One year—and $4,367— later, “The Wilderlands”
Similar to what I did in 2023, I want to look at the book I wrote a year ago, reflecting on having gotten it out and how I am feeling about it 365 days after the fact.
On the off chance you’re not familiar with it, The Wilderlands is my stand-alone adult fantasy novel. I was inspired to write it after reading Moby Dick and The Aeneid in High School, before Beowulf and Something Wicked This Way Comes finally solidified the idea in college.
(For those who are more familiar with media from the current millennium, more contemporary comparison points would be The Witcher books or The Last of Us show/video games.)
I am wildly proud of this book and the work that went into it. Both the labor I myself put in writing, what I think, provides a fairly unique and engaging reading experience—and the work of the people who helped make it possible. Particularly, I’m proud of the work of the cover artist, the audiobook narrator, Rae Witte.
I think nearly everyone who has seen the book has commented on the cover saying something along the lines of “That’s gorgeous,” or “That looks really cool!” and it remains something I’ve found myself admiring for stretch's of time.
Similarly, one of the the first people who heard Rae’s narration commented that they believed there were multiple people doing voices for the book at first. Rae also nailed the language and delivery of the text.
My overall goals when I started the process of self-publishing was to have a polished stand-along novel that I was proud of and an audiobook version of this story that I liked the quality of.
A year later I am happy to say I still love this project. I’m grateful to the people who worked on it, and I’m thrilled I get to show it to people and say I wrote it.
The Part With the Numbers
Now that we’ve established that I’m creatively fulfilled, let’s get into the business side of things.
Earlier in the year I broke down the price of self-publishing The Wilderlands and it ended up as follows:
Line Editing: $731
Copy Editing: $653
Cover Art: $350
Design for Exteriors and Interiors: ~$930
ISBN: ~$60 (bought in bulk)
That ended up totaling about $2,724 for the initial book material.
Since then, the audiobook has been released, so I now know the total price of that was:
Narration: ~$1,000
Editing: ~$645
All of this was initially charged and paid in British Pounds since I went through Monkey Hill Media, a British production company, which is why the numbers are a bit more rough.
Anyway, the total amount for my book with those numbers in the mix brings the price of everything to about $4,367.
I’m not gonna lie, that’s quite the price tag and the book has certainly not recouped that. Let’s look at the numbers real quick. We’ll go smallest to largest.
On Audible (ACX) I actually don’t even know how much I’ve made because audiobook pricing is really strange and I don’t believe I’ve made enough for them to send me a payment. All I know is that I’ve sold two books (technically three, but one was returned). Audible profit: N/A
Draft-2-Digital is the site I use to for all of the ebooks that aren’t sold through Kindle. For better or for worse, Kindle is about 90% of my ebook sales. So I’ve only sold about 4 copies here. Draft-2-Digital profits: $13.13.
Author’s Republic is like Draft-2-Digital for audiobooks, though this has actually been much more sucessful for me than Audible. When I released the book, I mostly pointed people to Spotify, so I think that’s been where most copies I’ve sold, but there’s a dollar or two in there that comes from Hoopla (a library service for audiobooks).
I will say, I had a sale on the Audiobook service Libro.FM where I know I sold at least enough books to bring my audiobook to the #1600-odd best selling audiobook of the week, so this number doesn’t account for that since I haven’t gotten a report on it yet. That said, I believe this represents 7 units that I know of. Author’s Republic profits: $37.88.
Barnes & Noble Press is where my book was pre-orderable as a physical edition. Because of that, the bulk of the sales here were day one sales. (Note: I would recommend that, if you’re an indie author, you also use this to publish the Nook specific ebook since you can circumvent the cut Draft-2-Digitial would take on this platform.)
I’ve sold about 19 books here. Barnes & Noble Press profits: $106.78.
IngramSparks is the service you use to self-publish if you want your book to be available for most indie bookstore to order. While I do have my book in a few bookstores, most of those stores have my book on consignment. (Meaning I get a check when/if it sells, usually in January or July.) Because of some weirdness with Barnes & Noble’s service, this is also where some of the Barnes & Noble sales show up.
On this site, I sold about 22 books. IngramSparks profit: $146.30
Lastly, there’s the Amazon profits (Kindle Direct Publishing) which is both Kindle and printed books combined. On Amazon, I’ve sold 31 ebooks and 25 print books. So a total of 56 books.
Kindle Direct Publishing profits: $220.67
By my math, I’ve made about $524.76 across most of the recorded platforms.
That said, I’ve sold some books on consignment through local bookstores. I sold 8 at a bookstore event this year and, if I remember right, 4 at a launch event, and then 4 more at a bookfair, those stray sales should come out to about $80.
So, across about 124 copies sold, my total sales for The Wilderlands, as of now is about $604.76.
So, if I’m rounding up, I’ve made back about 13.8% of the money I put into making the book. (This puts me a little under than my 15% return on Light Keeper Chronicle a year after the fact. It’s about twice as much money, but also a higher cost.)
That is also before other expenses though, which includes $150 spent on two giveaways (which I don’t really recommend), website upkeep, travel for the couple of in-person events, etc.
This is why you don’t get into writing for the money.
I share this not to bum you out, but because I do think it’s interesting and illustrative to see what goes into self-publishing. (The man hours are also crazy, I should know, I’m the man who did them!)
The slight upside here is that I did sell more copies of Light Keeper Chronicle after writing The Wilderlands, and when I’ve done events I sell copies of both books.
The Part Where I Face the Music
The reality of things is this.
I am certainly going to keep writing and self-publishing. I’m going to keep posting here. My next book is going to be the next Light Keeper Chronicle entry.
But I need to use the books I already have to generate the money to publish the next book. I don’t make enough money in my day job to be consistently cutting into my not-that-impressive income by 5-10% in order to support my writing every other year. I need my work here to start supporting itself and that’s going to be my goal for the next year or so.
That means hopefully making time to go to more bookfairs and author events and going out of my way to get the book in front of people.
There were about 16 months between The Unspoken Prophecy and The Wilderlands, and if I kept up that rate I’d have Light Keeper Chronicle #2 in Feb. of 2027. Maybe that will still happen—heck, since Light Keeper is a more straight forward writing task, it could conceivably happen in 2026.
But that’s not going to be realistic from a money perspective right now.
Even if Light Keeper #2 only costs about $2,000 to create (it won’t, it will be more expensive than that, even if only marginally)—I’m looking at three years of doing the same numbers I did this past year before I can undertake paying for the next book.
Money is tight for everyone and I need to start being more realistic about what I can do.
My plan is to finish my draft for Light Keeper #2 this November and then slowly chip away at edits on that while I focus on making back the money I’ve already sunk into self-publishing.
The Part Where I Reiterate the Good News
The good news is that I have two books that are solid to great and there are literally billions of people out there who I haven’t sold the book to yet (several hundred-million of whom read English).
I am, admittedly, about $3,700 in the hole for just this book, but I have decades to tell people to check it out.
That’s kind of the reality of the situation. I’ve done the hard part of writing, I’ve done the expensive part of paying for the book, now I need to do the good work of telling more people about it so that I can sell my next book and the book after that and the book after that.
Because there are other books I want to write. I want to write the next Light Keeper book and I have another adult fantasy unrelated to The Wilderlands that I want to write and I’ve got a vague notion for an adult science fiction novel. I’d love to also round out the Light Keeper series (before this life-long project becomes a project that takes a life-time).
That’s all very far ahead, though, and relies on a lot of wishful thinking.
But my solace is that I do actually have something to build on now. I have a stand-alone adult book that is quick to read and quite good! I have a series starter with a finished draft of the next book before the end of the year. I have stuff to sell that can hopefully help me make the next project happen.
So watch this space, I’ll have more for you soon!
*****
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The Wilderlands is available for physical purchase now from Barnes & Noble and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks. The audiobook is also out now on most major platforms.
Light Keeper Chronicle: The Unspoken Prophecy is available for physical purchase from Schuler Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks.