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Castaways of the Lost Star (initial Release – withdrawn) 4 Aug 2016	0	2,176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Lines in the Lawn (Short story) 8 June 2020 (withdrawn)	0	174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Omnibus Editions (Withdrawn)	0	30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, 3 total) 

6,137 Year Two, 2016/17 (1 novel released, 4 total)

6,385 Year Three, 2017/18 (1 novel released 1 withdrawn, 4 total )

8,225* Year Four, 2018/19: (2 novels released 6 total) * 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 total)

7,484 Year Six, 2020/21 (2 novels released, 1 novella, 1 children's short story 10 total)

8,853 Year Seven 2021/22 (1 novel, 1 novella 12 total )

19,524 Year Eight 2022/23 (1 short novel, 1 novel  Audiobooks 14 total)

14,468 Year Nine 2023/24 (1 sequel novel, 1 novella re-release wide in late April 15 total)

16,950 Year Ten 2024/2025 (2 novels 17 total )

24,774 Year Eleven 2025/2026 (2 novels, 2 Novellas 21 total)

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.

My 2025 Cealanda House Publishing Report

 

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!

My Year as a Publisher 2024 Edition.

My prediction and my sales numbers

Last year in this post I predicted: "Unless my Apple audiobooks do a lot better than I expect, I don't think 2024 will come close to 2023 in terms of sales. Book sales always decline over time." My 2023 sales were a record 18,928, thanks to the unexpected, and inexplicable, success of The Girl on the Kerb on Amazon, and thus, would be hard to beat. For comparison, the year before, in 2022, sales were 13,779, a sales record at that time as well. So how did I do in 2024?

Drum roll.

14,970 books. Though down by more than 4,000 copies from last year, I'm still  very pleasantly surprised with that number. Better than I expected, though there were some reasons. See below.

The details

This was the year I went almost all in on using Draft2Digital as my distributer. I moved all my books over on the 1st of January, from Smashwords - except those on Smashwords itself - and submitted my books to Apple to be converted to audiobooks. The conversion stretched out over the year, with three books still not converted, for some reason. In July I unpublished my books on Smashwords and had then republished them on the Smashwords store via D2D. And in October I unpublished my books in the Kobo store via D2D and submitted them myself to Kobo. I've talked about all of these moves in previous posts, so I won't repeat the reasons and results of all these moves here, except to say that for the most part, all of the moves had positive repercussions.

My sales on Smashwords thru July 2024, when I switched to D2D were 131 ebooks

My total sales on D2D ended up being approx. 3,321 (I don't quite have the final total when writing this.)

Apple ebooks accounted for 1,160  of those sales, edging out Amazon as my second largest ebook sales outlet. For reverence, I sold 775 books on Apple in 2023 via Smashwords.

2D2 Audiobooks on Apple accounted for 1,175 in sales. Well, as it turned out they did pretty well, once they became available. As you can see, adding Apple audiobooks basically doubled my sales on Apple.

Smashwords sales (via 2D2) were 664 ebooks 

Barnes & Noble sold 239 ebooks

Various other D2D outlets accounted for 83 ebooks

Kobo I've been distributing to Kobo directly since October 2024, my sales in the last three mounts amount to 91 ebooks. Comparable to B&B so far.

In order to get all my work on Amazon as audiobooks, I broke up my two massive books, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea into a six book series since they were too long for Amazon's auto-narrated audiobook program. I also sell them that way on Kobo as well. I have also priced the first books in my three series at $.99. 

My total sales  on Amazon were, 1,012

Ebooks, 976, most were the 2 free books,

Paper books 22

Audiobooks 14 

I earned $356.13 on my Amazon sales in 2024 I spent less than $100 on books and mailing for my beta readers, my only expense.

Last, but far, far from least, my sales on Google. It was steady as you go, for Google.  

Total Google sales amounted to 10,415 books

Ebooks sold, 5,055

Audiobooks sold, 5,360

Just as with Apple, audiobooks slightly outsold ebooks, providing half of my overall sales.

All in all, 2024 proved to be a solid year, performing better than I expected, though not a record year. I should note, however, that I did release two novels in this year and new books always drive sales.

All that said, my sales, now including audiobooks, are not much more than twice my sales of my first year, (via Amazon and Smashwords only) with only three books released, compared to a catalog of some 20 books these days. Take away Google and audiobooks and my ebook sales would've been half of my first year ebook sales. Yikes! As I have mentioned in the past, it is getting increasingly harder to sell books outside of the mainstream. I owe my continued success to several factors,

1. My competitive pricing.

2. Having built up a modest readership starting in 2015 back when it was far easier to do so.

3. Having written and published twenty books over the last almost ten years. I can't explain how I did that. I also published two new books this year. All these books mean that I have a good sized back catalog to offer any new reader who happens upon one of my books and likes it to explore.

4. Having explored new markets, including adding Google early on, and jumping on audiobooks when they became financially feasible. 

 Well, looking ahead, if I recall right, 27 April 2025 will mark my 10th anniversary as a publisher. I enjoy what I'm doing now, but maybe after ten years I should shake things up and try something different. I'll be considering what, if anything, in the next couple of months. If I do nothing stupid, I would expect to see similar results to this year, as I do hope to publish at least one novel in 2025 - my "Project 2026" book a little early. We'll see. Stay tuned.

I would like to thank all my readers for making this year another good year for me. I hope that in my own little way, I made 2024 a little better for you as well.

AND I HOPE ALL OF YOU HAVE A GREAT 2025! GOOD LUCK!

Nine Years as an Author/Publisher Part 2 - 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 - only not to lose money. To accomplish its stated mission within the assigned parameters, Celanda House prices ebooks and audiobooks at its cost, whenever possible. In most instances this price free. So, after nine years in business, how successful has Celanda House been in getting the novels of C. Litka out to the eager public?

Below are the sales numbers for each book for last year, this year, and nine years. Audiobook sales in parentheses, total sales in bold. Numbers are somewhat approximate. You don't want me doing your accounting.

Sales for the year from May 2023 to April 2024

Book Title / Release Date	Year 8 Sales May 2022-April 2023	Year 9 Sales (xx) audio Bold Total	Total Sales To date ebook & audiobooks total sales
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015	452 (488) 940	524 (400) 924	Total 10,103
Some Day Days 9 July 2015	468      (598) 1,066	578 (320) 898	Total 6,575
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015	1,360   (895) 2,255	703 (478) 1,181	Total 18,231
Castaways of the Lost Star 4 Aug 2016	Withdrawn	Withdrawn	Total 2,176
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017	783      (780) 1,563	705 (458) 1,163	Total 10,642
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018	431      (672) 1,103	500 (273) 773	Total 5,422
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019	625     (543) 1,168	303 (325) 628	Total 4,986
Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020	581      (678) 1,259	512 (359) 871	Total 3,735
Lines in the Lawn 8 June 2020	32	29	Total 174
Keiree 18 Sept 2020	637      (583) 1,220	538 (371) 909	Total 3,323
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon 11 Nov 2020	782      (634) 1,416	548 (363) 911	Total 4,483
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021	894      (692) 1,586	533 (392) 925	Total 3,634
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom 15 July 2021	894      (692) 1,586	583 (465) 1,048	Total 4,329
A Night on Isvalar 15 July 2021/27 April 2024 wide	23	43 (4) 47	Total 93
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince 29 Sept 2022	737      (291) 1,028	613 (427)  1,040	Total 2,068
The Girl on the Kerb 6 April 2023 _________________ Passage to Jarpara 21 March 2024 -------------------------Omnibus editions ________________	2,745     (45) 2,790 ___________ n/a n/a ____________ 2022-2023  Total Sales 19,524 of which  8,198 were audio	2,561 (353) 2,914 104 (73) 177 30 (withdrawn) __________ 2023-2024 Total Sales  14,468 of which 5,061 were audio	Total 5,704 Total 177 Total 30 _______________ Grand Total  85,855 Grand total as of  this date in; 2023: 71,396 2022: 60,879 2021: 47,550

Revenue:  2023-2024 Amazon: $174.74   Expenses: $74.74 (estimate.) net approx. $100

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)

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

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

Sales percentages by Venue

Comparing the sales split between Amazon, Google, and Smashwords (including Apple and B & N and of 2024, Draft2Digital ) Most books are not distributed by D2D except for my original Smashwords releases. I combine Smashword with D2D

                      Year 5      Year 6      Year 7         Year 8        Year 9 

Amazon            40%        35%        21.5%        24%            23%

Draft2 Digital    40%        39%        18%            9%             11% 

Google             20%         26%       60.5%         67%            66%

Year Nine Results

As you can see from the table above, my the previous year in publishing was a record breaking year with sales of 19,524 books, blowing past my seventh year total of 8,853 copies. That jump in sales was fueled by the introduction of audiobook sales, and the breakout success of The Girl on the Kerb, with 2,790 copies sold in the last than six weeks of that fiscal year. This year continued those sales trends, but without a breakout release and at a more moderate pace across the board. In the previous post, I mentioned that I hadn't expected my year nine sales to be as good year eight, and this proved to be the case. Just about every book sold less copies this year than last year, as both ebooks and audiobooks and as a result, my sales were down significantly - by about 25%, with audiobooks declining more like 40%. This year audiobooks comprised 35% of my sales vs 42% last year. Declines for sure, but coming off a record year, these declines still allowed for a very good year, with sales averaging more than a thousand books a month.

Looking ahead, I don't see much changing drastically. Sales of my existing titles will likely continue to decline slightly as they usually do. Amazon now offered only two of my books for free which will contribute slightly to that decline as well. It is impossible to say how much, if any, the nearly 6,000 sales of The Girl on the Kerb led to new readers. This year's release, Passage to Japara, as the third book in a modestly successful series will not move the sales needle very much. We'll have to wait to see how a theoretical 2025 novel does. I do not expect any significant sales from audiobooks on Amazon/Audible.

On a more positive note, I'm hoping that my sales on Draft2Digital will ramp up with the addition of audiobooks on Apple. However, with the release of only 7 of the 12 books I uploaded to Apple Audio, and those released at random, it is hard to estimate what sort of sales range they're going to settle into. However, since sales are still increasing, I have hopes. I was selling a lot more ebooks on Google when I released the audiobooks on Google, so I don't expect Apple audiobooks to do as well as my Google Audiobooks, but it would be nice if they could do as well in proportion to their Apple ebook sales.

I don't see any other audiobook markets for auto-narrated books that would move the needle, and probably wouldn't bother if any other audiobook market would take them.

I hope to write and publish another novel - a mundane fantasy - within the next 12 months. Another novella, likely a sequel, might also be possible. But nothing promised.

I'll enter Sailing to Redoubt in the next SPFBO X contest, but the odds are against it even being selected - selection is by lottery this year -with the odds likely 3 to 1. And even if it makes it, experience has taught me not to expect any bump in sales. I just do it to hear what reviewers have to say about my books, a book they likely would've never found otherwise.

As for plans for my tenth year as an author/publisher, well, they boil down to staying the course.

In the end, I feel that the ebook market has matured to a point where it is fairly easy to say what will sell, what it takes to sell it, and where to sell. If you do that, all you then need is folding money to spend and luck. I'm not writing what sells, I'm not doing what is needed to sell my books for more than free, I'm not spending money to try to sell them, plus, I'm not offering my books where they generate the most money - Kindle Unlimited. What I am doing is serving a relatively small market -  a market made up of readers, like myself, who read library books, free ebooks, and sometimes will even buy second hand books, if they're cheap enough. With 15 books in my catalog now, I'm hoping  that every new reader who happens upon one of my books will eventually read all of them - one sale leading to 14 more.

My prediction for my tenth year as an author/publisher? Well, I'm going to be optimistic this year, and say that I'm hoping that it will be pretty much like this year.