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3rd Quarter 2026 Income Report

October 30 2026 – 06:26pm

To listen to an audio version of this report, join the Patreon »

Revenue for the third quarter of 2026 was:

• July: $2,337
• August: $1,766
• September: $4,892

• Q3 Total: $8,994

Q2’s revenue was $6,604.

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Q3 profits were:

• July: $275
• August: $1,078
• September: $2,910
• Q3 Total: $4,264

Q2’s profit was $3,211.

Business continues to be tough, but now that Finish What Matters is live, revenue is getting a bump. Though I’m genuinely excited about my new focus and some new things that are in place that should free me up to be creative.

More records (low)

As has been the case most of the past couple of years, I broke a bunch of record lows this quarter. For example, I had record-low 12-month income every month, ending on $38,636 for the year ending September. I also had record-low 12-month book income all 3 months, getting down to $22,513 for the year ending in September. I even had my record-low income for a single month in August, at $1,766.

As I have record-low income, I also have record-low expenses. Not every month had record-low expenses, but August marked record-low 12-month expenses, at $14,918. I had the lowest expenses ever that month, at $687. Much of this is due to low ad spend. I hit record-low 12-month ad spend that month, at $6,682. That expense peaked at nearly $40,000 in November 2019.

Finish What Matters meeting expectations

After its first two weeks are in the books, Finish What Matters is on pace to sell according to expectations. My coin-flip prediction was that I would sell between 500–750 copies within one month (with October counting as the first full month).

As of the end of September, I have sold 514 copies. That includes 129 Preview Edition copies and one manuscript (for $200). If I take a quick peek at October’s sales, it looks like I’ll still be within my range.

After that decent start, sales do seem slower than they were for MMT. which was consistently selling around 250–300 copies per month after launch. A couple of the bigger promotions I have lined up with newsletters and podcasts still have yet to come out. I definitely struggled to reach supporters this time around – the response rate on emails is surprisingly low. After initially spending on ads at a good clip, I have scaled back for now, as they aren’t clear winners.

I could definitely use reviews on Amazon. Even if you merely click on a star rating, that helps! I still only have 9 ratings, and having more would make buying ads profitably more feasible.

“Wide” and direct paperbacks now available

One disappointment was that I had to launch without a “wide” paperback. I uploaded to IngramSpark well in advance, and they never sent a proof. My dashboard showed “Awaiting Update,” I couldn’t do anything, and support was slow to respond and didn’t help me with the issue.

After exhausting my options, the Alliance of Independent Authors member support team saved the day for me once again. I sent them my case information and IngramSpark cleared up the issue. (They really saved my butt when HSB was blocked.)

Issues like this are becoming more frequent, it seems. Maybe the self-publishing infrastructure is under stress with the tsunami of AI-generated stuff, perhaps not along with the commensurate increase in revenue to process it all. Anyway, the ALLi membership continues to pay off. (I also got a nice discount with their Lulu coupon when I needed an ARC in a hurry, and skipped the title setup fee with their BookVault coupon.)

So now the paperback is available on B&N, Bookshop, and other retailers. I also have it up on my Shopify store, where it will be printed and shipped for each customer, by BookVault.

Getting Art Done bundle now available

By completing Finish What Matters, I’ve also completed the entire Getting Art Done trilogy. Which means I can sell the whole trilogy as a bundle in paperback and ebook.

They’re made for each other, aren’t they?

I’ve learned it’s tough to beat Amazon on price when selling direct to readers, but a major exception is when I sell a bundle.

When Amazon sells a paperback of Finish What Matters for $19.95, I get $8.23. To earn the same amount when selling directly, I’d only have to charge $13.56.

That sounds great until you consider the customer gets the book in two days, with free shipping, if they’re a Prime customer. If I provide shipping, I have to charge $20.98, and the book still takes 2–3 weeks to arrive.

The economics flip when a customer buys a bundle. The cover price of the trilogy books together is $53.85. My royalties on that are $21.77. To have that same margin, I can sell the trilogy as low as $44.20 – with free shipping!

Still, Amazon is aggressive on pricing, and MMT is marked down to $16.07, which brings the bundle down to $49.97. But as you can see I can still beat that price.

The only downside is 2–3 week arrival for POD production and shipping. But if someone is buying three of my books, they presumably have an existing reading queue that can stand to wait.

So, I have the GAD bundle set to $49 on the store.

Vocal Booth Bathroom video

With the help of Preview Edition customers, I was able to hire a top-notch audiobook producer for the Finish What Matters audiobook.

I was surprised when he recommended I set up a studio in my home for recording, rather than come to him.

It turned out to be a fun project, though a surprisingly long and challenging one. But, I got the perfect recording studio for my space out of it, and saved a bunch of money (going to him probably would have cost all of my Preview Edition earnings).

I’ve shared the process in my latest YouTube video about making a DIY PVC vocal booth, in my bathroom!

You’ll see a line-item in this report for the cost of editing the audiobook: $1,775.

Zettelkasten t-shirt in store

I decided I want to show off my Zettelkasten pride when I’m out and about, so I made a Zettelkasten t-shirt, featuring the lettering from the Digital Zettelkasten cover. I also put it in the Shopify store.

The official one hasn’t arrived to me yet, but I made another locally, and have been wearing it in most of my reels – testing out the product tagging in Instagram, while I’m at it.

If you’re a fan like I am, pick up a Zettelkasten shirt in my store.

Main focus: reels, reels, reels

Now that I have all book projects off my plate for the time being, I’m focusing on the one experiment that really seemed to work when I was so busy writing.

My main focus, for at least the rest of the year, I’m telling myself, is to make reels. I’m trying to make at least one reel a day, but some days I don’t and some days I make three.

I’m getting my mind back into “reel mode,” and tweaking my creative systems to streamline production, so I can focus on the creative parts, and hopefully figure out how to turn all these views into some kind of revenue.

I’ve had a couple home runs, and some reels are deliberate bunts, and I truly enjoy the game.

If I could choose what society paid attention to, it wouldn’t be reels, but since it is, I’m happy to oblige. As a creator, reels are the best medium, because you get more data than any other medium exactly what is or isn’t working, and some great clues on why. It’s the most democratic medium – you can get a million views with 0 followers. Once you get used to video, it’s also quite fun!

I’m approaching 40k followers on both Instagram and TikTok. I’m getting a modest ad-revenue share on TT, and got invited to a program for YouTube shorts where I’ll earn $100 minimum each month for three months, for making at least a dozen reels. I guess I can make up to $1,000 a month with outstanding performance, but my Shorts performance so far is very meh.

Every time I think about tweaking my ads, I decide I’m better off making reels. When I think of building a course, I’d rather make reels. When I consider pitching podcasts – might as well make reels instead. When I wonder about any longer-term project, such as reviving the podcast, doing more YouTube videos, or writing a book, I conclude I’d be better off starting with reels. I’m currently viewing them as my “lead domino.” If I can become truly excellent at reels, and grow my audience, everything else will be easier.

At the same time, I think I’m kind of fucked if I don’t figure this out. It feels like my only appealing option, and fortunately I feel like I can do it. Well, I kind of have to.

Claude is saving my business (?)

I don’t want to speak too soon because it’s really only been about a month now that I feel like Claude might save my business. That’s kind of ironic because LLMs are of course also a big threat to my business, and probably one of the main reasons my book sales plummeted.

I held off on experimenting too much with AI while I finished the book, and I think that timing was perfect. Because just as I’m starting I’m having an experience that I keep hearing others say they’re having – which is that Opus 5.5 is the first time they’re like, Holy shit, this really works.

It’s helping me with so many things that I hated to do, or wanted to do if only I had the time and energy. There’s been a paradox in this business in that the more books I produce and more sales I generate, there’s more administrative burden for promoting, updating, and processing the performance of everything.

These reports are one example. I changed from monthly to quarterly because as soon as I was done with a report, it was time to start a new one, and I didn’t feel like I had the time nor energy to create the things I wanted.

I still think quarterly is a good move, but incredibly Claude can put together the numbers and do the bookkeeping, with very limited instruction. Fetching sales for all these books from so many different channels felt like such a complicated process it felt impossible to train someone else. I’ve had assistants in the past and it just wasn’t a clear win – especially not with declining revenue.

I feel a familiar groundswell that I haven’t for a long time – maybe since I was easily getting articles to the top of Hacker News (which led to my first book deal). I feel like I’m exactly the kind of person who will benefit from this technology – with just enough knowledge in various fields to direct the activities, and the creativity to leverage media and benefit from it. It feels like the parts of a machine have been put into place over the past two decades, and now it’s being switched on.

Who knows. Of course others have access to the same technology, but I’m excited.

I don’t currently have AI expenses in these reports because they’ve been filed under R&D, but I should probably shift them to general expenses.

YOLO-ing AI translations

After reading a couple of Amazon’s automatic Spanish translations of my books, YOLO’d translation in all the languages they offer, across all books.

There were a couple things that were off with the Spanish MMT translation. But so far the Amazon ratings are fine. The errors were clearly due to a level of abstraction that is not common across my books, so I decided to go for it.

As of a few days ago, all my books are now available on Kindle in Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, and Italian.

I would much prefer to have deals with actual publishers for those, but I don’t, so here we are. I can easily take down the translations if I’m fortunate enough to get deals in those languages (which all take a notoriously high level of success to achieve).

And who knows, maybe my AI skills will someday reach a point where it makes sense to lead and promote my own translations.

I’ve been leaving the small amount of revenue from the few translations I had out of these reports, but I’ll be keeping an eye on them.

ActiveCampaign refund

If you’ve been following these reports you might have read about my issues with ActiveCampaign. Long story short, they raised prices with insufficient (and erroneous) notice. I filed a chargeback with my bank for the difference.

You’ll see an “expense” for -$307 in July, which accounts for recouping the portion they had raised prices monthly, up until that point in the year. Their expense was amortized from their yearly fee, but won’t appear in reports after that date.

In all, I recouped nearly $1,000. I now manage email marketing through a combination of Kit and BigMailer. I hope to talk more about that soon (when I’m not doing reels).

Unclaimed property

I saw a tweet that reminded me to check the unclaimed property databases in the states I had lived. Between California and Illinois, I found $89. I believe that was a payment that was somehow unpaid from when I had some affiliate sites for which Regnow was the network. That is under Affiliates in July.

Foreign rights incoming?

I signed a one-year deal with DropCap, putting all new foreign rights deals for my catalogue under their purview. I think it’s foreign-right season? Hopefully they will have good news.

July Income

Book Sales

Misc. Products

Affiliates / Advertising

Reader Support

Services

July Expenses

General

Advertising

Hosting

August Income

Book Sales

Misc. Products

Affiliates / Advertising

Reader Support

Services

August Expenses

General

Advertising

Hosting

September Income

Book Sales

Misc. Products

Affiliates / Advertising

Reader Support

Services

September Expenses

General

Advertising

Hosting

This post is filed under Income Reports.