How much I made in my first year on #kdp (2023) | Indie Author Income

hey what's up my name is Lindsay and I am a self-published Indie author and I've made a few videos about income and income transparency and I made one last year in 2023 about how much I made in the like six months that I had been published and now I've been published for a year and like 10 months um and I realized that I never made a full like onee recap so I figured I would do that today I know it's a little bit weird into the year and we're just going to roll with it so

I'm going to tell you about my books a little bit and then I'm going to get right into the sales numbers and how much royalties and kind of bring you along to see how much it fluctuated throughout the entire year and then give you the grand total so last year in 2023 I had published Kingdom of Ashen Shadow which was the first book in my kind of interconnected spicy Dark Fantasy series but then in June I published second one so it was right at that cusp when I did the six-month income review that I had

published Kingdom of Shadow and Ice which is the second one so these are like I said interconnected the titles are interconnected so you can see that they share a word the third book will be called Kingdom Of Ice And Nightmares I will have them linked below Kingdom Of Ice And Nightmares should be out by the end of November so I have not released a book since Kingdom of Shadow and ice but I figured this way I can show you guys what I made for the whole first year of being self-published and then later in my

career I can look back and be like oh that's what I made in my first year without going into all the data and I can it'll be a fun little memory cap capsule moment here we go I'm going to pull up all my stats and they are both enrolled in Kindle unlimited so I get paid for the pages red but then I also get paid for the orders and I'm kind of just excited to see like the overall flow of it maybe I'll put a chart somewhere maybe I'll just tell you I haven't decided yet

editing Lindsay can figure that one out and if you didn't know can unlimited is through Amazon which means I'm published exclusively as as an ebook through Amazon but I also decided to only keep my paperback and hardbacks or whatever also on Amazon like the physical copies 2023 I published Kingdom of Ashan Shadow I had they don't make this easy I swear to god Amazon get your together I'm going to read this straight from my screen it's it's over here I swear oh no I turned my big I turned my big screen off get that back

on for you okay so January 20123 I had 31 orders either eback eback I always say an eback so last year January 2023 I had 31 orders and that could be physical or ebook and then I had 3,291 adriat and that came out to $136 187 and then in February I had nine orders so I think a lot of people were really excited to get the physical copies when I released like friends and family and stuff so that's expected to see that drop so nine physical orders and 4,288 Pages read so a little bit more

page reads but the roal royalties came out to $512 which if you've seen my recent income videos feeling familiar March I had 18 orders and 13,918 Patriots so it was like a big jump in Pay roots from 4,000 to 13,000 almost 14,000 so that's like a big jump which I was super excited about I remember that cuz I was like oh my gosh I got over 10,000 that's nuts like that's a lot of patries double double thousand I don't know anyways March was $122 54 so I got a little taste for the three digigit the

three figure income I was rolling big I was a big baller okay April I had 23 orders like I had a lot of a lot more orders than I remember getting I always imagine in my head that it was so many more page reads and 28,6 Page reads so it doubled almost 14,000 to 28,000 that's nuts in a month that's super cool to see looking back at that okay so April I made $200. 34 so I was like it's growing I was very excited I think I'm still really excited I don't know why I'm like

I was excited I'm still excited just looking back at this I'm like I can only imagine cuz when I published I was like oh maybe if I sell like a hundred books over the its lifetime that would be super cool not that I was like I was going to die really bad but like I couldn't fathom 100 people like reading my book and then all of a sudden it was I mean if I had 30 and the 9 and then like almost 20 like by by April almost like 100 people had bought my book so

plus the page reads so definitely 100 people bought my book by them that's crazy super crazy May 12 orders and 6,29 pagri so it dropped significantly in May and I made $674 and I do remember when I made the income video for this specific month on Tik Tok cuz I made it in June like I made it a few days into June it's still getting views it's still getting likes saves comments like it's still getting traction that Tik Tok that's like over a year old but every time I see it pop up in my notifications

that I get somebody liked it or somebody commented on it or somebody saved it I'm always reminded like that was like I was riding high for a couple months and then I dropped and I was like interesting that the low month that I reported on got a lot of traction and actually a lot of people ended up buying my book because they saw that video so I can't complain too much but I think that's a really interesting just societal social media observation when we see people struggling I think people want to help I hope that's

how it is I think that was kind of the case people like the transparency which is one reason I do this but I'll go over other reasons that I do it at the end cuz I think we just don't talk about money enough so that's mostly it but okay kind of debrief at the end of this okay that was May lowish month I mean the last few months for me watch this video cuz it's been a rough few months if you're curious about more income transparency for this year and then I will make a I

will make a total yearend income video in January so stay tuned for that feel like I'm looking everywhere I'm woo okay I have to remember that we're on May that's I think that's what I'm trying to keep in my head okay we're on May nope I did May because May was low we're on June this is what you when you sign up for me sorry okay June I had 20 orders and 52,009 ped reads and June is also when I released the second book Kingdom of Shadow and ice but I can guarantee you like if

I go look at the actual numbers of per book barely any of them maybe 2,000 page reads for the second book it was all the first book which was crazy cuz I was like I don't know if Amazon I'm pretty sure Amazon pushes your back list out when you publish new books so I think that's kind of what was happening also I think I had like a viral Tik Tok I know there were other factors and I could go back and watch those Tik toks so if you're curious like what I think went into it

I think I say that in pretty much all my Tik toks so let me know if you want me to do the research for you and and let you know what led to sales or anything I'd be happy to make videos like that okay June was cool I was and that's my birthday month too so I was like a little birthday present to me actually do remember filming that Tik Tok as well $284.5 I think I remember filming so many of these Tik toks because they got quite a bit of traction because nobody was really

talking about income so then I was like oh yeah I remember getting the notification and hearing my voice like a trillion times I'm not like I'm not sitting there like scrolling my own feed like oh I remember that video it's just strictly I have listened to myself so much fun of content creating right right okay July okay July don't freak out I had 75 orders 60 of them were free so I had like 15 orders but yeah know I had 16867 page reads in July and then the royalties for that month were $17492 orders and

23,2 162 ped reads and that came out to $171 and9 cents so it started feeling I think at that point it started feeling like it was evening out and if you look at the graph like obviously June was a big month but it was like $100 117 171 and then in September sameish September was actually really similar okay another don't freak out because I don't know why I have my book for free again maybe it was the other book I don't remember maybe it was the book two but I had 231 orders it was it

was Kingdom of Shadow and Ice that I had for free I remember that it's all coming back to me don't worry it'll come back to me I just need to talk it through but okay 231 orders 23 were free you can do the math I'm not going to do the math and then September 2373 page rates and then like I said the income was really steady so it was $163 42 versus the month before was 171 I can do the math I don't want to do the math I worked all day and then we have

October I had 33 orders I think that was a big amount of orders for not having a free book yeah it was like the most since release if it wasn't free that was the most orders I got so 33 in October 2023 and then I had 33,41 page reads and that was a pretty good month I made $259 67 so I was like back into the 200s I was like diving you know I'm grateful every single month but I think when I hit the bigger Milestones like once I hit 50 I'm like cool I can

pay for my computer programs like a once I hit $100 in a month I'm like cool I'm doing something right people are finding it having a good time if I hit 200 I'm like oh something's popping off I'm doing something really right and I got to figure out what it is and double down on it and then I had the $259 and I was like w that's the biggest it was since June and June was 284 so it wasn't that far off I was like maybe I had another viral video I know I had a

couple last year for Kingdom of Ashen Shadow and that really helped so it's really just there's a lot of involved and I posted a crap ton of videos I think I posted like 3 to six Tik toks every single day and some of them popped off so I guess we're having fun okay November and December got two months left I don't want this to be a super long video but we're going to keep strugging November six orders and 1957 page reads that was $110 27 so it felt it felt very in the if I'm like

100 to 200 I'm like yeah that's feels typical for me so for some people it's not for some people that's amazing for some people that's not good personally I have a 9 to5 job like I said I was working all day I have a regular job so I'm not relying on this income this is definitely like a side hustle income and I really get out of it what I put into it for the most part okay we have one month left and then I'll get a philosophical on you okay December 22 orders I don't know

why I said it like that 22 orders 17,6 195 patries December $171.3 what are those totals cuz I'm not doing the math were you doing the math for you following along and doing the math cuz I'm just going to give you the complete total numbers now because Amazon will give me those numbers very easily so orders last year and this includes the free ones 51 I like that it's over 5 that's such a round number I love it okay this is going to be a bigger number last year PID reads two 2 41,600 Patriots across

the board all year long that's a big number 241,000 that's like almost a quarter of a million we'll get there one day do I have a goal of reaching a million ped reads no do I think eventually it would just happen yeah okay royalties estimator last year my first year being self-published since high school when I wrote books and then took them down when I went to college drum roll $1,856 32 $1800 on something where I was just like this is fun I don't know did you guys think that was fun do you like the

whole year wrapup things I want to talk about I have so many tabs open I mean in my brain and real life okay points I wrote down that I knew I wanted to talk about we don't talk that much about money as a society I think it's a very you're my dog jingling her call her she's just is a dog we don't talk about money as a society very often there's a lot of like cultural taboo around income and about salary and about side hustles and about was it profit or Revenue like when you watch

all the side hustle gurus and they're like oh yeah you could make okay here's the thing I was watching somebody's side hustle video the other day and they said one of the easy side hustles was writing a book and selling it on Amazon and they were like if you sell your book for $10 Amazon has a 70% royalty rate which they do that is entirely accurate this Creator does not know the nitty-gritty that ends and out of the Amazon being an author so here's my explanation of it first thing maybe I'll post screenshots of this

because this is kind of important info if you're looking into getting to publishing and being an author and putting the info out there so here's the info somewhere here when you publish your book it costs money to print it unless you're only doing an ebook 70% of the ebook yes you get 70% of the ebook list price but they also do have like a digital delivery fee which takes a very small percentage so you get roughly 70% of the income ebooks typically have to be priced above I think it's $3.99 but it'll say on the

chart wherever I put it or the image paperbacks I think this is where the Creator where their head was at so they were like if you sell a book for $10 and you going to 70% royalty rate you make $7 per book that's not entirely how it works actually I'm very sorry to say first thing you have printing costs so Amazon gives you based on your printing cost a minimum price that you can set your book at and then once you set that they take out the printing costs and you get 70% of that so

say your book is $10 but it costs $4 to print if $6 left you get 70% of the $6 I will post what I sell my book for and what Amazon takes and what I get and all that stuff you get 70% of $6 you make $42 cents a book which is a lot different than $7 and it doesn't sound like that different but it is is like it adds up like if you have to invest in like a cover designer and a formatter and all these different things it can take a while to recoup

those costs unless you're doing it all yourself which pretty much I do I don't know why I said pretty much cuz I do I do it all myself so I'm not going into debt over publishing that is one of my the hills that's one of the hills I will die on is I'm not going into debt to publish my books anyways that was my rant about how to make money making books I don't know making money that was that rant that's my dog that was barking so yeah talking about money I had no idea how

much money I could make or would make or could expect to make from self-publishing just doing the marketing on my own I'm not paying for any ads if you want to know about my marketing I have a video about all the things I do and don't do for marketing and I will link that here but yeah I had zero idea I had like no following when I started my Tik Tok my YouTube nothing so it's been a very organic growth and very interesting to see so I think I think I like to share it so

that other people might get an idea of what to expect although everybody's journey is completely different your book might pop off and mine might not and that's okay so yeah that was my Rants and my insights into how much I made in my first year of self-publishing let me know if you guys like these kinds of videos and I will see you in the next one bye