Tag: authorbusiness

It’s That Time Again: My Year in Review (April 2024–April 2025)

Last year’s update (until 30 April 2024) is HERE, and the running page of past and present updates is HERE.

It’s old news by now, but I still can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I wrote one of these posts. A whole year since I made it official! Honestly, I thought it would feel different. I thought I’d get more done, too.

Overthinking is a beast of a habit, but I’ve wrangled it pretty well—if I may say so myself. Sure, it still drags me down some days, but I’m a lot quicker to notice it now. And then I do the opposite: I just get on with it.

The inspiration for posts like this comes from The Creative Penn with Joanna Penn, Sacha Black, and the SPA Girls. More on that over on my TIMELINE page.

📆 What Happened in 2025

Published Kobo Frances & Gilbert 1 August 2024

Joined Patreon 26 August 2024

Joined Ream 26 August 2024

Published Eternal Vows (Bonus for F&G) 26 August 2024

Published Enduring Vows (Bonus for J&J) 20 September 2024

Published Apple Books Frances & Gilbert 1 November 2024

Published Author Shop Frances & Gilbert 1 November 2024

Republished Amazon Jack & Jool 1 November 2024 

Republished Amazon Zara & William 1 October 2024

Published WIDE Frances & Gilbert 1 November 2024

Published Kindle Unlimited Leap of Her Own 12 November 2024

Serialised Silver Murder 3 December 2024

Published Eventual Vows (Bonus for Z&W) 3 December 2024

Serialised Lowveld Shadows 4 December 2024

Serialised Undercurrents of Deception 5 December 2024

Publish Kobo Jack & Jool 1 February 2025

Published Apple Books Jack & Jool 1 February 2025

Published WIDE Jack & Jool 1 February 2025

Published Author Shop Jack & Jool 1 February 2025

Published Everlasting Vows (Bonus for M&A) 22 February 2025

Published Kindle Unlimited When Hearts Leap 8 March 2025

Started blogging daily 22 March 2025

💸 Earnings (May 2024 – April 2025)

Amazon earnings from May 2024 to April 2025 R238.31
Kobo earnings R0
Draft2Digital earning R0
Direct sales earnings $1.98

That’s it for this year’s numbers.

📚 Reflecting on the Year

All the old stuff finally got cleaned up, published, and more importantly, left alone! Progress.

I also wrote loads of new content. If you’ve read The Unknown Series, you’ve probably seen the bonus material that came out of that.

Tried new things, too. Serialising on platforms like Ream, Substack, and Patreon was a real highlight—until I realised South Africa isn’t supported. No Stripe. Only PayPal, and readers really don’t love using it. We’ve got Paystack (Stripe owns it, but they keep it boxed in for Africa). Bureaucracy galore!

Luckily, WordPress to the rescue! I’ll be offering stories directly on my website soon, just as soon as I’ve sorted out the Paystack integration. It’s more paperwork than expected, but hey, nothing I can’t handle.

💪 The Real Wins

Beyond the writing and publishing, I’ve had some huge personal wins. Midlife hasn’t been the easiest, but I’m getting there—and that makes the writing side lighter too. So, so grateful for that.

💭 The Disappointments

Honestly? I’m disappointed in the earnings. I’d hoped to be making a steady $100/month by now. Clearly, I’ve not hit the right audience or strategy yet. But I’m still trying, and I’ll keep experimenting for the next year.

That’s it for this year’s review.

Cheers
Anne

PS. Past and future timeline posts will go to the timelines page

**Please send me an email with your feedback at anne@annecwest.co.za. Comments vanish and get missed, hence emails.**

My dearest readers and visitors

I’m happy you’re here.

It’s been quite quiet on this blog, not because life is quiet, I’ve been doing what I do best: OVERTHINKING.
Anyody else suffering from this?

DON’T! It’s a terribly limiting habit with only harmful consequences.
Preaching to the choir…

Anyways, I’ve been putting off picking up the blogging habit because I wondered what to write about. What would you want to read? Will anybody read it? What is the use? You catch my drift.

Then after a looooonnnngggg winded affair, I realised, I want to blog because I like blogging. If somebody reads this, bravo! If nobody reads this, bravo!

I like it.

Enough waffling on about this, let me get to the blog post for today.

I listened to an interview on The Creative Penn with Jo Penn. She interviewed Sacha Black about her author business. They talked about the timeline, the progress, etc. Jo mentioned the page on her website where she’s been recording the progress of her own writing career.

I thought that’s amazing! I wanted one of those pages. I started digging through my archives. I compiled this list of when I did what in my author career.

I will record this on my own TIMELINE page after reviewing the year that was.
This is the first year I am taking my author career seriously. I decided to take May 2024 as the start of my official fiction author career. Therefore this is the collection of events unfolding prior to May 2024.

I shared a little bit of info on the TIMELINE page about when I actually started writing. I mentioned how I have a history of being on and off with my writing career. So, I’m not going to add that here.

I think, let’s get into it:

2016

Published Amazon Appointment to Die 1 December 2016
Published Amazon Pebble in my Brick 2 December 2016
Published Amazon Walking the Pages 3 December 2016
Published WIDE Appointment to Die 3 December 2016
Published WIDE Pebble in my Brick 3 December 2016
Published WIDE Walking the Pages 4 December 2016

2017

Joined Wattpad 22 April 2017

2018

Joined StoryOrigin April 2018

2019

Published Amazon Beauty and the Vampire 19 January 2019
Published Amazon A Genocide 19 January 2019
Published WIDE A Genocide 19 January 2019
Published WIDE Beauty and the Vampire 19 January 2019
Republished Amazon Beauty and the Vampire 20 February 2019
Republished Amazon A Genocide 20 March 2019
Published Amazon A Day of Celebration 17 December 2019
Published WIDE A Day of Celebration 18 December 2019

2020

Joined Prolific Works March 2020
Published Amazon Frances & Gilbert 17 July 2020
Published Amazon Jack & Jool 3 October 2020
Published Kobo Jack & Jool 6 October 2020
Joined Bookfunnel 29 October 2020

2021

Published Amazon Zara & William 31 January 2021
Published Kobo Zara & William 31 January 2021

2022

Joined X (Twitter) for the 2nd time July 2022
Created Facebook Author Page 6 September 2022
Created Instagram at some stage…

2023

Published Author Shop A Day of Celebration 25 February 2023
Published Author Shop A Genocide 26 February 2023
Published Author Shop Beauty and the Vampire 26 February 2023
Published Author Shop Pebble in my Brick 26 February 2023
Published Author Shop Appointment to Die 26 February 2023
Published Kobo A Day of Celebration 10 March 2023
Published Kobo A Genocide 10 March 2023
Published Kobo Beauty and the Vampire 10 March 2023
Published Kobo Pebble in my Brick 20 March 2023
Published Kobo Appointment to Die 10 April 2023
Published Kobo Walking the Pages 8 April 2023
Published Amazon Notebooks 9 May 2023
Published WIDE Notebooks 10 May 2023
Joined TikTok 14 May 2023
Published Amazon The Harmony Bridge 28 May 2023
Joined Threads July 2023
Published Kobo The Harmony Bridge 15 August 2023
Published WIDE The Harmony Bridge 15 August 2023
Published Kobo Notebooks 1 September 2023

2024

Joined Goodreads for the 2nd time April 2024
Republished Amazon Frances & Gilbert 1 April 2024

EARNINGS

Amazon earnings from February 2019 to February 2024 R42.59
Kobo earnings R0
Draft2Digital earning R0
Direct sales earnings $45

That’s it until April 2024.

All I can say is, WOW! Indecisiveness, double-mindedness, doubt, insecurities, impatience, those are all things that only do harm. Can you imagine if I just stuck it out? All the stories that’s been simmering for years could have been out there in the world for all to enjoy.

I would also have been able to say that I’ve found my voice as an author. Or, I’ve found my genre.
Life is such an interesting journey.

But it’s what it is. We have now and we have our attitude. The rest of the things are outside our control. As an indie author, I can also say that I have technology that makes this possible, so use it, right?
That’s it for today, I’ll chat to you soon.

Cheers
Anne

PS. Future timeline posts will go to the timelines page