I’ve taken to summarizing my indie author business each month, so here’s March. This month, unlike many others, I did no new advertising (I have a couple small things that are ongoing). My books benefited from the afterglow from a BookBub featured deal at the start of February, although that’s fading now nearly sixty days later. So, this is a month that’s almost entirely profit for me, with very few expenses, and with a little boost from past marketing.
Revenue
Here’s my Amazon revenue (estimated, because they don’t announce the Kindle Unlimited rate until later).

The majority of this (blue bars) is the three-book box set of Inquisitors’ Guild books, which is what the BookBub feature in February was for. That’s $354 of the $487 total, or about 73%. The next highest is Kenai (in yellow) at $39 or 8%. Kenai has been a consistent leader for me. Third place (in red) at $32 goes to The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar, which may include some spillover from the Inquisitors’ Guild books, since it’s also epic fantasy. Good to see that book reaching some folks.
The $487 in revenue includes about $74 in ebook sales, $5 in print sales, and $409 in Kindle Unlimited revenue, making KU 84% of my revenues. That’s a high ratio for me, but I think it comes from the Inquisitors’ Guild set shooting upwards in the algorithm after the promo. I’m usually between 60-80% KU for revenues.
The story is almost the same as far as page reads go, since page reads were such a high source of revenue for me.

If you want to see the impact of the BookBub featured deal, here’s the 90-day history, which includes some time before it. I’m down from the immediate peak, of course, but the continued effects are nice and staying stronger than some of my promos do.

Added to these revenues, I sold seven audiobooks. Those usually net me about $3 each, although I won’t get confirmation for a few more weeks. So, figure I’m nearing $520 in total revenue for March.
Expenses
I spent a little under $4 on some ongoing Amazon ads with keywords that sometimes work, although I should probably cancel those. They’re very low-bid odd keywords, which are the only kind I’ve been able to make profitable, and they don’t scale well, so it’s kind of a waste of effort and time.
I’m obviously benefitting (or profit-taking) from the $700 or so I spent on the February BookBub and assorted related advertising. I broke even on that sometime in late February or early March, so it’s all profit now. I also have an ongoing year-long advertising buy with Dr. Who Online, which I paid for last fall. It was quite expensive and has done nearly nothing for me, so that was a mistake. They had a money-back guarantee, so I’ll see if I can get any of that returned at the end.
Summary
With $520 in revenues and $4 in expenses, this month saw $516 in profits. That’s pretty good, even if some of the profits come from prior months’ expenses.
Even with that success, this is a below-average revenue month for me. I had about $7400 in revenue in 2024, which would be a monthly pace of about $616. However, I reached that higher revenue with some ad spending that didn’t have positive return.
Is lower revenue with profit better than higher revenue with losses? In business terms, absolutely. In terms of growing my audience and my brand, maybe not. I’m going to try some advertising again in April and see if I can get some of my other books juiced up in the Amazon algorithm so that people see them. I can afford to blow some money on this to see if it helps. Still trying to figure out if the long-term growth impact of ad spending and audience building makes the short-term losses worthwhile.
I should also have a new mystery released in April, and I’ll have some launch expenses for that (cover, editing, promos), but I may also see some good initial sales – I usually sell 10-30 books in the month after a release, more if I put some ad money behind it.