What does an average Indie author of alien romances make?

Welcome to the smuttier side of romance, , with alien peens and the readers who love them!

I believe transparency in the industry is very healthy and allows for indies across the book world to connect, have realistic expectations, and know that they are not alone. But on top of that, I believe that it also helps readers truly understand the impact they make when they read, review and support an indie author when they buy a book, leave a review, or read their pages in KU.

Did you know on average many indie authors make less than $10 a day.

In fact, a majority of indie authors have $1.00 or zero income days or sometimes weeks.

We rely on reviews and readers to read our books and spread the good alien peen word to help fund the next book!

Every time you leave a review, read an indie book, you are a book hero to an author out there! Speaking of authors, I'm obsessed with this new indie I found and gobbled down two of her books already and can't wait to read more from her, but she is our feature indie today before I continue on with the rest of my newsletter about a day in the life of an indie author:

Indie Feature today!

KC Kingmaker and her spicy reverse harem genderbent Robin Hood Retelling Daughter of Sherwood! I was intrigued just with that concept alone, but OMG! These characters flew off the page and I love her writing, perhaps you will too!

Start reading Daughter of Sherwood on Kindle Unlimited and then come back here to read more about my indie author journey and book stats to go with them! I'll wait here while you do that. --> clicky clicky

Welcome back!

Often times, if an indie doesn't have enough support to have their book break even within a year or two... (not including paying themselves for their time, just the launch costs of a book and maintaining an author presence.) Then that indie is unable to fund bringing the next book to life.

You, being on this newsletter, and supporting indie authors, is a lot bigger of a deal than you think! You are already a BOOK HERO by being here with me and listening to my author journey as I claw my way through Author Mountain to reach its chocolatey center!

In the beginning, being an indie author is a labor of love where we spend years to create our worlds and putting them into a consumable package then we lovingly gift that time to you as well as our own money so that you can share in our imagination and be entertained for a few hours, perhaps a few days of your time.

Basically, it is our hopes and dreams that one day, we can reach the molten center of Author Mountain where we can be paid for being insane and talking with our multiple personalities in our mind as we act out various adventures together. Often times, my colleagues don't listen to me, I'm the director of our various mind jaunts, but they usually know better than me and I just roll with it.

Ahem, anyways, back to the author transparency.

It regularly costs me around 1,000 of my own investment, not including my time to write and market the adventures we so lovingly act out in my mind, in order to launch a single book, and without reader support, the next book wouldn't be possible!

Thank you to everyone who has taken a chance on my alien romance books and has allowed me to continue giving readers the next book!

We have a total of 6 alien romances available since 2023! And half of them have paid for their own launch costs, which is amazing! I'm excited to write the next book, so I can prepare for when I can reinvest for the next launch!

That's right, every reader who picks up my fated mates, spice with plot, knotting, consent is sexy, alien romances brings me one step closer to funding the next book. I take every penny and massage them back into giving you the next adventure. I'm in the labor of love stage of my indie author mountain career.

I started Sky Robert and writing alien romance books in 2023 and invested to bring to life 3 books and hope for the best. Because of reader support I was able to earn enough back to re-invest into the next adventure to bring 3 more books and I'm back to my original investment.

Without your pages read, your reviews, and your support when recommending my book to new readers then it wouldn't be sustainable to continue to bring you the next book in the universe, because an indie would essentially be paying readers to read their books.

No, I don't mean paying them for reviews. I mean paying money in book covers, editing, copyright, author subscriptions/ tools/ website/ hosting/ newsletter/ promo image creation/ marketing with other newsletters, giveaways, and more.

Everything adds up and if an indie doesn't see those costs returned then, yes, they have essentially not only paid to have people read their book, but they also spend quite a bit of their time to do so.

So, on average it costs me around 1,000 to launch a book

This is the average cost for even a book that I give away for free, Just the basic cost of an average book cover (170---this is cheap cheap, I've spent 450 on a cover before), 1 round of editing (450- this is also cheap cheap, I want to one day afford 3 rounds of edits which would run around 1,450 for the whole dev,copy,proof), copyright (65) = 685 for bare minimum, no paperback adaptation, no marketing, no author maintenance costs, and then I have to send my book to another editing round for $100 proofreading by the grace of kind editors that are barely squeaking by, but are doing their own part in the book industry out of their passion for supporting indie authors like me.) That leaves 200 out of the 1,000 budget I keep for myself per book to then spend around 45 in having the book appear on a single promotional book review site, 60 for a monthly service to provide promotional material like reels and images every month, another 35 for placement in a single newsletter like Fussy Librarian... you can see how the 200 for marketing doesn't go very far before you're already at the 1,000 marker, and my future author goal is to invest 2,000 into each book launch to make them even better.

An author career goes in stages, and I will continue to keep investing back into the books until one day... my books can buy me coffee for all the pampering I give them.

It takes me around two to three months to write a book (sometimes I'm faster, but sometimes I get stuck or delete a bunch of work and start over.) I wrote nearly 60,000 words into Her Alien Insurgent and then COMPLETELY trashed them to start over, then wrote another 67,000 words, essentially writing the book twice. On average, it takes me three months to write and edit a book.

That means, on average that's about 4 books a year for me writing mostly part-time between taking care of my kids. And 4,000 minimum of investment on my part and 12 months of a majority of my "free" time. I spend around 3 to 4 hours a day writing/editing/marketing.

Realistically, in order for my time to be paid for during that year plus the investment in launch costs, I would need my indie business to bring in 3,360 a month, which is around 112 a day (7 days a week)

And as I said earlier, many indies make less than 10 a day, including myself, and an indie career has flux days of sometimes nothing, sometimes only 1 dollar here and there, and other times, we can have an entire week or month of nothing.

So, being an indie is mostly a labor of love, and many who strive to make it a career that pays the bills are in it for the long haul and are aware that many businesses start off with an investment that won't see profit for 3-5 years.

Unfortunately, unlike most businesses, there isn't a business account that the owners (authors) can draw from for a salary for 3-5 years while they wait for their business to establish itself. So, we often go unpaid as we work other jobs, or are privileged enough to be in my situation of not being able to afford childcare for the kids, so one parent is required to stay home because childcare costs more than what I could have made with a job. This unfortunate drawback of the cost of childcare being outside of my budget, has presented an opportunity for me to use my savings and every single spare hour I have in a day between everything else, to try to make my dream job a reality in the time I have.

Even my parents donated funds as a Christmas present to help fund launching a book. You can thank them for my Medusa Romantasy retelling, Taking Medusa and Breaking Fate coming to life, it is because of their funds that I was able to do so. Since, my previous book on my other author platform S.M. McCoy, Kingdom of Acatalec, even traditionally published, completely flopped on engagement and left me with little to invest in trying again after losing 2,000 of my own investment in bringing the book to life and seeing less than $50 in return, plus countless hours of creating the book, narrating the book, and even working on book two of the series that sits languishing on my hard drive. Failures to launch like that end indie careers, usually, but I'm a tenacious bitch.

Much like that horrible slime my kids played with and got stuck in the couch fabric. You soak it, have to scrape it off with a butter knife and still it leaves its mark forever! I'm like toy slime, really, clinging on to whatever surface in author mountain I can, slowly working my way to the yummy center where my dream of being a full-time author that can actually pay for my own coffee comes true.

This isn't a plea for pity or sympathy. This is an open transparency about what it's like out there for an indie author. A majority of the time the indie does not actually make any money on their books because many never break even on their costs.

And, every month, the "cost" of having the book available increases, meaning the "launch" costs may eventually break even, but there is a cost of maintaining an author career every month that must also be wrapped into the breakeven costs, without ever paying the author for their continued time in writing/editing or marketing.

Technically speaking, I have 3 books that broke even on launch costs!

That is AMAZING! I'm just going to take a moment to acknowledge that I've NEVER broken even on my costs until last month APRIL 2024, when THREE of my books passed the ribbon of the launch race together! I'm blown away and am truly excited that it's like this light in the tunnel that gives me hope that my spreadsheet projections will come true, and I'll make it as an indie author!

Even with that amazing news, I have yet to actually break even on my total investment in being an author and investing in bringing my books into people's brainiums for consumption and happiness.

I took every penny from supportive readers and rolled it back into launching more books!

And I will continue to roll every penny back into bringing the next book to life until there are no more pennies to rub together, or until that mythological unicorn of an indie life presents itself and I can finally pay myself for my time and call this not just a hobby, but a job that I can truly say to anyone that asks, "I don't work a day in my life, because I love my job."

You as a reader are so very important to indie authors everywhere. It is because of readers that enjoy our work that we continue to share what we write.

Sure, we are addicted to writing and the books will keep being written, it's an addiction for many of us that we are compelled to complete, but we share them for readers who love our imaginations, we invest in the stories for readers who leave us reviews that tell us how much they enjoyed what we gave out into the world.

An indie author doesn't have to share their books at all. Many keep them stored away never to be read. (I actually have several unpublished drafts sitting around that I haven't taken the time to edit/polish/and bring to "life" because of the investment it takes to do so.

There are actually 6 of my 48 open book projects that are complete first drafts, that may never see the light of day.

I can't take a chance on investing in every idea I write until my author career is more stable and I know I can get the money back with readership in a reasonable amount of time.

Your reviews, your support is what give us the cheerleading necessary to keep at it and bring you the next adventure!

When you love an indie author, read their books, share their books with other readers, and leave those reviews! We aren't mind readers, though some of our fated mates may telepathically mate bond with each other, us authors need more tangible means of being validated to keep investing our time and our money into bringing you the next adventure.

Sometimes, seeing those boosts in pages read in KU, or another lovely review that says how much our stories meant to someone, if only for a few hours of their time, means the world!

A special place in my heart goes out to every review that has told me that my books keep on getting better, and they are addicted. When a reader says that my books helped them out of a slump and they regret not reading my books sooner, or I exceeded their high expectations. These are words I keep snuggled up to my squishy heart and help me keep pushing for the next book to launch!

A shout out to Erika for saying she may cry if I ever stop writing my books. STAUP, you're going to make me cry! Don't stop, *winky face*, no really, it's reviews like this that I keep close to me and remind me to keep clawing at author mountain to bring you the adventures in my mind.

Thank you for sharing in my imagination and reading my Alien Romances!

If you love my writing, enjoyed reading your free book Her Alien Exchange, consider checking out the rest of the series!

Check out all books by Sky Robert here available in KU! https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BNXSFHZ4/allbooks

Indie Temptations:

When I checked out Alien Warrior Baby Making by Beatrix Steam it was FREESIES on Amazon! Check it out!

Check out Legends by Edita Petrick available on Kindle!

Check out Michelle A. Bailey's Sci-fi & Fantasy Romance Reader Giveaway!

Author updates!

Since my newsletter is already filled with authorly insights already, this section just has updates on my writing progress, so you can get excited for what is to come! Sneak peeks at what I'm working on!

Breaking Fate: I'm at around 62k/ 90k goal in writing Breaking Fate (currently available for Pre-order) Goal to have completed by end of June 2024

Dragon's Oath: is the next freebie I'm working on to give to everyone on the newsletter! It's a darker alien dragon romance, but with plenty of humorous banter to help take the dark edge off and of course, lovely spice with plot as usual. This will be a series; I have 3 covers picked up to explore this idea with!

Word Count: 2,379/50K

Goblin's Treasure: is a darker fae romantasy about being abducted into the Goblin Kingdom with Labyrinth feels but older and spicier. So, if you ever rewatched Labyrinth and wished the Goblin King had asked you give yourself to him and he would be your slave vibes, then this one is for all you monster fudgers that would have said, "yes" to the goblins.

Word Count: 9,700/90K goal to complete by November 2024

Her Alien Starbreaker My goal is to have this completed before end of September 2024 for an anthology (Anthology cover reveal in JUNE). Best of all, the personal cover for the book is commissioned by Deborah Garcia! So, this is the first cover I have made from commissioned artwork instead of cover designers! (Note: I make sure all my covers are done by designers that do NOT support A.I., No A.I. is used for my covers, nor my writing. I R hooman.)

This book will first be included in the Anthology along with 12 other spicy out of this world romances for 99 pennies, available for a limited time, then it will launch solo with the sneak peek cover below for 2.99, added to the Treasures of Trillume series, including paperback to really highlight the gorgeous, commissioned art.

Word Count: 21K/50K goal

Check out the Trillume Universe with standalone plot with spice adventures of fated mates, space vampires, knotting, and bonds that will last beyond the stars! All available in Kindle Unlimited!

https://books.steviemarie.com/jotab

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralienprince

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralieninsurgent

Or check out the Necia Warrior Series!

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralienexchange (Freesies with this newsletter, dig it out of your e-reader!)

https://books.steviemarie.com/heraliensavior

https://books.steviemarie.com/heralienwarrior

(Next book Her Alien Captor I want to work on for NaNoWriMo)

Thank you for being part of my author journey,

xoxo

Sky

And if you didn't know! I also write romantasy! Check out this slow burn Greek Myth retelling of Medusa available in KU!