version. You just never know with Apple. As for audiobook sales on Apple - I'm happy with them - not Google level, but good enough. It was worth the hassle. 

In June I pulled my books on Smashwords and now sell them there via Draft2Digital. The move revitalized sales on Smashwords for several months, likely because the books appeared as new releases on Smashwords' home page, making them far easier to come across. Visibility, visibility, visibility is the key to sales. Sales have since settled down, but this move explains July's bump in sales.

My two bestselling books, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea were too long for Amazon's auto-narrated audiobook program, so I broke them up into a six book series; The Lost Star Stories -- The Captain, Enemies, Ghosts, Castaways, Islands. and Secrets of the Lost Star. While I've sold only a modest number of the new versions, I wasn't selling any of the two omnibus versions since they went full price on Amazon, so the move was a minor win. I've reformatted The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea to reflect their omnibus status, and will continue to sell them via Google and D2D - since they are audiobooks on Google and Apple.

On the other hand, I pulled distributing  from Draft2Digital for my titles to Kobo in October because I could not find my titles, or my my name, when I searched the Kobo site.  It seems that Kobo doesn't want to sell free books. I hoped that by listing them myself with Kobo they would actually turn up in the search results. They now do, sometimes. Early sales are modest - 40 in the first month. I can't say if listing them directly made any difference, since Kobo never reported free sales to Smashwords or D2D. Now I'll know. I took the opportunity to list the six book Lost Star Stories series instead of The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea when doing this. I will review my Kobo free sales before the end of the year and if they are fairly insignificant, I may raise their prices to match my Amazon prices in the hope that this might make them more visible and appealing to users of Kobo's version of the Kindle Unlimited lending library. 

The Numbers

Below is the complete breakdown of sales by book and format for the period May 2024 thru October 2024.  

Book Title/ Release Date	Ebook Sales	Audiobook Sales	Paper Back Sales	Total	Total to Date
SALES PERIOD May 2024 – October 2024
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015	224	245	1	469	10,573
Some Day Days 9 July 2015	153	207		360	6,935
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015	358	502	2	860	19,093
Castaways of the Lost Star (Initial Release -withdrawn) 4 Aug 2016	----------	withdrawn	-------	----------	2,176 (one year)
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017	269	231	1	500	11,143
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018	176	150		326	5,748
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019	207	190	2	397	5,385
Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020	155	156	2	311	4,048
Lines in the Lawn 8 June 2020     Withdrawn	----------	------------	-------	---------	174
Keiree 18 Sept 2020	150	186		336	3,659
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon 11 Nov 2020	230	296	2	526	5,011
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021	230	265	1	495	4,130
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom 15 July 2021	271	418	1	689	5,019
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince 29 Sept 2022	207	228		435	2,503
The Girl on the Kerb 6 April 2023	480	174		654	6,358
A Night on Isvalar 15 July 2021	277	167		444	537
Passage to Jarpara 16 March 2024	217	183	6	400	583
Chateau Clare 17 Oct 2024	357	113		470	470
Captain of the Lost Star 22 July 2024	9		--------	9	9
Enemies of the Lost Star 22 July 2024	5		--------	5	5
Ghosts of the Lost Star 22 July 2024	5		-------	5	5
Castaways of the Lost Star (New Re-Release version) Oct 2024	4		--------	4	4
Islands of the Lost Star Oct 2024	3		-------	3	3
Secrets of the Lost Start Oct 2024	6		-------	6	6
Omnibus Editions (withdrawn)	----------	-------------	--------	----------	30
TOTALS THIS PERIOD	3,993	3,711	18 (yr)	7,671
1H 2023	6,049	3,130		9,177
1H 2022	4,480	4,574		9,054
LIFETIME TOTAL SALES					93, 607

1 H Revenue $139.59, Expenses Approx. $20.00 Profit Approx. $120

Paperback sales were for the entire year. I don't pay any attention to them. 

Almost all audiobook sales come from Google and Apple. Amazon's contribution is insignificant at this point.

Passage to Jarpara, as the third book in a series is doing about as I expected - so-so, but Chateau Clare is off to a promising start. We'll see. Otherwise, this chart serves to illustrate just how important an author's back catalog is. The more books you have to offer, the more you can sell, since new books won't keep you afloat.

Looking Ahead

Steady as she goes for now. I will do my big re-think this spring, if I feel one is necessary. Currently changing Kobo to full price sales if free books aren't contributing much is my only ongoing experiment. I think I've done all I can to promote sales without actually going out, spending money, and promoting them. Ain't doin' that.

*As I mentioned in a previous report, you would not want me as your bookkeeper. We'd find ourselves in jail. Attention to details is not my strong suite. While the two totals are based on the same raw numbers, for some mysterious reason they never quite agree when it comes to making out this report. The  7,801 six month total at the top comes from my monthly composite tally. This is based on counting book sales each month, month by month. The 7,671 at the bottom of the chart, while based on those same numbers, are generated by adding up the six months total for each title for ebooks and audio at the end of the six month period. Clearly errors occur. Somewhere. However, since all this is just for my amusement, I'm not going to try to reconcile them. Take the numbers as a range only, the actual number is likely somewhere in between the two of them. Indeed, my grand total on the monthly composite tally is 94,494. I like that number better than the one at the bottom of the chart above. I have, however introduced a new, simplified accounting system for myself, so I'm hoping to improve my accuracy going forward.