I know I've mentioned this before, but my book sales do not, in any way, cover the costs of publishing the books. Moreover, they don’t cover the costs of the ongoing advertising of the books.
It’s starting to get a little closer. My advertising budget has a pretty hard upper limit due to financial issues, and I’m hitting that limit every month, which means that I’m consistently advertising as much as I can (as many people are seeing the ads as is mathematically possible). The flipside is that book sales are slowly ticking upwards, so even with a constant number of ad views, I’m selling more books.
Not enough to cover costs, as we said, but that’s okay. At this stage of my career, I’m really happy to just get my work into people’s hands… without starving or going bankrupt, of course, which is where that strict upper limit comes into play.
Still, it’s a weird feeling, being intentionally bad at business in this way. I know I can’t maintain it, and I know it’s actually digging me into a deeper hole that I will eventually still have to crawl out of. But hopefully it’s slowly getting me closer to my goal of being a full-time writer? I hope? Reviews of my work continue to land in the 4-star (out of 5) range, so that’s a positive sign!
But you know what would be even better than maxed-out ad budgets? Publishing more books! I should get back to that, right about now!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!