![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Self-Publishing Roundup
Apr. 13th, 2025 06:55 amOr, 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.
( Read more... )
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.)
