Happy New Year to you all! I hope you ended 2023 with more money than you started with. If you didn’t, then let’s change that for 2024 because there is a lot of money to be made from self-publishing.
Documenting My Self-Publishing Journey
Before I jump into the income report, I want to be clear that I do not share these reports to brag or because I want your congratulations. I share these to document my own self-publishing journey, which I have been doing every month since 2021. I also do it to show you what is possible, even when working a full-time job. Another reason is that I like to back up the advice that I give to you.
It’s easy for someone to make a YouTube video sharing various strategies or to put a KDP course together, but I think it’s important for you to know that the advice or direction this person is giving is actually working and producing results.
I just wanted to clear that up quickly as some people think sharing these things or talking about money so openly is a bit vulgar.
December 2023: A Record-Breaking Month
December is always a good month for me, but this December, in particular, has been the best of my self-publishing career. In the last income report, I mentioned that investing heavily in ads during November should supercharge my royalties for December, and here is the proof.
Beating Previous Records
I managed to beat my previous personal best of $14,000 last December, which I am thrilled about. Especially taking into account the Amazon printing increases.
Analyzing Royalty Patterns
Here is a screenshot of my royalties from December 2022, and you will see that the pattern is almost identical on both pictures. You can also see that between December 2022 and December 2023, I published 60 books. Most of these books were created recently during Q4.
Quality Over Quantity
So, I did not create a massive amount of books in the last year, considering I have over 1600 books in total. I mentioned this in the last income report, but around half of my books were made in the first year or so. They were not up to a good standard and have since been unpublished.
Now, I prefer to publish fewer books but make them better quality and advertise each one, instead of pumping out hundreds of books a year. Doing this also saves me a lot of time!
Photoshopping claims!
While we are looking at the royalty screenshots, I want to address a comment that I got on my last video. The comment basically said, “You need to work on your photoshopping skills because your screenshot from November 2023 and November 2022 both show the same number of books.”
Which, to be honest, is a fair comment, a bit rude but a fair comment, especially if you don’t know how the royalty estimator works. But basically, if I go into the royalty estimator and select a custom date range, for example, a date close to when I started publishing, you will see the number of books shows the same amount as I have currently.
Setting the Record Straight
I don’t know why Amazon chooses to show the data like that, but I just wanted to address the comment, in case anyone else was thinking it. He deleted the comment when I explained it. I guess I won’t be getting an apology anytime soon.
Share Your December Royalties
What were your royalties for December? Are you happy with them, and what are your royalty goals for 2024? Let me know in the comments.
Top 10 Best Selling Books
My top 10 best selling books brought in $10,839, which is 63% of my total royalties, which again proves that you don’t need 1600 books to make a decent income.
Breaking Down Earnings by Book
Now, let me break down how much these 10 books earned individually.
- My number one book is a 2024 planner and that earned $2527 in royalties.
- My second best-selling book is an activity book, and this should have been number 1. I will explain how Amazon screwed me over regarding this book in a minute.
- In the number 3 spot, we have a prompted lined journal/log book.
- In 4th place is another activity book. I am not allowed to run ads to this book because of bad language, so I created some social media content for this book which may have helped the sales.
- 5th position is a log book which sells particularly well in the USA. Log books don’t typically sell as well during Q4, as they are not items normally gifted to someone. That is why coloring books and activity books do so well.
- In 6th and 10th position, we have the brand new lined journals that were created at the end of October. To be honest, I thought these books would bring me in around $100 or so combined, but they have earned over $2000 this Q4. Like I mentioned in the last video, it is hard for a book to immediately start selling well, but even harder for a simple lined journal to do so.
Advertising Strategies and Course Offer
I would like to thank my advertising launch strategy and other advertising techniques for this success. If you want to learn all of my advertising strategies, feel free to check out, ‘The Amazon Advertising Blueprint‘ course.
https://moneyontheside.thrivecart.com/the-amazon-advertising-blueprint/?ref=web
Positions 7, 8, and 9 were log books. Now, although I had a fantastic month, I am a little bit disappointed with Amazon. Let me tell you why.
Addressing Amazon Issues
First of all, I received a lot of bad reviews on many of my books during November/December. Bad reviews are part of the process, but when they are to do with misprinting and ripped pages, it really annoys me. A lot of the reviews shared the same issues, regarding missing ink on the pages, which made the books unusable.
Impact of Bad Reviews on Sales
This massively affected the sales of a lot of my books, especially my number 2 best-selling book. This book was the best seller in its category and was constantly bringing in daily royalties between $100 and $140 for the first 10 days of December. I then received 3 one-star reviews within a few days of each other, which absolutely ruined the momentum, all due to misprinting reasons. This book has been selling well for a year now, and I haven’t changed anything to do with the interior. This was down to Amazon, and I know others in my Facebook group have experienced the same issues lately. This book then started earning below $50 per day. I believe these misprinting errors across all my books cost me between $1000-$2000.
Frustration with Amazon Support
I did try to get these reviews removed as they were clearly to do with issues on Amazon’s end and not mine. I emailed the community support team explaining the issue in great detail. I attached screenshots of the reviews mentioning the misprinting, I gave them the ASIN of the books, I provided links to the marketplace on Amazon where the reviews were from, and lots of other details. I got a reply saying that they could not find the review I was talking about. I then replied, saying I have provided all the details, you just need to go to recent reviews to find them. Someone else from the team replied stating that they couldn’t find the reviews in question. Anyway, I got the same reply 4 times from different colleagues, which blew my mind considering it’s a big company like Amazon.
Advertising Campaign Paused
To add to my frustrations, on the 20th of December, during peak gift buying time, Amazon decided to pause all of my advertising campaigns as they couldn’t take a payment. Because I was out with my family for most of the day, I didn’t check my emails until I got home, meaning that my campaigns had been paused for a long time. I spoke to the Amazon help team as soon as I found out. I explained that my bank didn’t have any issues and asked him to try and take the payment again. To no surprise, he said he couldn’t help me and that the system will try again in the next 24 hours. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait another 24 hours, but my ads were paused for about 12 hours on the UK and USA marketplaces. This would have lost me a lot of sales and momentum.
Impacted Earnings
Without these issues, I think I would have been closer to a $20,000 month. So, yes, Amazon really tried my patience during December. Did you have any similar issues with Amazon? I’d love to hear them.
Diversifying Income Streams
These issues are a strong reminder that it is a good idea to diversify your income streams, especially if you are too reliant on a company or platform. At the end of the day, you are at their mercy. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Amazon; they have changed my life and helped me reach financial freedom. Every relationship has its ups and downs, I guess.
Importance of Advertising
Now, here is an interesting bit of data which proves that advertising plays a part in overall royalties. These pie charts show the royalties earned per marketplace. I consistently sell most of my books on the USA and US marketplaces; for years, the ratio has been quite equal between the two. The other colors represent countries like Canada, Australia, Germany, etc
Between the UK and the USA, I normally spend a similar amount on Amazon advertising. However, for Q4, I made the decision to spend a bigger ratio in the UK marketplace. For December, I spent $1100 more in the UK than I did in the US, and as you can see, for December, the ratio heavily favored the UK.
This shows that running ads effectively helps to kickstart sales, which in turn lifts your books higher up the Amazon rankings, bringing additional organic sales. More organic and ad sales increase the chances of getting positive reviews, making your book more desirable than competitors with no reviews.
In my Facebook group – KDP secrets, I often see the question “Should I wait until I get a good review before running ads?” The honest answer is No! Of course, it helps if your book has a positive review, but you could be waiting forever to get that review.
Performance of Newly Published Books
I want to show you the performance of 3 of my newly published books, including the lined journals. This is a helium 10 chrome extension, and it shows you the BSR rank of any book over a period of time.
This graph is for my 2024 planner. I have selected all time, and the graph starts showing data from 09/23, which is September, obviously. As soon as this book was live, I immediately added A plus content. I also ran my ad launch strategy straight away.
Obviously, this book had no reviews at the beginning, but I ran ads to it. On the right of the image, you can see the rank. This is the Best Seller rank on Amazon. The lower the graph gets toward 0, the better the book is selling. This book, in particular, had a consistent BSR of between 800 and 2000 through December. Not bad for a brand new book with no reviews, hey?
My lined journals were published in November, which makes it more impressive, although they didn’t sell as well as the 2024 planner. You can see the similar pattern with all of these books. As I optimized my ads each week, the more sales I get, and the better the Best Seller rank gets.
Expenses and Earnings
Like I said in the previous video, I have been following this strategy for years now, and it enables me to squeeze the most I can out of Q4. I will quickly show my total expenses for December. Most of these expenses are fixed every month, except for ad spend and outsourcing.
This is the most I have ever spent on ads in a single month and is $500 more than what I spent in December 2022. Although I did beat my December 2022 royalties by $2700. I continued to outsource some A plus content which cost me $90. So, if I take away my expenses from my royalties, I am left with a very healthy $13,236.
Looking Forward to Next Q4
I cannot wait for next Q4 already. Thank you for reading; I hope some of the insights were valuable to you.
I hope you have a prosperous year! There is plenty of money to be made with Amazon KDP.
Take care!
Ben
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