Show Me the Money (Part #3): Your Book's Second Year on Sale
A Literal Literary Loser's Long Haul
My 18th traditionally published book, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” came out November 2022.
In May 2023, in one of the most popular posts from this Substack, entitled, “Show Me the Money: Large Publisher v. Small Publisher v. Self-Publishing,” I did something you are supposedly never allowed to do in this business: I got real, and I got honest.
I wrote: For the sales period of July 1, 2022 through December 31, 2022, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” has earned a total of $1,392.25 in royalties.
In April 2024 and an updated post, “Show Me the Money (Part #2): Self-Publishing v. Micro-Publishing,” I continued to do the forbidden and shared: January 1 - June 30, 2023 brought 483 sales and $345.73 in royalties. My most recent statement, July 1 - December 31, 2023 reported 315 units sold for $294.62 in royalties. Altogether, I have sold 2552 books to date in all formats (ebook, paperback, and hardback), and earned (including the initial advance) $2070.55. (Which would seem to suggest that I beat the industry average of selling less than 2000 copies, and made a little less than $1 per book.)
For reference, here is the industry average I was referring to:
The majority of books published (96 percent) make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies
Of 58,000 titles published in a year, 90 percent sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies
Since “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” came out at the tail end of 2022, I am rolling those sales into 2023 to state that, it’s first year on the market, my book earned $2070.55.
But that was the year of my 100+ people book launch, my California book tour, the flurry of guest posts and podcast interviews and friends and family purchasing and just everything newer always being better (hat-tip: Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother).
So what happens in the second year? When friends and family have made their purchases, bloggers and podcasters have moved onto the next, new thing, and your social media posts have blended into the background to become white noise?
You know what they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get… pushy.
I got very, very pushy.
Surely, there is still a podcaster who’d be willing to tolerate listening to me go on and on? A blogger who can put up with my opinions? A book club with a hole to fill?
For 2023, the second year of my book’s publication, I didn’t let up.
I posted, I wrote, I talked, I nagged. I learned to Instagram! (OK, so maybe I hired my teen daughter to Instagram for me. But that was still learning. Kind of.)
What did that get me? (Cue “Rose’s Turn” from “Gypsy.” Why did I do it… what did it get me….?)
I obviously don’t have the full accounting for 2024 yet. Only January 1 through June 30, 2024.
According to my latest royalty statement, for the first half of my novel’s second year on sale, I sold 169 books (89 ebooks on Amazon, 44 ebooks outside of Amazon, 32 paperbacks, 3 hardbacks) and earned $121.59.
Now for the fun part: How does this stack up against the self-published titles I’ve been using as a comparison metric, the fiction “The Figure Skating Mystery Series” and the non-fiction “Getting into NYC Kindergarten,” my all-time best-selling, self-published title?
For the first six months of 2024, I sold 11 copies of “The Figure Skating Mystery” series, and earned around $70, give or take. This includes a thoroughly unproductive paid promotion in January (read all the gory details on its utter failure, here), an even more unproductive and costly one in April to tie in with the World Figure Skating Championship (more failure, here), and a much more productive giveaway of “Murder on Ice,” the first book in the series, that same month (a modicum of success, here.)
On the other hand, for the first six months of 2024, I sold 91 units of “Getting into NYC Kindergarten” via Amazon, and earned about $550. This book, I do non-stop promotion for via my public workshops, one on one consults, articles, and social media.
I sold more books and made more money traditionally publishing fiction over self-publishing, and I sold fewer books but made more money self-publishing non-fiction.
Is that because I put more promotional hours into my non-fiction over my fiction? The former is literally my day job, while the latter is only my reason for living. (Sorry, husband and kids, love you too!)
I have also written in the past about how, having my novels traditionally published means I did not pay for the editing, the formatting, the cover, or for distributing ARCs and other promotional tools. A penny saved is a penny earned, after all!
From summer of 2022 to summer of 2024, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” has sold 2720 copies and earned me $2192.15. So, I’m still beating the average!
I definitely think it was worth it. In fact, I enjoyed my publishing experience with History Through Fiction so much that we have a new book coming out May 2025. Read all about “Go On Pretending,” here!
What about you? What has your self-publishing versus traditional publishing journey been like? Was it worth it? Would love to hear from you in the comments!
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And speaking of promotion, I’m still going strong! Watch my daughter and I discuss “Divide Me By Zero,” by Lara Vapnyar below. AP Calculus, a too happy marriage, weird kids, love, money making me a math savant, and Soviet Jews - oh, my!