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November 2024 Income Report

January 02 2025 – 05:44pm

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November’s revenue was $6,968, down from October’s $8,815. Profits were $3,351, down from October’s $4,853.

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Revenue still climbing, with profits stagnant

Revenue is still climbing, while profits remain stagnant. Revenue over the past twelve months has been $83,007. After dropping as low as $70,173 in June. It’s current level is the highest it’s been since January, when it was $83,478.

But, profits over the past twelve months have been only $45,704, which is almost exactly the average over the past ten months, $45,880.

Direct sales retracting

Direct sales have been a much larger portion of book revenues than I had expected when I started my Shopify store about a year ago. But those higher levels have been promoted by the release of two new products: The Journal Prompts Workbook, and How to Sell a Book.

Now that the initial spike in revenue from new products has subsided, direct sales revenue has settled back down. Direct sales of books this month were $688, which is 14% of all book revenue. Over the past six months, the average share has been 29.4%.

I was only 30% sure at the beginning of the year that I could grow that share to at least 30% by the end of the year, so finishing with that level seems very unlikely. But I will finish with a bigger share than I had expected!

100-Word Writing Habit Kindle on the way

After nearly two years in only paperback edition, I’m developing the ePub edition of 100-Word Writing Habit, which means it will also be available on Kindle.

The performance of this book has been weird. People react to it really positively in some contexts, for example, it’s the only book I’m able to break even on advertising on Meta. Yet it’s sold just over 1,000 copies.

I’m curious to see how releasing a Kindle edition affects the overall sales of the book. On one hand, I think that can increase awareness of both editions, as alerts for the release of the Kindle go out, or people discover it while browsing. On the other hand, I fear it will dilute sales of the paperback edition, or that readers will be disappointed in the short length of the book, given what prices will be necessary to make a decent margin.

I considered coding the ebook myself, but I’m working with the same designer from Reedsy to develop this version. It’s a bit more complex to produce a layout that mimics the paperback or PDF version of the book. You’ll see just a part of the fee for the designer in this month’s report, under Outside Contractors.

Readwise promotion of How to Sell a Book

Sales in December will get a boost from my third promotion in Readwise’s Wisereads newsletter. I shared a special extensive sample edition of How to Sell a Book with the community, including a coupon for purchase of the first edition.

So far, I’ve seen a spike in sales coinciding with the promotion. Even better, much of those sales are for the ebook version, so those are almost pure profit.

Black Friday promotion

I did a pretty simple Black Friday promotion this year, offering 20% off orders from the Shopify store. This promotion wasn’t quite as effective as the Readwise one. It brought in $316 in revenue, but most of those sales are of physical books that have to be printed, packed, and shipped.

I didn’t promote any courses this year as I have in past years. Doing so would have brought in around $1,000, but I’m sunsetting my courses, at least as they are right now.

TikTok Shop!

After a long and arduous struggle, I now have a TikTok Shop! I won’t get into why this was so difficult, but TikTok is very very picky about who they allow to open a store, especially if you spend time outside of the countries where they’ll let users run stores.

It took about a year to figure everything out, including getting a document from the IRS noting the current address of my business.

TikTok forces your official account to have the same name as your shop, so I made a separate account just for the shop. The account I’ve been using the past couple years, with nearly 30k followers, is just the “marketing account.” So, I’m using this different account to share some reels on running an indie author business.

I have yet to make a sale through this shop, so who knows if the struggle will turn out worthwhile. It seems promoting products on TikTok takes some marketing judo. Generally, simply showing your book kills engagement, but content totally irrelevant to your book doesn’t sell either.

Happy New Year!

As you can see, this is a shorter income report than usual (and a little later). I don’t know why, other than that I have been trying to step back and see the bigger picture, as I usually do during the holidays. As such, I don’t have much to say, just to observe. Happy New Year!

Income

Book Sales

Misc. Products

Affiliates / Advertising

Reader Support

Services

Expenses

General

Advertising

Hosting

This post is filed under Income Reports.