Happy 2nd Anniversary in Publishing!

Happy anniversary to me! I've made it through 2 whole years of being a published author and I'm super pleased with how far I've come in such a short time. (Read last year's anniversary post). I say “short time” even though sometimes it feels like an absolute AGE since I started this journey. Considering I was writing my first Nogiku book in 2011, I've actually been at this thing for over four years now, so it definitely feels longer than it's been. Let's get straight to the nitty gritty…

State of the Author

Before I get into some numbers and graphs, I want to talk a little bit about expectations, dreams, goals, and education. I've been thinking a lot about my writing career lately, since it's so new and I have the awesome ability to shape it in any way that I can since I prefer to be indie published. When I look back on my previous career (1998 to 2008) as a web programmer and designer, I had a whole ten years to build something really fantastic. In the beginning, I was at small dot.com firms, building websites and learning new tricks and programming languages. I struggled for 3 years to find my place before I came upon the ultimate working situation for me, a position at HBO.com. Over the years I was a programmer I learned many different things: Javascript, Perl, PHP, SQL, etc. Each year, I challenged myself to take on a new goal and achieve that goal, showing my employers that I was a valuable employee. I took my education seriously.

This summer it dawned on me: my writing career is and should be NO DIFFERENT. This past year I challenged myself to learn more writing craft and how to write short stories. Both of these things I took to heart and worked really hard at. I read a few books on story structures and I wrote a few short stories, both of which I really enjoyed. And now I can say I accomplished those things, can do those things, and can move on to learn even more!

Diversifying

For this third year of my writing career, I'm setting another goal. I wonder sometimes if I haven't found success yet, like I did in my first three years of my previous career, because I'm not writing in the correct genre for me (read my post On Not Fitting In). I love scifi romance and contemporary romance, and I'll continue to write books in those genres because I like having a diverse backlist, but I want to try something new I've never tried before.

This year I'm challenging myself to learn to write mysteries. I love mysteries and have always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and Murder She Wrote, so this seems like something that would be fun to try. Heck, if I fail, it's okay too! I remember trying to learn Java, and man, I just did not get it. Lol.

So it's quite possible you'll be seeing some very different (but still Japan-inspired because I can't get away from it) books from me in the near future.

Amazon

I remember a year ago how I wanted my books to be everywhere on the planet and on every vendor I could find. I researched a ton of solutions to get my books everywhere and even opened my own web store. And then I realized just how crappy other vendors were, how difficult it was to get to them and how badly they managed their businesses. Heck, Smashwords this past week announced they won't work with Flipkart in India anymore because they were so slow to list, delist, and change prices. Last year, iBooks gave me the runaround and denied Reunited five times (they denied a Revealed short story a number of times too), and Barnes & Noble screwed up all my books' listings. Sigh.

Now that I have two years of data to look at and have been through the Scribd debacle, I've made an important decision for 2016 and beyond. I moved all of my books exclusively on Amazon for the foreseeable future. I just do not have enough readers on other vendors to be excluding Kindle Unlimited from my income stream. I apologize to those of you who have found me via iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and the two people who have bought my books on Kobo or All Romance eBooks. Lol.

Read more about my decision and learn more about my Kindle to ePub exchange program.

Sales Stats

Last year, I shared with you my book sales stats and I will do so again this year. Since next year will include Kindle Unlimited data, I'll need to come up with a new chart. I hate Excel! But I'll do it for you, my dear friends.

I am still not making a living off my writing. Not even close to minimum wage. I want to make a living solely off of writing fiction, so I don't think that will happen for another few years. (FYI, for anyone else looking to make a living off of writing fiction, it's a long game. Be prepared to invest 10 years or more). These sales numbers are just numbers, and most of the higher bar graphs are when I was running a sale, which means my income was even lower than usual.