As the competition continues, I’ll update the status of the books here. Official designations from the competition are Semifinalist, Finalist, and Champion, although teams may choose to name quarterfinalists or make other distinctions.
To quickly jump to a team, click the name below: 1.21 Gigawatts – Space Girls – ZAPs – Ground Control – Jake
I occasionally do reports of my financials as an indie author. I’ve also started doing an annual report a couple years ago, which some people found interesting, so I thought I’d continue with that. If you’re curious in my progress over time, here are the year-end reports from 2023 and 2024.
The Books
Here are my books and their relative sales through Amazon last year. My newest novel, Unwelcome Matt, had a more modest release than some of my others, although it has not yet landed a BookBub Featured Deal, which has really boosted other books, including my top earners. In addition to these figures, I have audiobook and direct paperback sales from my home shop on top of these figures, but Amazon provides the vast majority of my revenues.
All my books are exclusive to Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited except Traitors Unseen, which I use as a reader magnet giveaway on other platforms. Unlike other authors who don’t get much out of KU and prefer the increased sales that come with selling on places like Kobo, Apple, Google, and Barnes and Noble, I have done pretty well in KU, so well that I don’t feel comfortable giving it up. Here is my revenue breakdown for my sales.
Revenues
Here are my revenues by category for this past year. A total of about $5,588.
That represents a significant drop from last year, when I made about $6,600, but it’s above 2023, when I made about $4,800.
Here’s my year-over-year revenues, mostly complete, but occasionally missing a few of the minor sources:
That growth trend looks pretty good until things drop off in 2025. However, I spent a lot less advertising in 2025, and I also didn’t get as many BookBub featured deals as in 2024, which had an impact.
Expenses
Here are my expenses by category for 2025. A total of about $10,650, which is down a little under $3000 from last year.
Notes
I published one book and redid the cover for two others this year, so that was a higher cost than usual. I also paid a premium rate (much more than I have in the past) for the new cover art for The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar.
I have a very kind and talented friend, Tami Ryan, who has edited and proofed my last seven or eight books. She doesn’t like charging me money, although I try to send her payments. So, my editing costs are unusually low.
I reduced my expenses for advertising by quite a bit – that’s the major change this year, and I suspect also it’s the reason for my lower revenues.
I increased my spending on newsletter promos for my price promotions (free and $0.99 promos). Part of that is getting access to more of them on BookBub, which I’ve started to do with more regularity. However, I’ve found them to be less effective than they used to be, which may be because their reach is fading, but it may also be that I’m sometimes doing BookBubs for books I’ve already promoted there. They’ve also started a new service which is a little cheaper for free book promotions. I’ve tried that maybe 3-4 times, and it does not have the impact of the featured deals that BookBub is more famous for. I will keep trying to see how much of a return that has.
Analysis
I managed to cut costs this year by $2750, even with some single big-ticket items like part of an audiobook ($800 this year for the 2nd half of the narration) and new premium cover art for Lady Isovar (a little under $1000). With less advertising, though, my revenues fell by about $1000. That is sort of progress, in that I managed to lose $1750 less this year than last, but I’m still net negative by a good margin.
That puts me marginally better off this year than last, as this table (with numbers rounded to the nearest $100) shows.
This isn’t the image of a thriving business, although I am fortunate enough to be able to afford the losses as I try to make this work. Unlike many other indie authors, I also am not necessarily interested in (nor do I need) to have the business be profitable to sustain my livelihood. I’m far more interested in reaching more readers than in finding the highest profit margin that I can. If I could spend $95,000 to make $90,000, for example, I’d be much happier with that $5K loss than spending $15,000 to make $20,000 and netting a $5K gain.
That mindset means that I take some risks and make some indulgences in my expenses that I wouldn’t if I were trying to maintain a strict focus on the bottom line. With that in mind, I can offer some caveats for some of the expenses:
I already know that audiobooks aren’t a good investment for me. Over the several years I’ve had audiobooks out, I’ve made $1739 in revenue on about $7175 in expenses for the four books I’ve done audio for. I did have a slightly better year in 2025 than I’ve had in the past, so it’s possible they might eventually cover their cost, but I am doing them more for fun than for profit. That’s a luxury I have with the money I have available to invest. If I were trying to become profitable as fast as possible, I’d have skipped every audiobook after the second one once the pattern became clear. Therefore, the $800 spent on audiobooks this year could maybe lie outside my business model.
I also would not count my attendance at WorldCon against my budget. I was not a guest at the convention and wasn’t part of any sessions, so I was there as a fan rather than an author. I had a great time and learned a lot from the panels, but from a business perspective, it sure didn’t make sense to go. If we view that as sci-fi tourism rather than business expenses, that’s another $250 I could knock off the expense side.
I also splurged on new covers for two books, Got Troubleand The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar. For Got Trouble, I wanted all my mysteries to have covers by the same artist, Abby Blanchard, and for Lady Isovar, I thought it might be interesting to see if more expensive cover art from a higher-profile artist might translate into more readership. All told, those two redesigns were about $1,430. This was completely an optional expense, one that, if I were trying only to be profitable, I definitely wouldn’t have done – I had good covers for both already.
If I deduct the luxury splurges, i.e. $800 audiobook, $1,430 new covers, and $250 WorldCon participation, that knocks my expenses down to $8,170. That’s admittedly kind of fake, but that puts my return for the year at 68% of expenses with a $2,582 loss. Still not profitable, but at least comparable to the last couple years.
Here’s how the big picture looks year over year. The light-shaded areas in the 2024 and 2025 columns at the right are if I take out the luxury spending like I mentioned above. That’s probably a little bit of BS to make me feel better, but I’m giving both figures, so read it how you want.
2025 Successes
I had some good developments this year in trying to move my indie author career forward. Here are a few:
After winning the SPSFC in 2024 Kenai, I served as a judge last year and this year. The SPSFC is an indie sci fi competition founded by Hugh Howey of Silo and Wool fame, now in its fifth year. I’m in the midst of reading some fun indie sci-fi now, and I look forward to seeing how the competition progresses.
I got one new book out in 2025, the mystery Unwelcome Matt. It’s been doing pretty well, although I am really hoping to get a BookBub deal for it. That’s what really took What Grows From the Dead to its big start in 2024. I also had a story accepted for a long-running sci-fi anthology series, The Expanding Universe, volume 11. This appeared with stories by authors who’ve sold hundreds of thousands of books, so I was proud of that. I also co-wrote a romance novel, Best, with Sarah Estow. We’ve got that drafted, revised several times, and copy-edited, so it’s now just waiting for Sarah’s agent to take a look at it. It was a real blast writing that, and Sarah was a tremendously fun partner with whom to explore a new genre. I also made progress on three other projects, but none are ready for publication.
In terms of milestones, I hit my highest ever number of books downloaded from Amazon in 2025, as shown below. Because Amazon can only show ten books at a time, this actually leaves off the 6,032 downloads of Unwelcome Matt, so the 2025 bar should be around 86,000, and the total at the top left should be right around an even 200,000. The vast majority of these downloads (over 95%) are free books downloaded during price promotions I ran, many of which end up buried on Kindles and never read, but even so, that’s a lot of copies, and it’s still nice to see the numbers going up.
Light blue here is What Grows From the Dead, yellow is Daros, light green is the Inquisitors’ Guild box set, red is Kenai, and purple is The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar.
I had a good year for pages read on Kindle Unlimited, with nearly 800,000 pages this past year. The biggest single force driving the increase is Bookbub promos, which I can’t control. I didn’t used to get those in my first four years of this, but I’ve been getting more opportunities there in the last few years.
The light blue there is the Inquisitors’ Guild box set, with the yellow being Kenai and the red Daros. You can see the big reception for What Grows From the Dead in 2024 in dark blue, but it didn’t sustain into this year, for reasons I haven’t really figured out.
Thanks for reading! I’m happy to answer questions in the comments. If you’re interested in any of my books, please check them out on my book page here.
For more team updates, check out our team page here.
The process
The four of us on the team are making good progress on our initial allotment of 25 books, and unfortunately that means we’re ready to make our first cuts of this year’s competition. Because this is the scouting round of the competition, we did not read the full text of these books. Our goal was to have at least half of our team read the opening chapters of the book, usually reaching about 20-25% of the total length.
Obviously, the opinions of any four judges is highly subjective. If we cut your book, that in no way means that we didn’t like it or that it’s a bad book – it just means that there were other books that appealed to these four humans more. It’s the nature of these competitions to be subjective, and we know it’s stressful and difficult to endure cuts – our four judges have lots and lots of contest entries between them, most of which ended in being cut, so we’re sensitive to how much it hurts. Cutting books is the worst part of judging, just as being cut is the worst part of competing.
Our decision in reporting these cuts is to not list what we didn’t like about each book we cut, but instead to send them off with a plug for what we liked and for what kind of reader we think would enjoy the story. Our short summaries below were written by various judges. If you are an author of one of these books and want more feedback on your book, including some of the reasons we didn’t advance it, I’m happy to correspond by email and share more information. I’m at dave@davedobsonbooks.com.
The SPSFC is unusual in indie book competitions in that it allows re-entry of the same book in subsequent years, and we encourage any entrant that we don’t pick, including these ten, to enter again in a future year, where you may encounter judges who are a better match for what you’re writing.
The cuts
Note: There is no meaning to the order in which these books are listed.
With a complex world and a YA, dystopian, action-movie feel, there is a ton going on in this book, including mysteries about a society that brainwashes and controls its members. A Maze-Runner feel, although set farther in the future.
Dives deep into a faraway alien society operating under very different conditions from humans on Earth. The alien culture and government is interesting. At times felt almost like a parable. One judge wrote, “Great imagination for the alien world.”
Cyberpunk awesomeness focusing on a young woman with inexplicable clairvoyance that starts off a compelling mystery. For fans of mystery and a murky technically advanced world.
A dystopian military sci-fi tale of a world where regular humans exist in uneasy stalemate (and sometimes war) with genetically enhanced humans. A strong main character with a great voice. Two judges hailed the well-developed writing and interesting characters, including a non-speaking commando.
If you’re fed up with corporate control of society and want the people to rise up, this could be the book for you. A near-future dystopia (minus most of the -topia), where a corrupt system funnels people into jobs they don’t want, leads to a secret rebellion.
One judge writes, “I loved the enthusiasm and detail of the golem battles that really hit the ground running as soon as you opened the book. The main character and his family were easy to slip into and enjoy their dynamic. Overall great prose and perfect niche book for LitRPG fans.”
A complex dystopian story about the end of the world, with both superheroes and philosophy in abundance. Part of a series. Fans of Watchmen might enjoy this one.
A welcomed world on an established lunar colony with an inviting main character. There is a mystery going on in the background as you settle in with the characters. This would appeal to fans of YA science fiction.
What an opener full of intrigue and very good prose. The plot then takes off like a rocket with an interesting world where the solar system has been colonized and has been fractured into interesting political factions. There is good plot and intrigue going on in this story.
This is a perfect book for fans of arcane academia. The author does something really interesting by creating a common thread of all the great thinkers and inventors throughout history and begins to weave a story connecting them together.
Our condolences go out to these authors, along with our respect for your efforts and our sincere best wishes for your success.
Just a quick update and intro to our first-round judging for the 5th annual SPSFC. For more team updates, check out our team page here.
We’ve split our allotment of 25 books into two groups, one of 13 and one of 12. We split our four judges into two pairs and assigned one pair of judges to each group of books. We’ve been reading the first parts of each book, usually at least 20-25%, and recording brief notes and reactions, including indicating if we think the book would make a good quarterfinalist.
One pair of judges is almost done with their group, and the other pair is at 9/12 books read for each of them. Each judge is free to read outside their group and add more feedback, and our quickest reader has actually read the openings to 17 of the 25 books. We’ll do more crossing over to sample the other group’s top contenders and to build more feedback for all books, especially books that might have split reactions from the original two judges.
Once we have all of the books read and commented on, we’ll consult and pick our quarterfinalists. There’s no fixed number, but we’ll probably select 5-6 quarterfinalists for complete reads. At that point, we’ll get each book read in full by at least two judges to place them for the semifinals. We can pick only two semifinalists from our group.
Obviously, the opinions of only four judges is highly subjective. If your book ends up cut by us, that in no way means that we didn’t like it or that it’s a bad book – it just means that there were other books that appealed to these four humans more. It’s the nature of these competitions to be subjective, and we know it’s stressful and difficult to endure cuts – our four judges have lots and lots of contest entries between them, most of which ended in being cut, so we’re sensitive to how much it hurts.
My personal philosophy for the early round is not to try to list what we didn’t like about each book we cut, but instead to send them off with a plug for what we liked and for what kind of reader we think would enjoy the story. That’s what our cuts will look like. If you are an author in our group and want more info or feedback, I’m happy to correspond by email.
The SPSFC is unusual in indie book competitions in that it allows re-entry of the same book, and we encourage any entrant that we don’t pick to enter again in a future year, where you may encounter judges who are a better match for what you’re writing.
Here’s a preview of our 25 entries for the fifth annual SPSFC #5! Visit our team home page here for more information.
Note: These initial summaries don’t include any feedback from judges, who are only just starting to read for the contest. They’re just an advance look at the team’s allotment.
We’re excited to announce our allotment for the 5th annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. There are 125 total entries, and our team has 25 of them to read. We’ve been introducing five of them at a time. Here is the fifth set of five:
One reviewer calls this “A hyperdimensional transhumanist space opera thriller.” A normal guy forced into a ship with a killer, sent on a trans-galactic hunt for mysterious artifacts called ‘points.’ Amazon reviewers agree that it is thought-provoking, well-written, and significantly mind-bending. One reviewer says, “a great merger of philosophy, science, and drama that draws heavily from the eastern mystic heritage.“
Ret is the story of a brilliant inventor who becomes an outcast in his society, taking his family down with him, and launching a struggle against oppression. One Amazon reviewer says, “The story is situated in another universe, but still deals with modern day issues, life, love, heartbreak, family, conflict. struggles and social biases that all can relate to in today’s society.“
Winner of two other book awards, this tells the story of a human society that has expanded throughout our solar system. Humans are under hidden threat by aliens, and war is imminent. One Amazon reviewer says, “The more i read of this book the more i loved the details worked into the characters, the unfolding of the plot, and especially the thematic nuances that beckoned to some favorite classic authors of mine like Hermann Hesse and Isaac Asimov.“
This book has a thought-provoking concept at its heart: Can robots fall in love? One Amazon reviewer gushes, “There is something so special about THE WARM MACHINE that I haven’t quite gotten in anything else. The writing style is perfectly matched to the theme—mechanical and completely logical but with an underlying level of “anomalous” emotion that SWELLS throughout the book.” A 4.7 average rating on Amazon from 21 readers.
Kuzack’s book Wakers of the Cryocrypt was a semifinalist in last year’s SPSFC, emerging from my team. In this new book, he looks at a broken future governed by greed and corruption, where one man, denied his dreams, joins an underground resistance, where he will pay a steep price for fighting back.
And that’s all our intros! If you’d like to see the others, they’re all linked on our homepage.
Here’s a preview of our 25 entries for the fifth annual SPSFC #5! Visit our team home page here for more information.
Note: These initial summaries don’t include any feedback from judges, who are only just starting to read for the contest. They’re just an advance look at the team’s allotment.
We’re excited to announce our allotment for the 5th annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. There are 125 total entries, and our team has 25 of them to read. Here is the fourth set of five:
A dystopian YA story follows a young woman whose technological enhancements and implants also leave her subject to control by forces unseen. Prairies Book Review says, “Brisk and emotionally charged; a page-turner.”
Billed as humorous sci-fi with romance and adventure, this sounds like it has it all. One Amazon reviewer says, “a novel that lovingly lampoons sci-fi tropes while delivering a fast-moving plot centered around a likeable cast of oddballs.”
Billed as a “futuristic techno-thriller,” this looks like a story about vengeance for a murder. An exclusive new release via crowdfunding late last year, we don’t have a lot of reviews to go on, but we’ll never say no to trying out a cyberpunk game-infused thriller.
A dystopian military sci-fi book that’s been a finalist or placed in four other competitions. A marine facing family struggles discovers a terrorist plot to destroy humanity! Great stuff. A 4.7 average rating on Amazon from 87 readers.
What a great concept! Watching modern civilization die, a group of time travelers decide to go back to colonial times and change history, strengthening the Mohawk people to resist colonization. One Amazon reviewer says, “a bold and imaginative blend of historical fiction and speculative adventure that asks profound questions about history, destiny, and human resilience.”
We’ll do our next five book intros soon! Stay tuned on our homepage for more.
Here’s a preview of our 25 entries for the fifth annual SPSFC #5! Visit our team home page here for more information.
Note: These initial summaries don’t include any feedback from judges, who are only just starting to read for the contest. They’re just an advance look at the team’s allotment.
We’re excited to announce our allotment for the 5th annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. There are 125 total entries, and our team has 25 of them to read. Here are the third set of five:
Andrew was a semifinalist in SPSFC #4 last year with Our Lady of the Artilects. This new humorous sci-fi story tells of a doomed world and the reality show exploiting its soon-to-die residents. An Amazon reviewer calls it “a well written spoof that will keep you turning the pages until the early hours of the morning.“
A pair of humans, maybe allies, maybe enemies, struggle to survive on a far-future dying Earth. Readers seem to agree that it ably explores the fantastic and weird. One Amazon reviewer says, “The characters are bizarre and wonderful, with complex relationships and meaningful development.“
A dystopian story of a subversive woman and an AI bot solving mystery that could topple the world. Kirkus Reviews says, “Other novels have played in this high-tech sandbox, to be sure, but few have done so in a way that makes a reader think and care for both people and artificial entities in such strong and equal measure.” A 4.6 average rating on Amazon from 37 readers.
A collection of several works, this book centers around a lonely man and the mysterious girl who pulls him to another time. One Amazon reviewer says, “I truly enjoyed every moment of this collection, which weaves you through an unbelievable journey with believable characters.”
Sheila was a finalist in SPSFC#4 with the interesting and thought-provoking Bisection. In this book, a military sci-fi story, there’s a war between Mars and Earth, and a Martian noblewoman faces mutiny on her warship. One Amazon reviewer describes it as “a ripping good yarn in the tradition of an old adventure story.”
We’ll do our next five book intros soon! Stay tuned on our homepage for more.
Here’s a preview of our 25 entries for the fifth annual SPSFC #5! Visit our team home page here for more information.
Note: These initial summaries don’t include any feedback from judges, who are only just starting to read for the contest. They’re just an advance look at the team’s allotment.
We’re excited to announce our allotment for the 5th annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. There are 125 total entries, and our team has 25 of them to read. Here are the second set of five:
A middle grade sci-fi story about a coding camp on the Moon, with an army of coding kids and their associated shenanigans. The description has a ton of charm. A 4.9 average on Amazon from 17 readers.
Military sci-fi on Titan – very cool. One Amazon reviewer says it’s a “great read that keeps you engaged from beginning to end as it takes you on a futuristic adventure with profound emotional human connections.“
Definitely the creepiest of our covers! 🙂 Rhodes describes it as a “psychological post-superhero sci-fi thriller,” with a main character who is a prophet (and sounds like maybe a demigod), and a bleak future that may just have a chance at salvation if enemies can work together.
A future war involving Earth and Mars, with space travel and innocent lives in the balance. A 4.9 average rating on Amazon; one reviewer there says, “The characters are fun, interesting, will pull at your heart strings and exhibit realistic emotional depth.“
A near-future high-concept thriller about the end of knowledge and invention, and a hidden centuries-old conspiracy that may rewrite human history. One Amazon reviewer says, “Great read, solid story line, great pacing and just the right amount of intrigue to keep you wanting to always keep going.“
We’ll do our next five book intros soon! Stay tuned on our homepage for more.
Here’s a preview of our 25 entries for the fifth annual SPSFC #5! Visit our team home page here for more information.
Note: These initial summaries don’t include any feedback from judges, who are only just starting to read for the contest. They’re just an advance look at the team’s allotment.
We’re excited to announce our allotment for the 5th annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. There are 125 total entries, and our team has 25 of them to read. Here are the first five:
This sounds like a chaotic, funny, smart book where pseudoscience is king, except where it’s not, and nobody can agree where truth lies. There’s even Jesus. A 5.0 average rating on Amazon.
A dark, dystopian adventure, where monsters from dreams lurk at the bottom of an abandoned city. One reviewer on Amazon says, “The plot’s numerous twists and turns made the book impossible to put down.“
An eccentric, distant father. A mysterious alien woman. A powerful artifact, and a doomsday cultist. Terrific ingredients for sci-fi horror. One five-star review on Amazon says, “What an intricate world this author has built! He has a way to make you care about the small characters throughout, the good, the bad, the sly, the innocent.“
I mean, you had me at space fennecs. One reviewer says, “Its characters are charming and intimate, its worldbuilding is focused and interesting, and the uplifting themes explored in Rafts are expanded upon to great effect. I loved it, and I think it’s well worth your time.” 4.63 average rating by 51 readers on Goodreads.
From the tremendously popular and booming LitRPG genre, this is a world of professional arena combat full of mechanical beasts and magical runes, inspired by Pokemon and Pacific Rim. A 4.6 average rating from 22 readers on Amazon.
We’ll do our next five book intros soon! Stay tuned on our homepagefor more.
