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renegadefolkhero) wrote2025-04-13 06:55 am
Self-Publishing Roundup
Or, This Shit Again
A song as old as time, I keep meaning to post here and keep not and here we are. Let's just start at the top, baby steps.
vriddy put me on Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic, and while we are VERY different writers, a lot of what she has to say in that book dovetails with my evolving mindset so thank you friend. I pulled a few quotes.
“We must risk delight,” he wrote. “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”
What you want is to cultivate quite the opposite: You must learn how to become a deeply disciplined half-ass.
It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind).
If you made something and it didn’t work out, let it go. Remember that you’re nothing but a beginner—even if you’ve been working on your craft for fifty years. We are all just beginners here, and we shall all die beginners. So let it go
You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters. You don’t need to know what anything means
After weeks of soul searching after my recent book's "failure," I realized my problem was I was being Too American. Meaning, even though I've sworn up and down I never wanted writing fiction to be my day job, way in the back of my mind, I'd come to view it as a backup plan. I had this idea that if I just cranked things up a few notches, I could make a living doing this if I had to, and when my proof of concept failed to sell, the whole thing sorta collapsed.
Anyway, I got better. Which is a glib way of saying, I finally really and truly internalized that not only do I NOT want to do this for a living, I can't. I lack the temperament and ability. And that is fine.
So, I made a list of things I want and need to do to enjoy writing to the fullest extent, and my list really hasn't changed much.
- Publish as many books as possible before I die
- Write what I want, and freely write across genres
- Finish books (release the ghosts, as I call them)
- (new one) Release books exactly the way I want to, even if I know I'll never earn out
- (new one) Prioritize releasing books easily and moving on to the next versus "doing it right"
- Embrace being a deeply disciplined half-ass, which is probably the most on-point description of my writing personality I've ever encountered
And as an aside, I'd like to start being frank about numbers in these posts. Writers tend to guard The Numbers like precious jewels, because We're All Competitors except we're not (I'll save that rant for later). If you're new here, I'm a wide niche queer (mostly MM) writer, my backlists are erotica and romance but my goal is to move into SFF.
I never posted my year-end roundup for 2024 and I just finished my taxes, so in the spirit of that, here we go.
2024 Roundup
Last year I made about $7,000 in royalties. If you're trying to make a living in the US, this is nowhere near what you need. If you're a hobbyist who just needs to buy book covers, video games, and maybe replace your old fridge, this is a fantastic number. While some of these earnings came from branching out and trying new platforms, the vast majority of that is backlist sales on established platforms as MM readers slowly discover me and resonate with my off-market weirdness.
US TAXes
While it's fresh in my mind.
Self-published writers need to file a Schedule C 1040 with the IRS (NOT a Schedule E, which are different types of royalties). Most of the big platforms will send you a 1099 with two notable exceptions. Kobo, which is Canadian, does not. And if you have royalties dispensed through PayPal, PP will only send a 1099-K if you received over $5,000 in payments in 2024. (For 2025, it will be anything over $600, and that is the new standard I believe).
The tax rate for most of us is 15.3%, and the IRS will penalize you if you wait until the end of the year to file, no matter what you make. This is because the people who deliberately made our tax code complicated so millionaires can tax evade are in fact sadists, and they're taking it out on us normies. For self-employed income you're supposed to estimate what you'll make and pay quarterly. You can do this through IRS pay direct. I made $2,400 Q1, and after deductions I'm paying about $340 this quarter.
2025 Look Ahead
- I'm on track to release my 50th book this year. (ffffffffffffff)
- I'll be releasing at least 6 books across 3 pens, and 3 of them are ghosts (books I started writing and had to abandon for whatever reason) so I'm happy about that.
- I'm on track for over 9k this year (my 4th). I made around 10k my first 3 years combined, to provide some perspective.
I recently released a book that won't earn out. It's written entirely for my pleasure, and it's a weird, imperfect, beautiful little book. I underpriced it, commissioned a cover, and pumped some money into ARCs because I like it when people say nice things about my books.
Do to royalty rate stupidity, at the 99c price point has to sell somewhere between 150-200 copies to break even, it varies with each platform. (At the "correct" higher price point of $2.99, it only has to sell around 35 copies... what a difference the 30% vs 70% royalty rate makes!) This is why I normally strongly, strongly, STRONGLY discourage shortrom pricing at 99c. Fuck that shit.
Anyway, I expect to sell 20 copies the first month on the high end, but we'll see? I've never released a book at 99c, and I'm treating it like an entry point to my backlist. But I also want to release a book I know can't earn out, as a mental exercise.
My goal is to not look at it for a month, and to focus on my current ghost. (I did already re-read it once; yes, I read my own books for fun.) I'm trying to internalize what Gilbert says: it doesn't matter if no one likes it, buys it, or reads it. I like it. And that's all that matters, and I'm onto the next one. (Gushing 4 and 5-star reviews certainly won't hurt though.)
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If you aren't treating it like a business, and you're just throwing books out there, it could be a while before you have reportable income. Especially if you're paying for covers, editing, etc.
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I'm really due a re-read of Gilbert :D I know some parts felt a bit too woo for me but there's so much good food for thought in that book. Especially around mindset, which is something I'm trying to wrangle at the moment. Hm you know what I'm going to put my library hold on it right now XD I also came across this 10 minutes video from her about the differences between hobby, job, career, vocation and that's something I'm also chewing on a the moment. I think maybe you've already figured it out but I enjoyed the way she frames it all.
Onward!
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Hell yeah write what you want \o/