DL White [00:00:14]:
Well hello my bookish friends. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time or day you might be checking in, I welcome you. Welcome back To The Book Cast, my platform for sharing short fiction and updates on what I'm reading and writing. This is episode 70, And I am your host, DL White. I'm an author of contemporary southern romantic fiction novels featuring black men and women. I am also a big fan of books. So we usually begin with the book report and today I want to talk about money as I was inspired by Rachel Herron's annual money And we'll talk a bit about writing plans for the Q1 of the year. Easy peasy, we're sliding in pretty easy for the first Show of the year.
DL White [00:01:04]:
Happy new year. And, welcome back. I'm so happy to have your ears. If you love what I do as an author and you look forward to the show every week I desire your support of this podcast at bookcast. Buzzsprout.com. You can offer a one time or recurring monthly gift for which I would be ever so grateful. Every little bit helps and thank you so much in advance for your support. If you would like to offer up a comment, a question, a wish for the new year there's a link on my blog With the speak pipe function, so you can just press the button.
DL White [00:01:39]:
You've got 90 seconds to pour your heart out. Or there's a form listed if you'd rather use your fingers, Send it on through. I will add the post to the show notes and, I'll share your input in a future show. I look forward to hearing from you. So, Let's not dillydally. You know, I've got things to do, you've got things to do. I've got some coffee and some toast, And I have a planathon session with the Wordmakers writers, so I'm up and at them early to get the show recorded and edited before we begin. So let's Kick it.
DL White [00:02:12]:
Today is Saturday, January 6th. Happy New Year. It is 8:0:5 a. M. Y'all I am so so early this week. It is rainy in Atlanta. I have a mic and I am ready to dig in, but first it is time for my first literally my first Sip of coffee. That is hot and delicious.
DL White [00:02:46]:
I feel it I feel it like I feel it going down like my throat, through my chest, into my tummy. It's hot. We begin as always with the book report because I am a book head. If I'm gonna do anything, I am going to read a book. I have read 3 books toward my goal of reading 150 books in 2024. That's a pretty achievable goal For me, I read a lot and I read fast. We'll see where I am mid year to figure out if I need to increase or decrease my goal. Again, last year I ended up at 185 books.
DL White [00:03:22]:
This was a bit of a busy week with 2 in office days which cuts down on my reading time quite a bit and in all transparency beverage giant would like us to start coming in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday And so, while I will still be listening to audiobooks etcetera in the office because I'm pretty autonomous. I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks during my workday when I'm not in a meeting. I don't have a job where I talk on the phone or anything, it will probably cut down on, book time. So I'll be using my commute, My mornings before I head in, my afternoons, on my way home from work and maybe doing some light reading when I get home. So That's why I set my goal at 150 and, we might we might make it, we might not. We'll see we'll see how it goes, but I'm never not going to be reading. I mean, Come on let's be real. When we last spoke I was trying to pick my last book of the year and I I I'm gonna be honest I just gave up.
DL White [00:04:19]:
I just gave up. The pressure was Too great. I was not finding like that spectacular book to end the year with. Everything bored me. I was not interested in anything and so I just gave up and I watched, what did I watch? I don't remember. I watched something, several episodes of something and, I ended the year at 185. I'm supremely happy with that, goals. Last week, this week last week I read 3 books.
DL White [00:04:46]:
I read The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni. I have been Scrolling past this book for months and wasn't really interested in it before, but it was, kind of one of those books that Sounded good but I wasn't really sure about it. A bit of a slow start but once it got started I could not put it down. It was excellent, I really wish that I the the rest of his books, outside of the Tracy Crosswhite series sounded interesting to me but, they just don't. A lot of them are, like, espionage and like, you know, Russian counterintelligence type books and that's not- That's not my GM at all but I do enjoy the Tracy Crosswhite series so I'm very much looking forward to Whichever book is next in that series and whatever else standalone he would like to write, I am all for it. I also started the Greetings from Tuckerville series by Jay Nicole. This is a small town romance series. Book 1 is Somebody, Somewhere and book 2 is Yours for Now.
DL White [00:05:52]:
I gave both of those book 4 stars. They're very well done. Storylines are very familiar, But I'm not complaining, she she did her thing. This week I am reading King, The Life of Martin Luther King by Jonathan, EIG. This book is so Good. Like every time I pick it up I have to make myself stop because I am in a group read and we have like certain weeks that we're reading You know certain days we're reading certain chapters and, regular discussions and I don't want to get too far ahead of people because I definitely want to talk about Kennedy. I wanna talk about, Ralph David Abernathy and I wanna talk about, like, there's So much. I I, like, haven't really read much about King so I guess I have the luxury of most of this being, like, Stuff I didn't learn about when we did the Martin Luther King Junior, unit in, you know, American history or when I Took African American history my freshman year in college.
DL White [00:07:02]:
None of this information was in there. We learn about Daddy King, we learn about his Great grandparents and his parents and him meeting, Coretta and did y'all did y'all know Doctor. King was ladies' man. Like, I had heard about that. It was a it was a rumor, for a while. I think it's like A really not well kept secret, but, I was like, Doctor. King. This book is really good.
DL White [00:07:32]:
It's very well read. It reads like Fiction, I guess they call it narrative nonfiction, is so well done. It kinda makes me wanna pick up his other book on Muhammad Ali. He just did a phenomenal job with it. I encourage you to pick this up ebook, print, audio, run to your favorite indie bookseller or a statueituponlibro.fm or bookshop.org and make sure that your purchases credit your favorite local indeed bookshop. Mine is Resist Booksellers in Petersburg, Virginia. Books I put down this week I'm starting to add this And because a lot of books go run-in and out of my TBR and, sometimes I'm like, you know what? This isn't happening. I put down Erasure by Percival Everett.
DL White [00:08:20]:
I do not know if I'm going to watch American Fiction. I'm not really a movie kind of person but I would Almost always rather read the book. This book, it's like when I read Orange is the New Black and it's such like a such a, Such a a a serious somber book when I read it, and I didn't understand how they got, like, Three seasons of a comedy out of that book. I'm, I'm at the point where I don't understand how they got American fiction out of erasure. So you know, we'll see. I'm people will enjoy it. I will enjoy discussions of the movie. I don't have a desire to see it.
DL White [00:08:59]:
I'm not I'm not really a movie gal. I'm also not seeing The Color Purple and my roommate does not understand this, but I don't I don't wanna see the color purple. So, Erasure by Percival Everett, I put that down. The book is just not for me it was not at all as enjoyable as the trees, and I also put down Another Country by James Baldwin. It, it just- it held no to me at all, so I'm gonna pick something else by James Baldwin, but not right now. Switching gears to our main topic for today's show we're talking about money. Show me the money. So Every year author and author coach Rachael Haran does a money episode where she talks about how much she made and how she made it.
DL White [00:09:49]:
Back in the day I used to do a finance Friday on Facebook where I'd talk with a close number of authors of course about how much it costs to be an author and how much of that I was making back. So also in prep for getting myself together for tax season and because I like numbers, I ran some reports. I'm only talking revenue Because I haven't done my expenses yet, it takes some time to pull that together and I tell my CPA I don't even want to talk about taxes until After my birthday in March. So like in early April is when I'm pulling my expenses together. It also gives time for everything to come in, and for me to like really figure out how much I'd spent but I wanted to share a bit of transparency on what money looks like for a very small time indie author. Author and I know I know I'm gonna get comments about that small time indie author thing, but let me just tell you what I bring in yearly some are bringing in weekly, Daily even. Monthly perhaps. Small time is not me insulting myself.
DL White [00:10:50]:
It is bringing levity and realness to this situation, no matter what you think about my books, I think they're great. There's a reason I work a full time job. So, I have a bunch of graphs and whatnot that I'll add maybe to my Instagram or try to get into the show notes if I can but here is how we break down for the year for books by D. L. White. All told, I made $3,708 for the year. All year. And that's 700 more than I made in 2022.
DL White [00:11:21]:
Now imagine if I didn't put any books out. Right? So the breakdown is, I made the most of course at, Amazon at 20,423. I made the rest of that Through, Draft2Digital, which is every other market every other market except Google Books and stuff that I sell on my own and audio. So I Draft2Digital, which is, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, libraries, What have you, that's 45564. I made 28.55 at Google Books which is surprising because I make, I usually make almost nothing at Google Books and then I made 49057 through BookFunnels so those are books that I sold direct from my site which which ain't bad ain't bad. For audio, it's split into 2 different, platforms: Find A Way Books which is all of my wide audiobooks which is basically everywhere except Audible I made four $158.61 and through ACX, which is, Audible, I made $232.30. So I think I said, you know, back in December when I was looking at my numbers that in years past, Audible would be kicking the pants out of any other market. And this year I really leaned into, like, stuff your earbuds and codes for audiobooks and Really trying to push audiobooks more, and like discounting my audiobooks, running those chirp sales have been, really beneficial to help me sell way more wide than I am through Audible.
DL White [00:13:06]:
I I really would like to push That for my ebook and my print well, for my ebook anyway for a wide to be bigger than Amazon, but we're not we're not quite there yet. BookFunnel plus Draft2Digital plus Google Books don't equal it's about $1,000 which is half of what I'm making at KDP. So, we're making it. It's it's, you know, slowly but surely, and as, you know, as the releases go on, I would like to do more situations where I release the book 1st, on my site and then upload it to digital markets. So we had a conversation Yesterday, a little conversation yesterday on Twitter about indie authors selling direct. Why do you do it? When did you decide to do that? And a lot of They're said it's the it's the money. It's it's the the retailers taking so much of a percentage of my book. They take anywhere from 30 to 70% of the retail of the cover price depending on how much you charge for.
DL White [00:14:11]:
Anything over 2.99, they take 30%. Anything under 2.99, they take 70%. So when I sell direct, I get 90% of the cover price, so it behooves us to sell direct as much as possible but like Author Nicole Falls said you have to be strategic because readers aren't quite yet accustomed to buying direct from authors. Some really don't like BookFunnel. They will wait for it to hit Amazon so it can be on their Kindle and they can have all their highlights and notes and whatnot. And I understand that, but I also wanna keep most of my money and I wanna make back what I spent, you know, on that cover. So she said that she wants be strategic about that so she would never put a full length on her website first she put that full length on Amazon but her shorts, her novellas, like fat flash fiction that she's selling for like a dollar 11 that's all gonna go on her website and that's where it will live until she is ready to upload it to Amazon, and then I believe her books are Kindle Unlimited. And so they live out, you know, until People are done reading them on Kindle Unlimited and then perhaps go wide.
DL White [00:15:26]:
So, you know, lots of avenues that we could take. As indie authors, we do have lots of And sometimes those options can be overwhelming, and so it's easy to just slap your books up on Amazon and call it a day. But the split is absolutely not fair. And if you wanna really, I feel like if you wanna make any money and retain Control of your indie career, you have to really think about where your books are going. So moving on back to the numbers my alarm just went off. Moving back to the numbers, I sold 1243 ebooks. I gifted, look at this number, I gifted 15,440 copies of books this year. Imagine if those were sales.
DL White [00:16:11]:
Like, imagine if I just went through my store and just marked everything down to 99¢, and, and, and, I just sold, like, 15,000 copies of books. Imagine 15,000. Now that's through that's through Stuff Your Ereader. That's through that's through 2 rounds of Stuff Your Ereader. That's through, one round of the All Black Book Affair that's like me just randomly putting books on sale for, like, You know, a a a book funnel thing. I rarely do though do those now because I don't like, I don't like doing newsletters And you're required to send out a newsletter if you do a book funnel thing so, I rarely do that now, but that's, You know 15,440 copies. And the idea with giving books away is that you hope that people Get hooked on your words, on your voice, on your style, and they want more books. And sometimes there's great read through, especially if it's a free first in series.
DL White [00:17:09]:
And sometimes people just roll through, take the free book, and, walk away. So it's it's very much a gamble. I moved 3,818 audiobooks. Those are both free and reduced price. I'd move a lot of audiobooks through the CHIRP or the, Find A Way quarterly Sale. So, like, last quarter, Leslie's Curl and Die was on sale for, like, 99¢ and people really snatched that up. Was happy to see that, so I always try to participate in that I can and I moved 87 paperbacks. So somewhere around January 15th I'm gonna be running a paperback sale To get rid of the stock that I have here at my house, I have 2 bitty stacks, 2 short stacks of books but I really, I need to get these out of my house.
DL White [00:17:53]:
I don't have room to stock books if they're not going to move like hotcakes, and so I'm going to probably not stock books here at home and not have Paperback available unless I've just done a new release and I order like 20 copies and I sell 20 autograph copies and that'll be it. You can always buy them at bookshop.org and I can always ask Demetrius at Resist Booksellers to order copies to have in stock. I think that is gonna be the move for 2024. I do like having them on stock, but I don't I just I don't have the room and I don't Sell paperback enough to have them on hand like this. They're just sitting here, so let's get rid of them. And then in a weird, turn of events, I Got 566 Kindle unlimited page reads. My books have been out of Kindle unlimited since 2019. But if you never turn the book in and you're still reading it, I still get paid for those pages.
DL White [00:18:46]:
So I made $2.39 and that is why my books are no longer in Kindle Unlimited. Also as of note I did not make a single dime on Spotify Audio. I did not make a single dime on Kobo Plus. So, you know, my highest selling platform is, of course, Amazon, KDP, Followed by Draft2Digital. No surprises there because those are the major players. And of course BookFunnel is my 3rd. I would love for BookFunnel to be number 1. I think readers still don't really trust direct sales.
DL White [00:19:19]:
My readers are on Amazon. But it's Slowly changing. I'm I'm very slowly following the lead of authors like Alexandria House, Christina c Jones, all these authors that Our Stephanie Nicole Norris, if you want a book by her you go to her website and buy it because it might hit Amazon Eventually, you know? So definitely encouraged by, looking at authors taking control of their career and selling direct. Paid units by market are overwhelmingly US readers. The next large percentage is literally other. So that's Canada, UK, etcetera. And then I have, like, little pockets. Like, I know I have, well, at least 1 reader in Tanzania.
DL White [00:20:00]:
I have at least 1 reader in Scotland. I have at least, You know, 1 reader in Australia. And so it's really funny when I see those countries pop up that I in its one sale, I know exactly who that Paid units by title. My biggest seller this year was Hey Lover with 4 91 copies and then Elysium at 155 copies and then 2nd time around and then Neverlist and then Brunch at Rupees. Paid units by series, my standalones clock in 1st, So Neverlist, Hey Lover, A Thin Line, and then the Black Diamond series, and then the The Powder Lake series are basically neck and neck and then the holiday shorts and then the Rubies series. So what do I do with this info? I I don't know. I don't know. I like knowing the numbers and have 3 65 days' worth of data to look at.
DL White [00:20:53]:
And it shows me that, I thought Elysium flopped, but it was actually my 2nd highest selling book of the year, but it also sold a third of what Hey Lovers sold, so the chasm between 4.91 and 1.55 Great. So I can make that sound good, but to me it still flopped. I didn't even move 500 copies of Pay Lover, like, it was my big my biggest selling book of the year, but I did not even move 500 copies of it. Not even 200 copies of Elysium. Is that fine? What do I want to do about that? I don't know. While I'm writing more novels, I mean time keep on slipping we just keep slinging the books, and I'll be honest, quit writing was an option. It was an option for a while. It's absolutely why I put my writing Side for a little bit and I went back to fan fiction because y'all being real come come close, come Come ever so close right now.
DL White [00:21:51]:
I am not finna put sweat and tears into these books and buy good covers and pay a dot k to slug through my work, and spend time and have backaches and neckaches and headaches To perfect my writing to sell 155 copies, I can write that mess out and Slap it on my blog as a free read for that and I am being so serious. Hey Lovers has been out for over a year and haven't sold 500 copies of it To me to me, that's pathetic, especially since I remember the days of making $1200 months but I was spending $800 in ads and my books were in Kindle Unlimited. So it's like I'm Like I'm not even comparing me to other people, I'm comparing me to me, but it still act as apples and oranges because it's a totally different situation. My books aren't in Kindle Unlimited because at a certain point you just stop making money in Kindle Unlimited and then I can't sell that book anywhere else, and I was spending almost what I was making just so my books were visible. Well, now I can do stuff like fussy librarian and e news reader today and freebooksy to push books, but that's Basically, like spending money on ads, like, will eyes get on my book? Will black readers see my books? Do black readers Want to look at these books and buy and again, you know, I mentioned I made $0 at Kobo Plus. We're just not there. My readers aren't there. The subscribers aren't there.
DL White [00:23:32]:
They're either not reading them or they don't like them. Kobo readers don't really like me. Don't know why I got so excited about Kobo plus Kobo readers don't like my books. I did 2 rounds of stuff for your Kindle. I can't really say it did much For me, the All Black Book of War happened really too late to measure effectiveness, but I do hope that people that grabbed it up during the Read What You Got Challenge offer a review. Hope that you read it. Hope you enjoy it. And if you did offer up a favorable review I did See that that book had a 2 star review but I didn't read it because it's not any of my business.
DL White [00:24:06]:
So if you read that 2 star review don't tell me what it says. I'm not gonna rewrite that book. I am just gonna keep going and write better books. You know what I'm saying? I don't need any negativity going into writing any new books. Speaking of writing new books, pivot, pivot, what's happening? So my most recent release Home for the Holidays, A Pottery Lake small town romance novella is out in the world. It's being enjoyed. I hope if you have read it that you absolutely loved Read and Sabrina the way that I did it was it was a really like sappy low angst happy holidays type of joint Pick it up at booksbydlwhite.com/home for holidays or booksto read.com/homeforholidays. All one word.
DL White [00:24:56]:
If you have read it and loved it, please drop a few lines at your favorite retail site Goodreads, Storygraph, and or your socials. You don't need to tag me, just tell your Friends. So I'm currently writing an extended epilogue to that story. I really enjoy when writers do this and, I've always wanted to do it so I'm gonna do it for Home For The Holidays. It's going to be fun. It's also going to be sappy and low angst so if you are looking for something that isn't gonna have your nerves on edge, look forward to this epilogue. It'll be available to newsletter subscribers and supporters of this podcast. I have actually started writing it.
DL White [00:25:34]:
It'll be 4 chapters. They're all sketched out. I just need to actually like write them and perfect them. I am not going to send them through editing. I'm just gonna write them, pop them up on the website, good to go. If I decide to publish them publish Those chapters publish the epilogue, it'll be later in the year probably closer to the holidays so that it can also be purchased in tandem with, Home for the Holidays or I will possibly update Home for the Holidays, add the epilogue, and increase the price of it. We'll see. At that point, I will then send it through editing.
DL White [00:26:07]:
At, you know, at this point, it's an extended epilogue that's just gonna be an exclusive thing for people who sign up for it. So I need to get That done and out the door before the year really ramps up at work, and so I have some time for my brain to rest before I jump on Black Diamond Romance number 3. Now, if I want that book To be out by summer, and I do, I need it to need to get it to my editor by mid to late April, so I need to get started on it. My editor typically needs At least 4 weeks, so I really wanna revamp my plan for that book too. It'll be a workplace romance. And I've planned for Davis to be a hero since I first published Beach thing and tried to write the pearl but the davis that I wrote in Elysium is different from the davis that I planned for the pearl. So he's definitely has a past. There's a reason he's on Black Diamond.
DL White [00:26:56]:
There's a reason why he is averse to romance and falling in love. So I'm gonna prime the pump on that book and get going and start planning out, the new and improved Davis Scott. It's gonna be great because I love his heroine. I'm really ready for you guys to meet her and, we will see Wade and Amina in book 3. So I'm I'm super Super excited about that. I also have a fan fiction challenge coming up. The theme is off of the new year new me trend, but we're doing new year new fix. So the theme is new.
DL White [00:27:32]:
The stories have to be about something new, new love, new home, new relationship, new tattoo, something different, something new. Anyway, that will run from the end of January to the end of February and wrapped up, and there will be a separate Valentine's Day challenge. I think, my Chord writer pals had something like steamy something 50 shades of planned for, Valentine's Day, so that'll be fun. And then there's an album anniversary in there. JC's Only solo release schizophrenic turns 20, so we'll be very very busy and I don't want to be too tired and fried to write some fan fiction for the challenges that will pop up. So, you know, Q1 of the year looks like Starting the pearl at Black Diamond Bay, which is gonna be Black Diamond Romance number 3. I would really like to write some new people, Some short stuff like I you know I said in my year end episode I wanna like just relax and have some fun. I wanna do some shorts, Some novellas.
DL White [00:28:38]:
Let's dream up new people, let's let's write new things, let's try out different concepts, different, you know, locations. I'm not Tired of writing books set in Atlanta or Georgia or, you know, on Black Diamond, but I also like the challenge of like someplace new, so let's kick it. That is what we are looking at, this week of Cross your fingers, it'll be a pleasant one. It is gonna be the 1st full week back in the office and I said we have in office days Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, so we'll see how I can manage my schedule and also get in my reading and writing time. I will be busy, which is not really my favorite. I don't like being too busy but It does make the time go fast. Alright, I'm off to put words and a plan behind all that stuff I just said. That brings us to the end of Today's episode.
DL White [00:29:33]:
Thank you so much for joining me for today's show. The book cast is written and produced by me, D. L. White. This is an independent black woman owned and run podcast. And as I mentioned before, I still appreciate everyone who offers their support of this work. Please head to book cast about buzzsprout.com to offer a one time or recurring monthly gift. I love and appreciate you for it.
DL White [00:29:55]:
I will be back next week.