2018 accomplishments (and a sneak peek at 2019)

written by Betsy Flak on 2019-01-09

For this year's recap and annual goals-setting, I'm doing things a little differently. I'm going to start with the big picture (gasp!) and work my way into the details.

First up are my accomplishments. As an indie author, I have two main responsibilities. First, publish as many works as possible, whether that be through my blog, through sites like Prolific Works, or through the more traditional means of e-books, paperbacks, hardcovers, etc. through Amazon and other retailers.

My second job is to get my books into the hands of readers. Or to put it bluntly, to sell my books so that I can, you know, eat food, drink water, have shelter and healthcare, all those basic necessities for life.

So that's what we're going to look at first. How many works did I publish? How much did I sell?

1: How many works did I publish?

Note that I used "works" here and not "books." That's because I publish a variety of items, from flash fiction ultra-quick reads through full-length novels (and eventually I plan to publish boxed sets, audiobooks, and who knows what else). In the table below, paperbacks and e-books are grouped together as one item.

A second note is that when I use "published" here, I don't necessarily mean in the traditional sense of being in bookstores and in e-book retailers like Amazon. I count it as published even if it was only available on my blog, to my email list, or as a limited-time launch bonus for a regular book.

Without further ado, here's how I did this year:

That's a nice, big uptick. I doubled the amount of novels I published, equaled the amount of novelettes, and published some flash fiction and short stories too.

For 2019, I unfortunately don't see myself continuing to increase the amount I can publish. At the moment, it seems like this is my maximum output for any given year, at least in terms of total word count. I mean, we'll see. If I can publish more, I'd love to do that. But I need to watch that whole work-life balance thing.

2: How much did I sell?

First, I'm not going to share the raw numbers of my book sales, at least not right now. This is because I want to focus on growth rather than hitting certain numbers.

Secondly, the "growth of gross revenue" listed below is based on annual book sales completed from November of the previous year through October of that year (because Amazon pays two months after the sale occurs).

All right, so I'm definitely pleased with 970% growth from 2017 to 2018. That said, we are working with small numbers here, so that 970% didn't require a crazy-high jump in the raw number of books sold. And it is not sustainable in the long run.

So, I'm going to target a 50% growth rate for 2019 since I'm all about the slow, steady, consistent growth. But of course, if I can push it higher, I'm going to.

That's it for my broad 2018 accomplishments. I published more works (including more novels and more works in general) and I grew my business by over 900% based on gross revenue. I look to continue this work into 2019 and beyond!

via GIPHY

And because it's fun—and informative—to look back, here are my 2017 accomplishments.