So How is Author Life Going, SE?

I’m so glad you asked. (Literally no one has asked).

I did promise to make this independent author journey transparent, though. So you are about to get the update you might not have wanted, but will be interested in anyway. Onward!

As indie author SE White I released my novella, Beneath Me, in August of 2021. You will be pleased and proud to know that Draft 2 Digital already had to send me two royalty payments. Yep! A whole $3.20 USD. The tone of this may sound sarcastic, but I assure you I’m actually pretty stoked to have gotten royalties from a self-published writing effort.

I made minimal efforts at marketing. I announced the book release on Instagram, which is my main author social media site. Around 6 of my Instagram friends requested an ARC copy, which I was happy to provide them. Only one friend has read it so far, but she enjoyed it and had nice things to tell me. That was pretty cool. I created a BookBub account and listed it, as well as on my AllAuthor page.

And I made sure it was added to Goodreads, which was dumb, because Draft 2 Digital had already added it for me and now there are two copies of Beneath Me running around on Goodreads. Indie Author tip: if you’re using a publishing service like Draft 2 Digital or Ingram Spark, trust that they know about Goodreads and have added your book. Do not do this twice. I made this mistake so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

Last week I released the full size novel in the same superhero romance series, The Sidekick and The Supervillain. Here’s how it’s going so far, according to D2D.

Looks like another dollar of royalties will be headed my way! All of my sales data is broken down for me on my D2D account. It’s pretty nifty. For example, I can get a specific breakdown of what book was bought on which platform, and when. 2nd Indie Author tip: Amazon blows most other ebook sales sites out of the water. We all already knew that, but here’s a visual for reinforcement. For right now, Amazon holds the monopoly on book sales.

And here is the breakdown of my 2021 royalty payments, for those of you who have made it to the bottom of this post. Congratulations! You now have a good idea of what it’s like to be an independent author. I still recommend Draft 2 Digital. They’ve been great to work with, and I love having the charts breaking everything down for me.