I thought that last year was a wild one, but this year… jesus fucking christ. What a rollercoaster. I really feel like this is the year I got to live the dream. This is what I’ve been working towards and it is boggling the speed at which the change has come about.

You can catch year one lessons here, year two lessons here, year three here, year four here, and year five here.

The Income Update

I’m not going to give you exact income figures this year because… well, I just don’t want to. What I will say is that for those of you that have been following, and have listened to these episodes in past years, I’m sure you can work it out. This year was a 340% increase on last year. I am a multi-six figure author at gross, and a multi six figure net author too. It was a frankly incomprehensible increase this year and I’m still reeling. 

• 65% was straight book royalties
• 19% was shopify income
• Meaning 84% was book income. If you also include Kickstarter which, I do, then it was 96% of my income.
• The 4% everything else includes: podcast sponsorship, ALCS, speaker fees.
• 6-7% of my total income was audiobook license fees and royalties, all books with the exception of Crimson kisses and curses as they haven’t had enough accounting quarters have earned out.

When I left my day job in 2019, book sales were 17% of my income, but this year’s sales are a 9185% increase in the amount of sales income compared to that year.

The biggest change over the course of the years of writing full time is freelance. Last year I was still over 10%. This year it was zero. I am beyond proud of this. I am equally grateful for the years of freelance and the fact it kept me out of the corporate world.

For those of you always interested in the costs, the most significant costs are:

• Shipping
• Print runs
• Renting and set up of a warehouse 

The warehouse is running at about 50% cost so for every 100 pounds made, it costs 50 to make it. That said, now that the set up is complete and things are evening out, I do think the profit will rise to between 55 and 65% especially as we bring on more products.

Second to those costs are staffing and advertising. But these totaled 5.7% of my turnover. Most of my marketing is content marketing on social media and I use sweat equity to do this.

I looked back at the last annual review and laughed, because there was a moment where I said that I’d looked back at the previous year and thought that year 5 would be really different, and it was. Then last year I said the following:

“In terms of progress, if I look at this “calendar” year as opposed to tax year, I’ve already surpassed this figure. Which, honestly? Is a bit astounding. I have no idea if it will continue, but if it does, then there’s the potential to be a multi six figure author by the end of this calendar year. Big IF tho.”

Not an if. We went so far beyond IF, I honestly… I don’t really know how to do this update. I think I’m equal parts scared and excited to say what the next goal is.

*deep breath*

No matter how long it takes, I want to hit seven figures. 

And then I want to hit it net.

I honestly can’t make a statement about where next year might be, the world is in turmoil and I feel like my powers of prediction are tired. I will quietly hope for progress. 

I’ve had to learn so much this last year about money, how to deal with it, invest it, pensions and tax. And really, entirely restructure the way I work with money. It’s been exhausting and I’m not doing everything right yet, but I’m doing my best and that’s got to be good enough. The biggest thing for me was having to let go of money and put it into a pension. I essentially had no choice. If I didn’t, I’d end up giving more of it to the government. What I found hard was letting go and giving up control of it. I have always been a control freak and I hate the idea of not being able to control the money I’ve worked so hard for.

The Assets

I’m going to include three images in the show notes, year 2 assets (because I didn’t create a year 1 graphic). Year 5 and year 6.

I included the earliest assets graphic I could to show you that time and patience matters. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is an author career. While I may be a fast writer, I am not a fast producer of books. But over time I’m building an empire.

Two important things:

1. You DO have to produce. And by that I mean start and complete projects and then you must let them go and put them out into the world.
2. You need to then iterate the products into as many iterations of your IP as you can. They add up fast and they build enormous potential for income.

A third more mindset thing is to realise that not every asset will produce equally for you. 

Two years ago, nonfiction was everything. I presented this statistic at a keynote I gave last August. 

In January 2023, I made £926 on Amazon of which, 1.4% (£13.16 was fiction). The rest, 98.6% was nonfiction income. Roll on 17 months, I made £19.3k on Amazon of which, 1.2% (£250 was nonfiction) The rest, 98.8% was fiction income. That’s a 1990% increase in income and a complete 180 on where that income came from.

The income has grown exponentially since then and the nonfiction income has remained somewhat stable. Last month it was around £200. But in real terms this means it’s considerably less than a percent of my income.

Last year I had:

• 10 nonfiction titles
• 11 fiction titles
• 2 self narrated audiobooks and 3 rights licensed with another 1 about to release
• 2 Korean nonfiction titles released
• 1 special edition and 1 unpublished title

This year, year six I have:

• 10 nonfiction titles
• 13 fiction titles plus two unpublished manuscripts, one of which will definitely be released in tax year 7
• 3 Korean nonfiction titles released\1 or 2 licensed in arabic
• 4 self-narrated audiobooks with 6 licensed and another one under negotiation
• 7 special edition hardbacks, 8 paperbacks and 
• 2 special edition omnibus’s (those these are on preorder currently so I’m not sure if I count them fully on year 6 I’ll wait until year 7)
• 1 additional manuscript that is written and as yet unpublished

Lesson 1 Understanding What I’m Good At

I feel like Ruby was the start of me understanding what I am actually good at. A true process of acceptance and separation. Acceptance that I can’t and actually don’t want to be good at everything, and separation of me from those things. 

For so long I felt like I had to do everything, be everything and as I’m sure long time listeners know, I struggled to ask for help. The business explosion shifted that. It forced me to realise that if I didn’t step back, if I didn’t give things up and ask for help and work with others I would go bust. I think being an indie author serves to encourage this kind of ‘I have to do it all’ thinking because we have no publisher support backing us up. It really is all on our shoulders but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a team around us. It doesn’t mean we have to be on our own or do it alone.

I have had to accept that I legitimately cannot do it all. The business is now bigger than me. But actually, what that’s done is meant I can focus on just the things that bring me joy and that I’m really good at. I spent a long time doing things I’m honestly a bit shit at. I’m not good with detail and I shouldn’t be taking on those tasks.

By outsourcing as much as I have I’ve been able to scale back the jobs that are on my to do list. I literally used to have four-page to do lists and now some days I struggle to even write in my planner because there’s nothing more than outline, or write 5000 words.

The more I’ve come to understand what I’m actually good at, or as Gay Hendricks would say my zone of genius, the more the business has made. I actually like working with others, I like empowering my team to make decisions and do creative projects within the business.

I’m good at big ideas, vision and have so much starting energy, I am great at the set up of projects but not as interested in the completion. I think the warehouse was a great example of this. I absolutely loved getting it set up. But once it was running and we moved into the monotony of having to get the parcels out every day and having to be there for the collection, I quickly felt stifled by the consistency. I wanted to mix things up, be able to get out and do different things and go back to writing.

What this has taught me is how to let go, or more that I have to let go regularly. With every project I create, I make new work but I’m not always the right person to do that work and that’s okay.

I think I have four roles in my business:

• First and more importantly, create new stories
• Understand the market and readers
• Have the vision for the business
• Sell – because I am the brand and I’m good at marketing.

Alongside understanding what I’m good at, is an understanding of the market. I am struggling to put my finger on exactly what it is that I’ve understood. But I feel like TikTok taught me to speak the language of readers. The repeated exposure to data and a live algorithm gave instant feedback. So I could recognise what resonated with readers. That enabled me to see what key words worked, what hooks worked and what really grabbed the attention of the reader. It also helped me trend spot in a much deeper way than I had been, and spot things across genres and learn transposition techniques. By that I mean maybe seeing a hook that would work for a cat food company and iterating it into sapphic romance. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it didn’t. 

But this constant feedback cycle and also exposure to a lot of ‘failure’ helped to build resilience too.

Lesson 2 Understanding my Energy Flow

My energy has shifted in the last year. I think that some of it may be the relief of having run what feels like a marathon and being a wee bit tired. Some of it may be age too, I’m approaching 40 and I really don’t feel 18 anymore. Much as I’ll try and claim it. As my career has blossomed, my kiddo is approaching teen years and the parenting energy required is shifting too. Pressure and tensions are shifting.

Social media shifted. The level of intensity in my comments and messages increased to the point that I couldn’t keep up anymore. I felt like I was spending my time answering them instead of responding to my family. I’ve out sourced a lot of the comment replies and DM management so I can focus on the things I’m good at – the video marketing and understanding the trends and algorithm.

Energetically, I feel like I’ve spent a good portion of time this year withdrawing.

Withdrawing from everything really. I was giving too many pieces of me away and leaving none for myself. I’m not sure I’ve quite gotten the balance right yet, perhaps I’ve withdrawn a little too much in places. But there isn’t enough of me to keep giving out and it’s exhausting. I’ve stopped messaging in groups, stopped going to as many conferences, stopped saying yes to teaching and projects. It’s sad in one respect but also I can go back to it and say yes again in the future. I just need a break and to recoup my energy and apparently a weekend off isn’t sufficient. Who knew.

I think the other major lesson I’ve learned this year is what my rest looks like and what it should look like. I have very consistently published three books a year since I started. But I only take 5 weeks from first word to handed to the editor to write a book. So why aren’t I publishing more?

I think because I’ve been resting by doing other things. Setting up warehouses. Creating courses, running a podcast.

Instead of doing what I need, going to the gym, reading and inputting the world, museums, castles, countries. That’s what I need in terms of creative rest. But instead I was displacing the need and converting it into doing other types of work. My big experiment this year is to try and stop that shit and give my body what it needs and see what the creative output is like. It may be that I just can’t write more than that in a year. Or it might be that if I just fed myself more I’d be able to do more. Only the next year will tell.

Lesson 3 Growth Means Change

Change is both inevitable and necessary. Humans by their nature are curious and curiosity means evolution. I really believe that if you want to stay in this industry for the long term then you have no choice but to keep bettering yourself. The competition increases, technology modernises, reader desires evolve, which means adapting is your only survival mechanism.

I used to hate change, and there are still times when I do, but if you want to be better, if you want to stay in this game then you have to be better because what you’ve already done is what got you here. If you keep doing the same thing you’ll stay here and there are other places I want to go.

I feel like I’ve spoken at length about change and letting go and adapting in this episode. Which is why it feels timely that I make this announcement.

Over the last year, I have realised that in order to stay in my zone of genius and more my happy place, I’ve had to say no to an increasing amount of projects, requests and activities.

No is my least favourite word. And yet, saying no is what has helped me to be happier, to do more of what I love and also to… rest.

Sacha Black as a name, a brand and a business brought me so much joy. It enabled me to leave my day job and changed my life. But she wasn’t a sustainable business. In order to make ends meet I had to run myself into the ground. Ruby has enabled me to live the dream, to take a second to breathe and to spend time on the work that I left my day job for.

All things change. All things end. 

Which is why I’ve decided this is the final episode of The Rebel Author Podcast. And I suppose in some way, this may be my greatest rebellion of all. To leave behind the thing that started this journey, that took me on the path to my dream. It’s scary, terrifying to let go of what once was my life raft. But if this show has taught me anything, it’s that we rebel to create joy.

And from joy comes all our success.

This show has been my companion on this journey and it is gut wrenching ending it but I also know it’s the right thing to do.

I want to say thank you to each and every listener. Whether this is your first episode or your 200th, I hope that the show has made a difference to you. I hope that you have taken something from the interviews and learned something helpful about the industry. I want to say thank you to the show’s sponsors and above all to the show’s patrons. Some of you have been with me from the start and that is an honour I can barely process. Thank you for the community, for the rebel stories and for joining me on this incredible journey.

It has been an honour to serve this community and I hope make a difference to you on your journeys. It’s my hope that I get to hear about every listeners success. That one day you drop me an email to tell me you finally published and that you have swathes of readers clamouring at your door for the next book.

In terms of practicalities. I will be leaving the show open for the time being. I will continue to pay to have the show hosted, especially as I may return in a year to do another annual lessons learned. That’s not a promise, it’s a hope.

Lesson 4 No Matter What, This is Always Better

This is the same lesson I come back to every single year, whether I’m talking to you in a year or not, that I hope I continue to remember.

This photo represents my lowest moment creatively. I still remember the pain riddled in my mind, manifesting as physical bodily sickness. A constant yearning ache for something more. Something different.

It still astounds me every day that this is the life I’m now living. I often look at the photo and say I don’t recognise the woman in that photo. But that’s such a disservice to who I was then.

In some ways, she is the strongest version of me. She is the one that fought despite being in pain. She stayed the course despite wanting to quit, despite not seeing success. There is power in your lowest moments. It is from them that you find who you truly are. You find what you’re actually made of.

If that is where you are, be proud because I believe you can fight your way out. You can keep going. Creative people are the strongest humans I know. 

Wherever you are right now, you don’t have to be in a year’s time. Hell, you don’t have to be there tomorrow. You are creative you can find your way out. You can create a new path. Create your dream and make it a reality.

I said it last year, but as a creative, you are a magician. We have the power to change lives with our words. With YOUR words. But not if they stay in your mind.

There are people out there that need your words and your stories. They need to feel the connection that only you can. They need the meaning that only your way of telling that story will give them.

If I leave you with one message this year, it’s that it counts.

Everything counts.

Every word you lay down. Every action you take. Every social media post, every ad. Every finished book. 

But you must keep going. Keep trying, changing, evolving. Letting go. You have to be willing to say goodbye to one path in order to say hello to a new one. The one that potentially you were always meant to be on.

Each action you take, big, small or somewhere in between is a step towards your dream. And no matter where you are on this journey, this doesn’t have to be your resting place. Never settle, never accept. Always strive.

I am so proud of this community, of the support we give each other, the kindness that thrives when creatives surround each other with like minds. I am in awe of you all. Honoured to have gotten to watch so many of you follow your dreams.

Know that no matter how hard it gets. No matter how many dark days you experience, how many set backs, how many missed goals, there is always tomorrow. You can always start again. Try again, ask for help. This community will always have someone there with an open hand willing to help pull you up.

Because this life is worth it. The fight, the tears, the struggles, the yearning, the longing, the rage, frustration and sadness. All of it is worth it. This life is so much better than the misery I was living in and I hope that I never forget that. That I stay grateful.

I live an honoured life, serving readers with my creativity. I wish that for all of you. That each one of you fights long enough that you live your dream alongside me. There will always be space, my arms will always be open and I will always be cheering for you. Today, tomorrow in twenty years.

Thank you

The post 292: Lessons Learned from Six Years of Writing Full-Time appeared first on Sacha Black.

Don’t forget, Patrons get early access to these Black Herron episodes an entire month early and then we air them on the podcast feeds the following month. If you’d like to hear them early you can join me on Patreon from as little as $2 right here.

To find out more about Rachael, you can listen to her show “How Do You Write” or visit her website.

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If you like dark humour, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.

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In this episode we cover: 

• Planning as an indie author
• Maker, manager and marketeer
• How to plan for 2024
• What being a good publisher means
• Knowing what to measure

This week’s question is: who or what is inspiring or motivating you at the moment?

Recommendation of the week is: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

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Find out more about Orna:

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Rebel of the Week is: Helen

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com

Lots of new patrons this week, welcome and thank you to I Heart SapphFic, Kiz Moncrieff, Lyn, Leela Hughes and Brooke T Carr, and thanks to The Blumenkranz Twins for upping their pledge. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

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