I thought that 2021 was going to be the year that we left the Coronavirus pandemic far behind us. I didn’t foresee variants, supply chain issues, or resistance to public health recommendations. When I look back at 2021, I realize now that the world has changed in ways that we’re never going back to again. To be honest, I’m still coming to terms with navigating through this part of the pandemic. This year hasn’t been easy for me.
Still, I had some great successes, and wanted to share what I learned over the past year.
If you’re new to my wrap-ups, here are my posts from previous years:
2019: (I skipped this year, but my numbers are included in the sales graph).
Why do I write these year-end posts? I like to share what I’ve learned with new and up and coming indie authors. I also like to shed some truth on the challenges on a having an indie author career. Hopefully, my success and failures can help you.
2021 Goals
A little background for you. In 2021 I worked full time and published four books as part of my second career as an indie author:
Let Go and Be Free: 100 Final Daily Reflections for Adult Children of Alcoholics (January 12, 2021)
Persecution: book 2 of the Red Door Diaries series (February 28, 2021)
Retribution: book 3 of the Red Door Diaries series (August 15, 2021)
Godlings: book 1 in the Godlings series (November 22, 2021)
So what were my goals for 2021?
Publish new books.
Focus on marketing.
Release my Let Go and Be Free non-fiction series (four books) on IngramSpark.
After a productive 2020, I wanted to continue to write books and get out as many quality ones as I could this year. But I also wanted to focus more on marketing and book formatting. Since I started publishing my books back in 2011, I’ve used Calibre to format my books.
But in 2021, I wanted to learn how to use Vellum. The problem: I didn’t have a Mac. Why did I want to use Vellum? I wanted to provide a more professional interior for both my ebook and print books. The good news is that Mac-in-Cloud allowed me to inexpensively rent a virtual Mac in the cloud that had Vellum installed on it. Yes, I still had to purchase Vellum, but I’m so happy I did. Formatting books with Vellum now saves me time and my books look much more professional.
Once I purchased Vellum, I started releasing my books with the software and then I decided to experiment by releasing all four of my Let Go and Be Free non-fiction books through IngramSpark. I had heard from other indie authors who had consistent sales on the service without doing any advertising. I figured that I would release those four books and see if I had similar results.
And finally, I had a two-pronged approach to my marketing this year. I would continue running Amazon ads for volume 1 of my Let Go and Be Free book, and I would make book one of three of my series permafree, and then pay to have those books advertised through various newsletters. I’d drive traffic to those free books and sit back and watch as read through picked up for the other books in the series.
Expenses
Mailchimp: $411.96
ProwritingAid (lifetime license; an awesome proofreading tool): $239.00
Copyright.gov fees: $200
Bookfunnel: $20.00
Book cover: $253.52
10 ISBNs (Bowker): $295.00
Atticus book formatting services (lifetime license): $117.00
Vellum (lifetime license): $264.99
Alliance of Independent Authors membership (ALLi): $119.00
Marketing (newsletter promos and Kobo promotions): $1,072.99
Amazon ads: $901.48
IngramSpark Fee (Let Go 2): $24.50
Mac in Cloud Service: $30.00
Google apps: $76.32
Squarespace web hosting fees: $203.52
Web domains: $27.16
Total: $4,256.44
A few thoughts about my expenses:
I became a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors to not only have access to all their great resources but also to receive my monthly coupon code for IngramSpark. Without the coupon code, IngramSpark charges $49 per book. Since I created five books in IngramSpark this year, the cost of membership to ALLi ($119) was a lot cheaper.
Yes, I wasn’t happy to spend $295 on ISBNs. But if I wanted to release print copies of my Let Go and Be Free series with IngramSpark, I needed the ISBNs. I still have a few codes left, so I don’t expect to have this expense in 2022.
Book formatting tools such as Vellum and Atticus took a nice chunk out of my budget. Both tools are onetime expenses, so I’ll not be needing to spend money on this again. Why spend money on both? I wanted to teach myself how to use Vellum, and after doing so, I can’t speak more highly on how useful and easy the software is to use to format books. The only challenge is that I don’t own a Mac and need to rent time on a virtual Mac. For all of 2021, I spent $30 for the Mac in Cloud service and I still have plenty of hours left (I had rented 30 hours of time). With Atticus, the cloud service is for people who use both Mac and PCs. I didn’t expect Atticus would be coming out this year and for the lifetime beta fee of $117, I wanted to get the service so that I can learn how to use it (and compare it to Vellum).
Marketing fees: I’ll get into this in a bit, but spending more than a $1000 on newsletter promos also took a big chunk out of my budget. I went all in this year with going wide, make the first book in my series free, and then promoting the free books through various newsletter promotions.
Sales
Here’s a breakdown of all my income for 2021:
Amazon: $1600.93
ACX audiobooks: $28
Affiliate sales: $200.91
Apple Books: $103.12
Kobo: $42.67
Barnes & Noble: $30.71
Google Play: $89.69
IngramSpark: $161.99
Total: $2258.02
Reflections
On the positive side, my gross sales are the most that I’ve ever earned before. Of course, the negative is that I spent more than $4256 on my business expenses. Why do I like to shine a light on my business with such scrutiny?
I know that there are many indie authors out there who have just started or are about to start and, for every best-selling or six-figure author, there are many more of us that fall into my camp of struggling to turn a profit.
When I look back at 2021, I know that I could have pulled back on expenses. I didn’t need to buy Vellum, Atticus, ISBNs, ALLi membership, have a website, or a mailing list. Frankly, I could have saved a lot of money by cancelling all of those line-item expenses and just focused on putting books out.
But I don’t write just to make money.
I’m a lifelong student and I like learning new things and I learned a lot this year.
Before I get into the details, let’s play a simple “what if?” game:
If I pulled out all the non-essential expenses for the year, how much would I have saved?
Non-essential:
Mailchimp: $411.96
Copyright fees: $200
Bookfunnel: $20.00
Atticus book formatting services (lifetime license): $117.00
Vellum (lifetime license): $264.99
Alliance of Independent Authors membership (ALLi): $119.00
Marketing (newsletter promos and Kobo promotions): $1,072.99
Mac in Cloud Service: $30.00
Google apps: $76.32
Squarespace web hosting fees: $203.52
Web domains: $27.16
Total: $2423.94
When I subtract my non-essential expenses ($2423.94), from my full expense list ($4256.44) my essential spending is $1832.50 for 2021. When I subtract those expenses from my total sales ($2258.02), I came out with a positive $425.52 in sales. Again, we’re playing “what if?” here, but humor me.
In the end, all the earnings I make through my indie author business are peanuts. I could have picked up a second job at minimum wage and easily made more money.
Yes, I still am struggling to learn the business of writing and on strengthening my craft. Why do I keep going? I figured that out this year—it’s something I’ve always known, but never could put my finger on it that would make much sense to others.
But before I get into what I learned, let me first give a breakdown of my sales, so that you can learn what worked and didn’t work for me this year.
2021 Breakdown of Sales by Book Title
The graph above tells a striking story: My daily meditation guides (Let Go and Be Free) for Adult Children of Alcoholics continue to be my best selling series.
And what’s even more telling: I spent $1,072.99 on newsletter marketing promotions to three of my permafree books. When I add up the read-through sales that I earned from the three series that I promoted, it comes to $364.06.
What did I learn? Promoting one of my wide free books did not translate into sales.
I tracked all the promotions that I sent out and I can share the data on how many free downloads I had (and which platform brought in the most downloads).
But before I do that, I want to be clear: The newsletter promotions did not work for me. I write fairy-tale and adventure fantasy. If you write romance or thrillers, I expect you’ll have better results than me.
So either my books suck, they’re not what readers on those newsletter lists are looking for, or maybe those readers are just looking for free books. It could be a combination of all those things (or more).
I can’t cry over spilled milk.
I can look at the data, see the average reviews for my books, and keep practicing my craft. I’ve been at this now for a decade. I’m not going to give up now. It’s not just money that’s driving me.
Book Expenses and Sales: 2011-2021
When I look back over the last ten years, I smile. Back in elementary school, I wanted to grow up to be a “novelist” (that’s what I wanted to call myself back then). I wrote my first book at 16 and obsessively worked on that book up through my late 20s.
But with the launch of the Kindle and ebooks, I realized that I could achieve my dream. I wrote one book and then its sequel, but it never saw the light of day. I gave up on my dream and got a full-time job, got married, and had kids.
When my daughter was a toddler, I wrote Lost: Cinderella’s Secret Witch Diaries and since then I’ve written 14 novels and 5 non-fiction books.
Yes, my sales aren’t great and my expenses are still way too high.
I’ve learned how to format both print and ebooks, been on several podcasts as a guest, set up my own automated email sequences, keep up a bi-monthly newsletter, and am learning the ins and outs of Amazon ads.
Now that 2021 is coming to a close, let me delve into what worked and what didn’t.
Newsletter Download Breakdown
Over the course of the first half of 2021, I spent $1,072.99 on newsletter promotions and only earned back $364.06. Below are breakdowns of a Freebooksy, Fussy Librarian, and Book Barbarian promotions. The first two promotions performed well with downloads, though I didn’t see much in the way of sales over the month or two afterward. I also wish to point out that I had poor results for a Book Barbarian promotion. Your mileage might vary, but I’ll not be spending my money on a Book Barbarian promotion again.
Want more data? Here is the Google sheet for all of my 2021 book marketing newsletter promotions.
Clearly, the newsletter promotions and going wide did not work for me. Not only did I not make my money back, but I had some of my lowest fiction sales in years.
I put all my fiction advertising budget into newsletter promotions and that didn’t pay off.
Freebooksy
Date: January 9, 2021
Book: Lost
Cost: $110
Downloads:
Amazon: 1118
Barnes & Noble: 1
Kobo: 52
Google Play: 33
Apple Books: 71
Cost per download (CPD): $.09
Fussy Librarian
Date: January 16, 2021
Book: Lost
Cost: $42
Downloads:
Amazon: 748
Barnes & Noble: 40
Kobo: 76
Google Play: 53
Apple Books: 32
Cost per download (CPD): $.04
Book Barbarian
Date: February 8, 2021
Book: Lost
Cost: $50
Downloads:
Amazon: 287
Barnes & Noble: 0
Kobo: 0
Google Play: 0
Apple Books: 0
Cost per download (CPD): $.17
Amazon Ads
In 2021, I spent $901.48 in ads on Amazon, but I only spent that money to promote my Let Go and Be Free (volume 1) book. I mostly ran automatic ads, typically starting up a new one daily, and I set the cost per click to be at $.35.
I also tried multiple permutations of standard ads at around $.40 - $.59 per click with hundreds of keywords. I did my research, pulled together the lists, and ran the keyword ads ever 2-4 weeks (depending on how well they performed). I tried daily spend limits as low as $500 and as high as $15,000.
Some ads would turn on and I’d see some good impressions, while others never really took off.
With limited time, I did my best to make the ads as easy for me to set up and run as possible. Because of the topic of my book, I could not find any combination of words that would allow me to have my own ad copy, so I stuck with automatic ads. I would have preferred my own text on the ad, but the automatic ones worked. (In talking with other writers, I learned that they had similar issues when trying to get Amazon to accept ad copy on weight loss and other self-help topics.)
For 2022, I will continue to run Amazon ads, but I’ve currently turned all my ads off because I’ve found that the keyword costs are skyrocketing due to the holiday season. I’ll get back into running ads in January.
I’ll also try running a few ads for my fiction books in 2022 to experiment, but when I’ve tried that in the past, I didn’t have much success.
Bookbub and Facebook Ads
I’ve tried over the years to get a BookBub featured deal, but I haven’t been able to land one yet. Every few months I go into my BookBub tracking sheet and try again. If I’m selected for one, great, but I’m not going to lose sleep on it.
And when the BookBub ads started up a few years back, I tried them, but I didn’t see much results and decided to spend my time and energy on Amazon ads.
What about Facebook? There’s not much to say here. I don’t agree with Facebook’s mission and their refusal to take responsibility for how much harm their products have caused people. Between the reports that came out on how toxic Instagram can be for teenager girls and Frances Haugen’s testimony on Capitol Hill, I decided not to spend my advertising dollars there.
What Did I Learn in 2021?
Vellum
I taught myself how to use Vellum to format both my ebook and print books. For the longest time, I resisted purchasing the software. I didn’t want to spend the money, and I didn’t have a Mac. I prided myself that I could format my books from scratch using Calibre. Plus, I really enjoyed getting into the code and tweaking my books.
But when I look back, I realize that not only did I waste a lot of time formatting my books on my own, but Vellum had more formatting styles than I could have imagined. I admit it: I was wrong and am so happy that I learned how to use Vellum.
To help the indie author community, I wrote up what I learned about Vellum in my “Step-by-Step Instructions of How to Use Vellum to Make eBook and Print Files” blog post and shared it with the Wide for the Win Facebook group. If you’re in need of instructions, go check it out.
IngramSpark
What else did I learn this year? I took the plunge and purchased 10 ISBNs and learned how to set up my books in IngramSpark. Now bookstores from around the world can purchase print versions of my Let Go and Be Free books.
What I didn’t know last year is that bookstores don’t order their print books from Amazon. Why? Cost. In IngramSpark, the general incentive is 55% off for bookstores to buy books. Granted, I’m not making a lot of money per book, but I have the Amazon print version (that is selling well to readers) and now I have the IngramSpark print version that’s selling to bookstores.
Part of the challenge with IngramSpark is that bookstores would prefer that I accept returns. Since I have a limited budget, I’ve decided not to accept returns. Why? Earlier this year, Pamela Kelley shared that she had received back 1,800 book returns from Amazon. They had purchased extra copies of a Christmas book published in December 2020 and then returned the books to IngramSpark many months later. Pamela was hit with a massive return bill.
Knowing that such practices are taking place, I advise you to protect yourself so that you’re not also hit with numerous returns that you would then need to pay for.
Large Print Books
I don’t have any data yet because I only just finished creating a large print version of my Let Go and Be Free book, but I wanted to include this here. I had heard for the last few years that other authors were seeing strong sales of their large print books, so I put my toe in the water and used Vellum to create my large print book for IngramSpark.
What I didn’t think through is that I spent some time formatting my Word file and then imported that into Vellum. I forgot that Vellum would do all the hard work for me, so I wasted some time in setting up the font size and borders in Word. I was trying to rush to get the book together and didn’t stop to think the steps through. Thankfully, with that lesson learned (and now having created documentation), I’ll not that mistake again.
Build Processes and Document MY Workflows
With working full-time, volunteer work, and raising a family, I have limited time to write. I get up at 5 a.m. four times a week and write (or edit). I cram in marketing and business work at night or the weekends. On the other 3 days of the week, I run early in the morning.
I don’t have time to re-learn intricate steps in book formatting or remembering what I need to do next for a book launch.
To solve that problem, I’ve started using Trello for my personal work and to document my “how to” steps on launching a book.
I can easily create a Trello card, duplicate it for as many books as I want, and set up a simple “to do” list per project. Here’s a 5-minute Loom video to show you an example of my Trello board with my book launch “to do” checklist.
The more books I publish, the more I’m building up my backlist and my knowledge. By creating processes and having a workflow, I’m not re-inventing the wheel each time I publish a book. I’m learning to work smart.
Know Thyself: Clifton Strengths
Back in September, I picked up Becca Syme’s Dear Writer, You Need to Quit and I can’t recommend her book enough. When I first heard about her book, I didn’t have any clue on what it was really about. So I read her book and here is a list of things that I quite this year:
Instagram posts for my Let Go and Be Free series.
Comparing myself to other authors (okay, I’m still working on this).
Running Facebook ads.
Berating myself for not doing better financially by selling my books.
I also took the additional step and took the CliftonStrengths test. The results of the test weren’t revolutionary for me because I’ve known my strengths or weaknesses, but I did enjoy comparing my top five strengths with my weaker strengths. Here are my top 5:
Learner
Intellection
Input
Connectedness
Empathy
Basically, I like to learn, gather information, and then connect with others using empathy. That through-line can be found in all my fiction books as well as my non-fiction writings. I feel comfortable in my own skin and in not only what I write about, but why.
As corny as it sounds, I see these words as a thread that connects us. I share what I learn in the hopes of building relationships.
What’s my weakest strength: Command. Pretty telling.
Now I’m using what I learned to help me align better with what my strengths are, but also to help me use my six through ten strengths.
With 2021 being a mixed bag due to the pandemic, I took time to rethink what I want—not only with my day job but also with my indie author career. The Great Resignation is happening because people are waking up to realize that they’re not happy and can choose to work differently.
I know that I can’t just keep pumping books out one after the other each month. I need time to think, process, explore, and to be.
Analytics: Data Are Your Friend
I have Google Tag manager installed on my website and I like to review the data. What are the most accessed webpages? How much time do people spend on my site? Where are the people coming from to visit my site?
I get pitched from content marketers pretty often as they want to partner with me to write an article for me and have me post it on my site. I know that I could make some money doing this, but I’d rather only write about products and services that I actually use and enjoy.
So when I looked at my site’s analytics, I saw a few interesting things:
A review of the PARKS board game that I wrote back in 2020 is the 4th most visited page on my site.
An article I wrote back in 2018 on the Netflix series Anne with an E came in at 11th.
Throughout the year, I like to write blog posts where I review something I like that’s similar to one of my books. And in those posts, I’ll link to one of my books or add affiliate links to potentially earn some money. It’s an easy way to get some organic traffic to see my products (books/stories) and I like to review things that I like so it’s a win-win.
As for where visitors to my site come from, here are the top five countries:
United States
United Kingdom
Canada
India
Australia
I like seeing more international traffic come to my site, but as of yet, I haven’t been able to entice readers from India to pick up more of my books. If I had more time/funds, I could redo covers of my books and make them more appealing to readers in different countries.
When I dig deeper into the analytics, I can see that 57.40% of the visitors are on desktop and only 36.66% on a mobile device. More than 62% of people visiting my site are female with the majority of visitors being 25-34 years of age. Their interests are in “Media & Entertainment/Book Lovers” as well as categories such as “Food & Dining/Cooking Enthusiasts/30 Minute Chefs”, and “Media & Entertainment/Movie Lovers.”
And I can see the flow of traffic on my site: Most people land on the home page, then visit one of the my series’ pages, and then look at the individual book pages on the site.
I highly recommend that you set up Google analytics on your site and look at the data every few months. There’s a lot of information to be found there. It might not give you a full picture, but having some data can help you in the long run.
When you could do is to use Google campaigns and put those links in the back of your ebooks. I prefer to drive traffic to my website and then offer all the various publishing platforms to those people. (I did this because Apple won’t let you directly link to an Amazon sales page in the iOS Kindle app on an iPhone or iPad). Since the major of traffic coming to my site are people using iPhones or iPads, I play it safe to drive the traffic to my site.
In testing my ebooks on an iPhone, I became frustrated that the links wouldn’t work, so I’d rather drive the traffic to my website than for a reader to also become frustrated and not have a link work.
The more data we have, the more we can use that information to help us make marketing decisions.
Need help with Google analytics? Here’s my “How to Identify Your Reader Profile via Google Analytics” article on the Alliance of Independent Authors website.
ScribeCount
I’ve been using ScribeCount since it first launched, but I leaned into the tool this year because I wanted to better understand (there’s that “Learner” in me again!) what was working for my business and what wasn’t.
For 2021, my fiction marketing strategy consisted of putting book 1 of several series permafree on the major platforms (Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Google Play, and Apple Books) and drive traffic to those books by advertising in newsletter promotions.
In 2021, readers picked up 24,819 free copies of my ebooks.
When I look at how successful I was in going wide (another 2021 goal of mine), I didn’t do too well. More than 82% of my book sales were on Amazon, with Kobo being less than 5% of my sales.
I continue to find it difficult to build up sales (and reviews) on other platforms.
When I look back and see that readers downloaded more than 24,000 free ebooks, but I only sold 523 books, that’s a downright disappointing. My hope that going wide and driving traffic to sell other books in that series failed.
The lesson that I learned: I need to spend more time understanding what readers want and then write books like that.
I’m not saying to give up my own individual flare, but I need to better understand what’s selling in the market these days.
With ScribeCount, I’m able to see data on what book is selling, on what online store, and in what country. But what I really like seeing is the breakdown of the print and ebook sales. For my Let Go and Be Free (volume 1) book, readers evenly purchased the print version. (This is another reason why I wanted to experiment with a large print version of the book and to make the book available on IngramSpark).
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the last few years is:
Learning the business side of being an indie author will make or break you.
Writing books is easy. I can dream something up, sit down, and write it up. I love writing. The business side (marketing, copyright, advertising, trends, keyword searches, etc.) is so much more difficult. It’s not impossible, but it takes time and the learning never ends.
Our industry is evolving and what worked yesterday may not work today.
The good news is that I’m a lifelong learner. I’ve been selling books since 2011 and have learned so much. I still have a long way to go, but that’s the beauty of it all: The road is long, winding, and leads off to the horizon. For me, I want to learn, explore, and grow.
Yes, I have failures, but I wouldn’t be where I am today without those missteps.
Summing It All Up
For me, 2021 was a mixed bag. I look back at the beginning of the year and things started off rocky. Coronavirus cases had skyrocketed due to the holiday season, and an insurrection took place on January 6th.
I had hoped that with all the vaccinations taking place throughout the US that we would be in a better place this Christmas, but as I write this post cases are still extremely high and we’re all waiting to find out more information about the Omicron variant.
Over the course of the year, my wife and I have navigated risk factors for our kids, and tried to figure out how best to make certain that are family stayed safe.
Our oldest went off to college and my daughter started high school.
Lots of change took place in 2021 and I did my best to roll with the punches.
After ten years of being an indie author, I realize that there’s never going to be “more time” to write or learning book marketing. All we have is now. I rather liked Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Hold Fast to Dream” blog post. There’s no better time to write than now.
I can’t wait to have more time until I retire. I’m taking the long and slow approach like the tortoise in the fable. If I waited, I might never publish any of my books. I might never finish a book and I surely wouldn’t have readers who send me great words of encouragement.
When I look back a decade ago and see what I knew then, and compare that to what I’ve learned about writing and marketing, I’m amazed. I’ve learned a lot, but I know that I have so much more to learn. I’m never bored and the limits are set only by my imagination.
There are NFTs, the Metaverse, cryptocurrency, and a whole list of other great things to learn.
Recently, I pulled out my old Atari 2600 and played Adventure with my kids. The graphics are horrible, but someone had to write the story about the character looking for keys to find treasure to win the game.
Fast-forward nearly forty years later and The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience recently dropped. Yes, you can still tell that the people are CGI, but we’re quickly getting to a point that it’s going to be challenging to distinguish between the real world and virtual reality games.
Someone is going to have to write the stories and adventures in the Metaverse. Sure, books aren’t going away, but there will be other properties and products that need storytellers. Look at how the video game Hades just won a Hugo award (that’s a first for a video game).
In the end, that’s what I am: a storyteller. Just as I couldn’t quite know what the future was going to be when I played my Atari as a kid, so I can’t quite see where we’re headed now.
I do know that there will be great opportunities for authors. And yes, tools can be used for both good and bad, but the possibilities are going to be endless. What we learn today about storytelling, the market, and the business of writing will help serve us for what’s coming down the line.
Where some might only see my financial failure in this year-end report, others will see that I’m shining a light on the necessity of education and community. No one is an island as John Donne once wrote, and I look forward to learning all the new technology to come as well as sharing that with my fellow authors.
Thank you for taking the time to stop by and I hope you found this post helpful.
Please note that there are affiliate hyperlinks used on this page and that I receive a small percentage of sales if you choose to purchase. I only recommend items that I have found helpful and useful, and am passing them on to you to help. Thank you!