My one year anniversary - of being an indie author

Thursday was my one year anniversary of publishing my very first ebook, The Railway Angel. It so happened that I published my fourth estory that day, too, The Quest. As a lot of indie authors are blogging about their journey and how they have got on in their first year, I thought I'd do the same. So, here are my figures and what I have learnt along the way, and what I have still to learn.

Figures

Smashwords

Railway Angel   5066 (1 paid)
Racing Angel     46 (12 paid)
One Good Turn  17
The Quest           1

I have earned: $8.32 (It has now gone up to $9.52 - two more of my second ebook have sold).

Guaranteed that most of these, esp for the last three ebooks, are probably just for samples. But, hey, it still means that people are reading my writing.

Amazon

3247 in the one year, that is all the ebooks so far.
16 of those are paid.
I have earned: $5.68

Kobo
1 (OGT) = 37p

So let's calculate how many that is overall - 8378. I know some of these are just samples, but this number is more people I have known in my life to have read any part of my work. I am really happy about this.

I have earned more and had more sales on Smashwords. At one point it was more earnt on Amazon with more sales on SW.

What I have learnt along the way
1. I am not alone. I have found that there are now so many other authors going the indie route rather than the trad one, and some of these are very friendly and helpful with offering advice to others how they went and what they have learnt to do and what not to do. One of those being namely, DD Scott.
2. I am so enjoying having control of my writing life. What I write, the length I write, what I want to publish.
3. How to format documents into an ebook. After I did it the first time, it came easy to me. Tip here: try to get the document you are typing to be with the Smashwords guidelines as you go along eg the para indent and line spacing. Saves time when it comes to publishing it.
4. How to convert documents from Word using Calibre. I found it easy to use.
5. I can't do cover designs, so have hired it out to someone else to do.
6.Am still learning sentence structure and plotting and character development.
7. You can get great photos of people and places from stock photo websites such as istockphoto.

I have yet to learn: how to do a Table of Contents. I have been told it is easy to do. We shall see. Oh, and how to use Twitter and Facebook more effectively for marketing. I plan to start up my own Street Team on Fb next week, so watch FB.

That is it. Oh one last thing. I had a message on FB the other day from another writer. She said that she read my blog about being an indie author and it inspired her to do the same. Well, there you go. I don't think I've inspired anyone before.  Here's to another year of being an indie author. Cheers!