Welcome, one and all, to my 34th birthday extravaganza! In the life of a new-father author, a longer-than-usual newsletter is as much of an extravaganza as one can hope for. Please forgive the lack of balloons and party favors.
What you'll receive instead is a detailed accounting of a year in the life of an indie author with... three books published!? Three whole books, I can hardly believe it. I started officially writing my first book in 2018, and 10 years of writing is going to sneak up so quickly. But in many ways, 10 years feels short, like I'm still just getting started and have so much more to learn.
For instance, in a more rational timeline of our multiverse, those three books would be the complete Sibling Suns trilogy rather than two Sibling Suns books and one random standalone sci-fi novel that's selling extremely poorly. Unfortunately, we're living in a much more chaotic timeline, a fact which is quite self-evident.
It's good to embrace that chaos. As the financial hole of self-publishing gets deeper by the year, the notion that this gig will become a full-time job recedes into the distant future. But continue to dig I shall. Maybe it's not a financial hole. Maybe it's a financial well, and if I dig deep enough I'll strike oil. Literary oil. Or something.
In any case, the masculine urge to dig holes wins out. I'll keep grabbing my shovel, day after day. Keep picking bits of these stories from the latent space between neurons and sticking them on the page. Let's rappel into this ever-deepening pit together, shall we? See what I've gotten up to this year.
Table of Contents
Writing statistics
Alright, we're starting off with the same high-level stats as last year. First up, a complete timeline of what I worked on each month.
Timeline
- June 2024: Released To Burn All Belief, then finished the final Grave of the Waiting revision guide
- July 2024: Wrote 2.0 draft of unpublished Grave of the Waiting chapters
- August 2024: Published remaining chapters in serial edition of Grave of the Waiting
- September 2024: Finished 1.0 draft for Secret Project and finished edits for Grave of the Waiting paperback and Kindle editions
- October 2024: Finished release preparations for Grave of the Waiting and wrote 2.0 draft for Secret Project
- November 2024: Released Grave of the Waiting and became a dad!
- December 2024: Holiday month
- January 2025 - May 2025: Outlined Sibling Suns 3
As you can tell, the 2025 half of Year 33 was much more singularly focused than the 2024 half. But in 2024, I released two books within a span of five months! That involved a lot of scatterbrained planning (for books and baby) interspersed with bouts of focused revision.
Key Metrics
In last year's Odyssey, I said, referring to Benny's birth (which was a surprise for the end of the newsletter):
This coming year will likely see even lower metrics, for reasons I'll share later.
How accurate was my prediction?
| Year 31 | Year 32 | Year 33 | Year 34 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Words | 132,121 | 209,212 | 76,422 | 70,562 |
| Total Hours | 482.65 | 461.50 | 361.30 | 190.00 |
/* Note: Total Words includes only those written during the outlining, drafting, or editing stage of stories/newsletters. Total Hours includes all time spent doing anything writing related, e.g. sending emails, marketing, graphics work, and of course writing. */
/* Note 2: Since the beginning of the year, I've also dedicated a reasonable amount of time into improving the website. I haven't tracked that time for the Total Hours count, but maybe I will this coming year. */
/* Note Infinitum: Those flat days were the start of the year when I forgot to keep track of how many words I was writing each day for the outline. I just amortized the count on day 19 across the prior 18 days. */
Things were looking Grim until I started the Sibling Suns 3 outline in January. But while my prediction is technically accurate, it's much less dire than I had expected! Granted, Year 33 was a low-metric year too since I was halfway through To Burn All Belief's 1.0 draft when it started.
This year should be different. I'm expecting something in between Year 31 and 32's word counts, assuming my goals are successful.
Goal assessment
Goal 1: Publish Grave of the Waiting – SUCCESS!
I don't think there's any denying that this goal was a success. See there? "Publish" Grave of the Waiting. And you can't deny it's published.
Now, if this goal was about selling Grave of the Waiting? Well, that'd be a different story. I knew sci-fi was a tough market to break into, but it's rougher than I guessed. Especially with a book as weird as Grave of the Waiting.
I wrote the darn thing and even I barely know what genre it is. A speculative horror, cosmic sci-fi thriller with a literary lean? Yeah, that's not flying off the shelves anytime soon. The niche audience for this one might only be about 40 people, because that's how many have bought it.
The truth is, when it comes to marketing, I'm a dog in a chemistry lab. I really have no idea what I'm doing. More of that in the financial transparency section.
It's a definite weak spot of mine. Something I'm working on improving. Otherwise, Sibling Suns 3 could be a total flop, and I really would prefer if that didn't happen.
A quick aside about Sibling Suns distribution
As a quick aside, that leads into this month's website improvement, a new landing page for the Sibling Suns series.
One difficulty in my writing journey has been that the Sibling Suns books were not planned with any market or target audience in mind. My current thinking is that this was completely backwards from how it "should" be done. Should, if your goal is to sell books as opposed to writing for the art of it. Product-market fit doesn't just materialize out of thin air. It takes research and genre familiarity.
That's made it quite difficult to pin down a message for any of my books that lands for a target audience. Grave of the Waiting and the Sibling Suns series are both deeply weird. All three books are a different unlikely blend of genres. Having a landing page like this (and the existing Grave of the Waiting page) will let me refine the marketing pitch over time by driving paid traffic to the page and measuring conversion through direct sales.
That's right folks. The money pit needs a fresh infusion of burning cash. At least for a time.
But this means I'm going to have to do something a bit sad. I'm going to be pulling my books out of Kindle Unlimited. I want to sell paperbacks and ebooks directly, but Amazon requires exclusive license to sell the Kindle edition for a book to be in KU.
To Burn All Belief has already been pulled from Kindle Unlimited, and An Ocean of Others will follow suit on August 21. If you were hoping to read either of these books on KU, I do apologize.
To make it up to you, I've made them both free to grab this week! An Ocean of Others is free on Amazon from today (June 4) until Sunday, June 8. To Burn All Belief is free at the Sibling Suns landing page for the same period.
(If it's not free in your country, please let me know so I can rectify that.)
Oh, and did I mention there's a second new feature this month? A fully redesigned store page! Only books for sale right now, but more merch coming soon. Check it out!
The nice part about the new store is it's hosted directly on my site. That means it can see if you're subscribed to the newsletter or as a Benefactor and offer you discounted prices automatically. Hooray for technology! 🥳
Goal 2: Finish 1.0 Draft of the Mathemelodian novella Finish the Sibling Suns 3 outline – SUCCESS?
Alright, back to Odyssey business. I started Year 33 planning to finish the Mathemelodian novella before Sibling Suns 3. My reasoning at the time was that I had a new baby on the way, and planning the trilogy's conclusion would not mesh well with new parent life.
But shortly before Benny's arrival, I realized I had it completely backwards. New parent life was much better for outlining than drafting. Outlining doesn't require nearly as much unbroken focus. It seems so obvious in retrospect, I don't know how I could have gotten it wrong. Funnily enough, I officially started the Sibling Suns 3 outline in the hospital the night before Benny was born.
In any case, this goal got chopped down a bit. Finishing a novella's first draft, finishing a novel's outline. Tomato, tomato. And finish I did!
Outlines are funny things. I could keep noodling on the Sibling Suns 3 outline for months. Diving deeper into side character motivations. Meticulously planning each scene. Answering every unanswered question posed by the series so far.
But at some point you just have to say, "Enough!" Halfway through May, I hit that point. The outline is just a tool to make drafting easier. Do a bit of work up front and you won't find yourself tangled in knots in the book's second act.
I've written three outlines, and all three have been completely different in the approach and result. This latest is by far the most detailed. In fact, the word count is probably about what the novella's would have been.
So I'm considering this goal a success, even if it wasn't what I originally planned. And it rolls right into this year's one and only goal.
New goals
Goal 1 -- Finish the 1.0 Draft of Sibling Suns 3
Twelve months to write a novel. Can I do it? Well, that's longer than it took me to write any of my last two books' first drafts. /*AOOO took longer, but it was my first book, and I had no idea what I was doing.*/ And it's a longer time than my audiobook publisher would prefer, I'm sure. Sorry folks, I know I'm slow!
But I really want to take my time with this one. Let it simmer. Stew. Marinate. Allow myself time to make big changes if the story doesn't feel perfect. I want to be sure to stick the landing.
For a while, I was caught up in the idea of releasing a book every year. I still think that's almost mandatory if you want to make a living as a full-time author. I, however, am not a full-time author. I'm a full-time software engineer, a full-time dad, full-time husband, and part-time author. You have to be realistic about these things. I still have to find time to sleep at night, you know?
So, this will be a slower release process. After I finish, there won't be a mad rush to finish the second draft in one month (as with To Burn All Belief). In fact, after finishing the first draft of AFTS (👀), the plan is to prepare the long-overdue second editions and maybe even hardcovers for An Ocean of Others and To Burn All Belief.
What I'm trying to say is:
"'The books will be done when they're done.' - George RR Martin" - Joshua Scott Edwards
I promise it won't take 15 years.
Financial transparency
What might take 15 years is digging ourselves out of this financial hole. This year was interesting, because two books were published, but most of the artwork and editing for them was included in last year's report. So, there aren't too many big expenses. That said, this hole is still going downward. Let's break out the tables.
Last year we only had stats for one book. Now we've got three to contend with. I've simplified them so they're not too overwhelming. First up, total sales of each book.
| Sales | An Ocean of Others | To Burn All Belief | Grave of the Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kindle/Paperback | 65 | 185 | 41 |
| Audiobook | 116 | 17 | 0 |
| Lifetime Total | 860 | 202 | 41 |
Note, the lifetime total for each book includes all formats but only paid sales. There are also 361 new free copies of An Ocean of Others out there, for a lifetime total of ~3760 eBooks. I've also given away a bunch of paperbacks of To Burn All Belief and Grave of the Waiting, but don't have any stats for those.
There are also Kindle Unlimited reads for the Sibling Suns series. Here's the up-to-date tally.
Lastly, the table you've all been waiting for. How much money did I make this year as an author?
| Income | ||
|---|---|---|
| Amazon/Audible Sales | $411.66 | |
| Direct Sales, Subscriptions, & Merch | $357.43 | |
| Year 34 Total | $769.09 | |
| Last year's Total | $353.55 |
Compared to last year, things are up! Hooray! I published two books, so I would certainly hope that's the case. I'm going to try to do a better job of accounting this year, so I can separate direct sales from subscriptions and merch. Yes, I do have subscriptions – it's called becoming a Benefactor, and making those memberships more valuable is at the forefront of my mind this year as I prepare to conclude the Sibling Suns trilogy.
But how does that stack up against this year's expenses. Given the new baby's arrival, the goal was to keep expenses much lower. Brace for impact.
Total expenses last year were $6368.38. This year...
Only $3,354.80! 🥳
That's almost a 50% reduction, which is huge. That, combined with income more than doubling? Holy smokes, this business is taking off! To sum it up:
| Year 34 Paid Sales | Lifetime Paid Sales | Year 34 Revenue | Lifetime Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 424 | 1,103 | $769.09 | $1633.68 |
Folks, we're just getting started. Thank you all for sticking around to support my passion for storytelling. I'd keep doing this even if there was no light of profitability at the end of the tunnel, but having some semblance of readership motivates me to challenge myself and tell the best stories I can put to the page.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. 💚
Naz News
Only one thing left on the docket. BNN: Breaking Naz News!
Nazgul has definitely been growing more jealous of Benny. The older Ben gets, the more attention he needs, and that hasn't escaped Naz's notice.
If Benny is sitting at the table, Naz has to sit at the table too.
If Benny is laying on his play mat, then by golly, so is Nazgul. That's why we send him to daycare thrice a week. So he comes home ready for this:
Of course, we love both our boys and don't want Naz to get upset with Ben. They're going to be best friends before he knows it! Until then, he just needs a few more walks and treats for us to stay in his good graces.
That wraps up this year's Odyssey of JoshSE. Once again, thank you for sticking around with me this year. It's been a chaotic one, but I'm really looking forward to sharing more about Sibling Suns 3 as I work on the 1.0 draft! Keep an eye on that Trello board to follow along with my progress.
And with that, I'm off to go play some Elden Ring: Nightreign. At least, until Benny wakes up for his nighttime bottle—the first of many this night, I'm sure.
As always, thanks for reading!
—Josh