How I Make Six Figures as a Self-Published Author

I was looking at my 2024 and I realized that I’m a pretty big failure. Funny thing is that was the key to my success!

I failed. A lot. But each stumble taught me something and brought me closer towards the eventual path to success: I now make multi-six figures as a self-published author. Curious to know the failures that made me a success? Read on!

1. Solidify author branding

My first mistake? I didn’t know who in the heck I was. I wrote three entirely different subgenres of romance. It’s not a problem if you write across different genres. It’s double (or triple) the work if those genres don’t share the same readers. I soon learned these three subgeneres of romance did not.

Readers of my super steamy, dystopian MMF erotic romances were not interested in my contemporary fairytale romances. (For those googling MMF, that means male-male-female, which are ménage à trois tales where the swords cross.) Brand new readers who found my fairytales weren’t interested in my books where men shifted into wolves.

What I learned from my readers was that the level of steam matters most. If, for example, you have steamy romance readers who want the bedroom doors flung wide open alongside sweet romance readers who might clutch their pearls if they peeked inside the bedroom, then you must divide and conquer.

How did I solve this? A lobotomy would’ve been too expensive. So, I developed a split personality instead. I separated my books into three different pen names and put the appropriate subgenres together, building three separate audiences.

I kept my paranormal romance and fairytale retellings together with some crossover:

My sweet contemporary romances featuring wounded warriors have a separate pen name:

Everything else—where the bedroom door was in the spotlight and the mattress was super crowded—went under the erotic romance brand (who I later killed off in a plot twist around 2022).

This made readers super happy and confident that when they opened a particular book, they wouldn’t get an unwanted sword(s) ⚔️ in the eye!

What You Can Do:

• Examine your catalog.

• Do your books share a common audience? If not, consider segmenting them.

• You don’t necessarily need separate pen names, but clear branding will help readers know what to expect when they pick up your books.

2. Create a publishing schedule

The next place I failed was in setting reader expectations. Sometimes I put out a book a month for three months. Other times, I only put out three books a year. I lost readers and then gained new ones only to lose them again. I had to learn it wasn’t about speed. It was about showing up on time and when you were expected.

Are you a fast, moderate, or slow writer? Can you draft a book in a couple of weeks? Or perhaps it takes you months? No judgement on your speed, because it's really not about how fast or slow you go in this business. It's all about consistency. When readers know when to expect you, they're more likely to show up for you.

To become consistent in putting out books, you should know your WPH (words per hour) so you can plan out your publishing schedule. Let's talk word count tracking.

Personally, I don’t write by word count. When I do, I break apart my contractions and use tons of adverbs and adjectives to make the goal. Instead, I write by chapters. For me a chapter is a complete story in and of itself. I set a chapter goal for each day. I typically aim to draft or revise two to four chapters every day. I get diminishing returns if I try to write more than that.

I’m a very visual person with an unhealthy obsession with office supplies and stickers. When I finish a chapter, I reward myself with a gold star sticker ⭐️.

When you know your WPH, you can do more than plot your story — you can plot out exactly when you'll finish your book. If it takes you an hour to write 1K words, and you write 50K-word books, then you need to find 50 hours on the calendar to write your book. Therefore, if you could take one hour a day over 50 days, you'd get your first draft done. Or you could get it done in half that time in 25 days if you can find two hours per day. And so on.

Pull out a calendar. Mark off the days you know you're not going to write. Then schedule your 50 or so hours. You can track your words (or chapters) manually with pen and paper like a planner or bullet journal (bujo). You can record them on a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets. You can mark them in online apps Pacemaker or 4thewords. Once you know how many words (or chapters) you can write in an hour, day, or month then you will have a gauge of your publishing schedule for the year, set reader expectations, and then meet them.

What You Can Do:

• Track your writing pace (WPH or chapters per day).

• Use that data to create a publishing schedule you can stick to.

• Communicate your schedule with readers through newsletters or social media, so they know when to expect your next book.

3. Decide on a distribution strategy

My next failure was being uncertain of where I wanted my books to live online. I moved on and off retailers and in and out of exclusivity for years, which again won and lost me readers.

Finally, I decided to set my book wide, meaning that I offer my books for sale across multiple ebook retailers worldwide. I choose not to have many exclusive deals with retailers, such as Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. I made this choice for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that I have been laid off from a job before. Overnight, my single source of income was ripped from me. That trauma made me fear being beholden to one income source.

Being widely distributed is a lot of work. There are multiple commerce dashboards I have to keep up with. But instead of overwhelming me, this makes me feel a sense of security. Income comes in every week from one source or another. When I opened my direct store in 2022, income started coming in every single day! I have the confidence that if Bezos packed up his toy and went away, I can rely on Apple, Barnes and Noble, Rakuten (owners of Kobo), or Alphabet (creators of Google) or my direct sales store to feed and house me each month.

Does that mean that you should go wide? Well, it’s your choice. Remember, my decision came from a place of fear. You should take a close look at each platform. How do the books in your genre or subgenre fare on that platform? Do you have time to be mindful of more than one sales dashboard? I recommend looking at the bestseller charts of the platforms you’re interested in on a daily basis. In fact, I have each retailer’s app on my phone and I study their bestseller charts over my morning cuppa tea. Whatever you decide, make a decision from a place of information and not fear.

What You Can Do:

• Analyze where your books perform best.

• Consider whether exclusivity (e.g., Kindle Unlimited) or wide distribution aligns with your goals.

• Study the bestseller charts on each platform to understand your market.

4. Set attainable sales goals

My final failure was not having a clear goal for my author career. When I started out, I was making a decent income as a college professor and screenwriter. Of course I wanted to make a lot of money, but I figured the money would simply come because my books were awesome. Instead, my books earned me lunch money every day. I was okay with that because that million-dollar goal was just a dream.

And then I got word that the college I taught at would be closing in one semester. I needed my books to become my full-time income. Quick!

At the time my living expenses amounted to $2,500 each month — not including business expenses. I needed my books to make $30K per year or $82 per day. If my books were $2.99 and I made $2 each sale, then I needed to sell 40 book every day.

I had a goal. Now, I just needed some strategies. So I started running measurable marketing campaigns.

Newsletter swaps: I set up newsletter swaps with other authors, believing I might be able to average 5-10 sales with each blast. I connected with author friends who wrote in the same genre and asked for mentions in their newsletters, reader groups, or social media.

Paid Newsletter Promotions: In 2019, I was selected for a BookBub Featured Deal for the box set of my Purple Heart Ranch series under my sweet pen name Shanae Johnson. I sold thousands of copies at $0.99.

I left the box set at $0.99 for thirty days because I knew BookBub would keep the deal on their site for that long. The read-through to books 4 and 5 continued for months and is what pushed me to make over $66K that year.

In February 2020, I offered the first book in the Purple Heart Ranch series for free, and once again, BookBub accepted it as a Featured Deal. By then I’d published ten books in the series. With tens of thousands of free downloads of book 1, the second book made $13K on Amazon alone (remember that my books are widely distributed).

Display ads: Next I set up CPC (cost-per-click) ads. By this time in my career, I’d figured out Facebook Ads by taking courses, heeding advice from author groups, and trial and error. I started a $5 per day Facebook ad aiming to add another five sales per day to my quota.

Once I got those ads stabilized, I tacked on AMS ads hoping to gain yet another five sales per day.

When that started to work, I added in the BookBub CPC Ads. I was blessedly lucky that a few of my books earned a coveted Featured Deal. My best BookBub Ads target my own pen name as the audience. Those readers already showed they were interested in my books because they’d clicked the Featured Deal or liked my BookBub Author Profile. It was an easier sell to show them my new releases.

Please note that I was spending about $15 per day and now had to make closer to $100 per day to hit my $82 goal. But sales were increasing so I had the wiggle room.

Other paid promotions: There are a number of paid newsletters out there, including Robin Reads and Fussy Librarian. Because funds were tight during this time, I stalked each company’s website before purchasing an ad spot and looked at the books they’d chosen in the past.

First, I checked to make sure the books they promoted were similar to mine. Secondly, I looked to see if there had been a change in the book’s rankings on the e-retailer platforms. Once I was satisfied, I made sure to space the promotions out so that I could evaluate the results. If sales increased after the promotion, I knew it worked out for me. If not, I’d let the company know. Sometimes, I got a refund. Sometimes, I got no response.

What You Can Do:

• Determine your financial needs and set a realistic income goal.

• Break it down into actionable steps, such as daily or monthly sales targets.

• Use measurable strategies like newsletter swaps and ad campaigns to grow your audience and drive sales.Track your marketing efforts and sales to identify what’s effective.

• Be willing to pivot when something isn’t working.

• Continuously evaluate your business strategy to stay aligned with your goals.

The Takeaway

I failed at nearly every step of my author journey: branding, publishing schedules, distribution, sales strategies—you name it. But I learned from each mistake and used those lessons to build a successful, multi-six-figure career. Today, I know who I am as an author, I meet my readers’ expectations, and I set realistic goals that I consistently hit.

You can do the same. Take a hard look at your business, reflect on what’s not working, and create a plan to fix it. If I can fail my way to six figures, so can you.

For the next 21 days, I'll be posting tips and tricks about my journey as an indie author. Why? Because I wrote my first nonfiction book, Page Turner Pacing, and I'm launching it on Kickstarter on Monday!

In my Page Turner Pacing Kickstarter campaign, I share actionable tools and techniques to help you craft binge-worthy stories and grow your author career. Let’s turn your failures into stepping stones for success!