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2025 was a good year for Cealanda House Publishing. Sales volume was up - indeed, it proved to be a record calendar year. Revenue, however, was down from 2024, so I'm lucky that I don't have any stockholders to bamboozle. My business results can be explained by five factors. Let's breakdown them down.
The first is the frequency of publication. My goal is to release one book a year. This year I released three books, likely a record. I'm working ahead... They were:
Glencrow Summer (a novel) in on 20 February. It has sold 1,972 copies in 11 months. It has proven to be a very good seller. Indeed sales have picked up since June.
The Darval-Mers Dossier (a novel) on 27 May. It has sold 1,336 copies in 8 months. Another very good seller. I consider a 1,000 copies in the first year to be one of my "best sellers".
The Founders' Tribunal (a novella) on 6 November. It has sold 590 copies in 2 months. It is doing just fine as well. As I said, it's been a good year.
New books bring new sales across the catalog.
Releasing three books in one year is perhaps the key driving force behind my success as a publisher this year. Not only do new releases sell well, but they tend to bump up the sales of back catalog books as well, since new releases are promoted on most platforms. Every new release increase the chances of introducing your books to new readers, some of whom then go on to buy more of your books. Since the early days of self-publishing, releasing books rapidly has been the bog standard way to sell lots of books.
Over time I've adopted a willingness to write and release shorter novels and novellas. I like writing shorter works with less elaborate plots. And since they take less time to write, I can get them to market sooner. That said, I write books as long as I have a story to tell, not to a given length.
The second key factor in this year's success is the size of my back catalog of books.
I have 23 books for sale on Amazon and Kobe where I sell The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea as a six book series rather than as a two volume omnibus. On all other platforms I offer 19 books for sale. The more books you have to offer, the more sales you can potentially make. The fact that I have been able to write and publish 16 novels and 3 novellas over the last fifteen years is paying off in sales, if not in revenue. But who cares about revenue?
The third key factor was my willingness to embrace auto-narrated audiobooks as soon as I was offered the opportunity to do so.
This year 40% of my sales have come from audiobooks. This percentage is down from 44% last year. Recently ebooks have been outselling audiobooks by a good margin some months, but audiobooks have, over the years, taken up the slack as ebook sales have been harder and harder to come by.
The fourth, and on paper the driving force in my business, was getting my books into the Google Play store. I don't know why it works there, but as you will see below. It does, at least for me. Big time.
The fifth is price. I sell my books in a less competitive market; the free book market. Plus, it's a hard price to beat. And there is no friction for readers to give my books a try.
Right, so on to the numbers.
According to my vendors, I sold 22,269 copies in 2025. This is up from 14,970 in 2024 and handily beats my former record year of 2023, when I sold 18,198 copies.
Google: 9,965 Ebooks 7,704 Audiobooks for a total of 17,669 79% of my sales
D2D: 2,635 Ebooks 1,146 Audiobooks for a total of 3,781 17% of my sales
Amazon: 657 Ebooks 13 Audiobooks 19 Paper for a total of 4% of my sales
Kobo: 162 Ebooks a rounding error
Gross revenue however, was down about $50 from 2024 coming in at $307.13, all from sales on Amazon. I spend less that $100 for books and postage for my beta readers, so Cealanda House is still making a profit as a publisher; about $.01 a book thanks to doing nearly everything in house, with the help of some generous volunteer beta readers. A penny a book is razor thin margin, but we're still in the black and still in business after ten years, plus!
The bottom line is that this level of sales is due to releasing books frequently, having a substantial catalog, and selling my books competitively in all the market and formats available, and on Google.
However, these numbers should be viewed in their historical perspective. Ten years ago, in 2015 and for several years afterwards I was selling, on average, around 2,000 books per title per a year, on just Amazon and venues distributed by Smashwords - without audiobooks. In 2025 I am selling books at about half that rate, about 1,000 copies a book per year, but those sales include audiobooks that account for 40% of sales, and in additional stores. And I'd be selling 80% less books than I am, if it wasn't for the addition of Google as a vendor.
It's tough market.
The ebook market, especially on Amazon, has matured and consolidated. The casual ebook readers have likely returned to paper books as the newness of ebooks wore off. What remains are the very avid readers who read books of a specific genre or subgenre, and specific authors. I suspect that these readers account for the vast majority of ebook fiction sold/read. If your books fall outside of those mainstreams, and you don't spend money advertising, and hours a day on social media promoting yourself one way or another, the pickings are few, as my sales on Amazon clearly suggest.
The other factor to note is my dependence on Google for my sales. One would like to see a wider distribution of sales. Like many Amazon only authors, I have most of my eggs in one basket. But unlike most of Amazon only authors, who have no alternative market, I've taken every opportunity to reach every market. It just falls out that Google is my best choice, by far.
All that said, the bottom line is that these are just numbers. What I value is you, dear reader. Yes, the more the better, but in the end, I sincerely hope that I am entertaining readers like you, while at the same time, I am entertaining myself writing these stories. There'd be no numbers without you, and it wouldn't half as much fun. Thank you for making my day!
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