How much do I make?

Drumroll please…

In my previous posts I’ve talked about the minefield that is book pricing and advertising. I’ve also mentioned that I’m spending 10 times more on advertising than I receive in royalties. Here I will break this down a little and also reveal how much I’ve made in total from my two self-published novels over the last 5 years with a micro advertising budget.

Royalties

The exact royalty per sale varies depending on the royalty scheme, and the price of the book which changes from time to time. As a guide, I’ve mostly made about 70p from an eBook sale, about £1 from a Kindle Unlimited read, and £1.17 from a paperback sale.

Advertising

(NB this only covers my main US advertising account - Amazon requires you to have a separate advertising account for each market)

$738.20 advertising spend resulted in:

1,127,570 times my ad was displayed (impressions)

1,104 times someone clicked on it

$41.20 of sales generated.

Total Income

Overall over 5 years across all channels:

Royalty income: £120.50

Advertising cost: £1088.43

Business admin: £490.13

Overall: -£1458.06

So overall I’ve made a loss of nearly £1500, not to mention the countless hours of my time I’ve invested. Interestingly the above tells me that the US market is using 57% of my advertising budget but only generating 33% of my sales, so I think it’s time to pivot back to the UK. That gives me an idea for another blog post - ‘Why don’t the Americans like my book?’ :)