Antonio Tropiano

September 2026 Earnings

2026-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Better late than never right? I had a terrible month in September and I think that’s why I procrastinated writing this post. My last three book launches were either failures or not making money yet. I guess I am still too unexperienced, or maybe I am just unlucky. Or it could be both.

Luckily I am still freelancing. My dream of making self-publishing my main source of income seems to get more and more far as time goes by.

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Freelancing

I started a new collaboration. This one takes me most of my time, and it’s a full time. This obviouslyt akes a lot of time away from self-publishing which is not ideal.

Publishing

I launched two books this month. They are both activity books, one is focused on Halloween. And they have completely flopped. There are a few reasons for that which I try to list below

Amazon has become quite slow on updating books. I have launched a book with a terrible cover and listing, and it took forever for Amazon to approve the changes. Now I am satisfied with my listing, but I completely lost momentum. Which is important, especially for a Halloween book. Lesson Learnt: spend a few extra days to improve your listing, especially if you are targeting a specific holiday (like Christmas or Halloween).
Ad spend is crazy high for low-content books. I had to bid at almost $1.50 to get any impression on my word search book. I am never going to do a word search again. I am not even sure how people are profitable in this niche. I guess I am not ready yet and maybe never will be.
I have launched too late. I thought that to target a specific holiday the best way is to launch exactly one month before. It kinda worked for the Italian market before, but it’s way too late for the US one. The first month is honeymoon period, but the real profits come from the second month onwards. Next time I will launch at least two months before the holiday.

All in all, I lost a lot of money in ads for books that didn’t sell. I guess it’s a lesson. Quite expensive, but still a lesson.

The cashflow

Let’s see how much money I lost.

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $1073.52
Book Ads	- $980.21
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
Grammarly	- $14.00
Bookbeam	- $15.00
Publisher Champ	- $13.00
Bookreverb	- $350.00
Canva	- $14
Ideogram	- $24
Perplexity	- $24
Total	$-377.90

Good news, I am above $1k in revenue. But the rest is very bad. This month is also not going very well, and I am considering a new strategy. I need to slow down because I cannot create more than one book per month, I think. And this means that I have to move my target a bit. I am considering a few options

Keep publishing in low-competition niches in the US market. This way I will still make 1 or even 2 books every month. Each of them might make $50-100/month in profit. And I aim at making 20 books, which will bring me to $1k-2k/month in profit.
Publish in the Italian market and focus on marketing books with cheap ads. The ads in Italy cost 2-3 times than in the US market and the competition is much, much smaller. The problem is that it’s very hard to get reviews in this market.
Stop publishing and start marketing on TikTok. I have tried TikTok at the beginning of the year. It’s time-consuming and requires a completely different set of skills. But I have seen it give huge results. Might be survivorship bias?

I have just published an Advent Calendar book this week. The hope is that it can be profitable in November. But I should have published much earlier in the year, to give myself the best shot. Let’s see how it goes, you never know. I will not publish anything else before the end of the year, launching in Q4 is brutal. I will just optimize my Ads, pray Amazon Gods, and hope to turn profitable again in October and have a nice end of the year.

August 2026 Earnings

2026-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Some people slow down in August. I decided to take the time to improve my books, write more titles and get ready for Q4. I can confidently say that I am going to publish and launch 4 to 5 more books before the end of the year. And I hope these will do well in the coming holiday season.

I am still freelancing, and since I am not doing well financially, I have also taken the time to look for other contracts. I might have found one starting in September. Fingers crossed. The long term plan is still to make self-publishing my main source of income. Despite the setback I had last month, I am confident I will succeed.

Data Freelance

I wrote a new post in the Telegram group, where I detail how I found my next contract. it was easier than I thought. Have a look above if you are curious to know.

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Redesigned the landing page. In 10 minutes. With Copilot. Why not?

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Freelancing

Still doing it. Still two clients, probably will become three from September. I need this because otherwise I won’t be able to put food on the table.

Publishing

This has been the first month without my bestseller. I had to take it down because of potential copyright issues. As fas as I can tell, all my other competitors are still up and doing pretty well. I think they are making around $600 in profit/month. Maybe I was too cautious. Only time will tell.

On the other hand, I have spent more money and pushed hard my last book, that I published in July. This is probably the first completely optimized listing I have, with full A+ content, video review, and video ads. The book has been still losing money (around $200) for all August. But now that it’s ranking, I am optimizing ads and seeing the first break-even week coming. Maybe next week will be already in profit. I have also optimized all my other listings. Added full A+ content to all books, improved covers and descriptions where needed, and also published the hardcover version of some of my books. I think I underestimate hardcovers. For each of my books I sell one or two hardcovers per month. And it’s just a no-brainer to spend 30 minutes making a hardcover version of the book. Most of the work is on the cover design and at this point I have become capable of doing it myself.

I have published two books in August. Currently still collecting ARC readers, and soon I will start running ads. One is a seasonal book, the other one is pretty much evergreen. I am going to run an aggressive ad strategy for those two, and let’s hope things go well. How many books have I published this year so far? Only six, I thought more. By the end of the year, I would have published 9 books I think. Not too many, my goal was 10 to 12 books by year-end. I have probably overestimated my capabilities from one side. But from the other side, I have noticed that I can probably write and format around 2 books per month now. The problem is launching them with the right timing and finding the budget to launch them properly and push with ads.

Last but not least, I have created a Trello board to keep track of all my books progress, from idea to production to marketing. It’s helping me a lot in finding where to focus my efforts, now that I have many books in the pipeline.

The cashflow

I am pretty sure I lost money this month. But it’s expected since I am investing heavily in new book promotion and

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $1005.85
Book Ads	- $746.88
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
Grammarly	- $14.00
Bookbeam	- $15.00
Publisher Champ	- $13.00
Bookreverb	- $350.00
Canva	- $14
Ideogram	- $24
Perplexity	- $24
Amazon influencer	- $70
Freelancer (book production)	- $93
Total	$-375.15

I am still above $1k in revenue. Which is very good, and a sign that, if you don’t take into account the book production and launch costs, I am basically profitable. Probably if I stop launching new books, I could net around $400-500/month. Probably more during Q4. I remember doing this calculation in June, when my bestseller was still on the market. And the numbers were not much different. Happy to see that my other books have almost fully compensated for the book I had to take down.

I am completely focused on Q4 right now. My next book is targeting Halloween. And then I have another one in the pipeline that will be perfect for Christmas. Plus, a lot of my books are giftable and should do really well during the gift season. The investment should pay off. How big? It depends on how skilled will I be at executing the launches of my next books. I feel like I have got much better at this, and I am confident these books will reach very low BSR and could be profitable for a long time.

July 2026 Earnings

2026-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

Another quick monthly write-up. I believe I haven’t missed a single one since December 2023. A lot happened since then.

This month was a bit of a set-back. There is a huge drama going on in the self-publishing space with many books related to Murder Mystery being taken down. Even though I am not in the exact niche of the book taken down, I kinda saw the writing on the wall and decided to pull the plug on my best-selling book. Wise decision? Time will tell. For now all my competitors are still up and untouched. But they are out since less than 2 months. Let’s see.

My focus is now on Q4. I am working on 3 titles that I want to publish before the end of the year.

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Freelancing

Still doing it. I am not looking for more clients, but I might soon, since I am not in a great financial position.

Publishing

So the big news is that I had to take down my bestseller. It was a voluntary decision, and there are many factors that determined it.

Risky niche. My book was the first to copy the idea of a very famous puzzle book. The original book is in the top 100 in the US, and they have a huge budget. Since I don’t think I have much differentiation yet, they might claim some kind of trademark on it. And this would mean the end of my account.
My book was made focusing on speed at the expense of quality. In hindsight, it was not a great idea, but at the time I wanted to publish fast. The 1-star reviews started to come fast, and that really slowed down the launch and hurt the book long term too. Instead of trying to salvage it with extensive editing, taking it down and focusing on other projects looked like a better decision.

I think I skipped July ad didn’t publish anything this month. But I was working on a title that I am launching right now. It’s in the word search space, another super-crowded niche. But I think I have a unique angle to succeed.

My other books are all profitable. I am running ads and experimenting with them, and at the same time I am reviewing the listings and optimizing them. My ACOS in July has been 45%, up from 37% of June. It’s not bad, but I gotta keep this under control, I have a tight budget and my cash needs to be saved for expensive Q4 ads.

The cashflow

Time to see the numbers.

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $1610.50
Book Ads	- $734.34
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
Grammarly	- $14.00
Bookbeam	- $15.00
Publisher Champ	- $13.00
Bookreverb	- $100.00
Canva	- $14
Ideogram	- $24
Perplexity	- $24
Protect My Work	- $60
Total	$595.04

Good overall results. All books are profitable apart from the one in launch phase. I am working to turn that into profitability in the month of August.

The start of August obviously suffers from the missing revenues from the bestseller. Moreover, my books don’t really do well during Summer, so there are missing sales all over the catalog. I should close the month in break even, maybe slightly in the red. September should be more or less similar, and I am working hard to get back in the green in October.

See you next month for another update!

June 2026 Earnings

2026-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

Quick write-up for June, before I go back to work. Really not much to say, I stopped posting on X because I wanted to maximize the time I give to self-publishing, and even this monthly report might be a waste of time at this point.

The reality is, as long as I publish more books, my revenue will keep going up. As simple as this. And that is my only chance now to get a good income for my family. So, nothing else matters to me.

While I am still freelancing, the long term goal is to go all-in on KDP. How far away am I from it? Not sure, but maybe at the end of the year I can be in a position to just be able to focus 100% on KDP. Probably.

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Freelancing

Still doing it. I am not looking for more clients.

Publishing

I didn’t manage to publish a book this month. So I am at 5 books in 6 months in 2026. Kind of on-track to publish 10 by the end of the year.

I am starting to think about Q4 right now. Many of my current books should do well in Q4, but I also want to publish something that is seasonal, and I am starting to plan for it right now. Given that it takes quite a long time for me to produce one book, I need to start at most at the beginning of August to be able to publish a title or two in October.

Still running ads for all my other books, and optimising as much as I can. Now that I have a bit more disposable income, I am experimenting and learning and playing with ads more and more.

The cashflow

Let’s look at how much money I made with KDP this month.

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $1817.07
Book Ads	- $587.69
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
Grammarly	- $14.00
Bookbeam	- $15.00
Publisher Champ	- $13.00
Bookreverb	- $100.00
Canva	- $14
Ideogram	- $24
Perplexity	- $24
TikTok content	- $125
Total	$883.26

Another record month. I think I might be on track to reach $1k profitability after all expenses soon. I didn’t expect to get there so fast. But I will take it. The fact that there was no new book launch in June really helped too, so I am aware that this is a bit of an outlier.

The start of July is not looking great to be honest. I have started running a new ads campaign for my new book, and as usual, at the beginning these lose a bit of money. My main goal is to position my new book, and I will be spending a bit of money to achieve that. This is my 3rd or 4th launch, and I think I am getting better and better at it. Maybe by the 10th I will be able to get a book inside the top 10k BSR.

May 2026 Earnings

2026-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

I thought I’d better hurry writing the May report, otherwise I might not remember anything anymore about it. It was a good month overall. I am not sure if it was the best month of the year so far, but it was pretty close. I got a lot of sales from TikTok, all my books were profitable, my ads were making me money and on the last day of the month I was able to publish a new book (the e-book version).

Still freelancing, but I am doing some calculations right now, and it looks like the revenue brought in by KDP is now comparable to one of my contracts. This is great, I feel the closest I have ever been to make KDP a full-time gig.

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Freelancing

Still doing it. Two clients, but might become one soon. I am not looking for other opportunities though.

Publishing

I committed myself to write one book per month, and I managed to do it right at the end of the month. On the 31st of May. I am hopeful for this book and I personally think it could do well. Not exceptionally well, but better than the books I have published so far. The most important thing, is that I feel I have applied all the lessons learned in the last 6 to 9 months, and this book is the result.

The rest of the time was spent promoting and fixing the puzzle book I released in March. This is a completely new niche for me, and I didn’t really know what to expect. I got some 1-star reviews, that made good points regarding the quality of the puzzles, but sounded a bit harsh. Anyway, I fixed the issues with the puzzles and so far I have not received any more negative reviews. Apart from that, I decided to test TikTok and partnered with a creator to publish 5 videos (spread out over 2 to 3 weeks). Those have been quite successful I think, probably better ROI than advertising. But it’s hard to say.

For the other books, I am not doing anything special. Running ads, managing them, updating the A+ content (I am still not using it to its full potential) and improving the covers and descriptions. I noticed that many publishers neglect their old books, but I think making small improvements over time helps a lot with conversion rates and in the long term these tiny changes compound, like everything in self-publishing.

The cashflow

Let’s look at how much money I made with KDP this month.

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $1516.23
Book Ads	- $862.40
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
Grammarly	- $14.00
Bookbeam	- $15.00
Publisher Champ	- $13.00
Bookreverb	- $200.00
Canva	- $14
Ideogram	- $24
Perplexity	- $24
TikTok content	- $125
Total	$207.71

It’s the best month of the year so far. And I notice that I have a lot of costs that can be classified as production costs for my next book. Since I am publishing one book every month, these are basically recurring. But if I had to stop publishing and just wanted to profit from the books that I have already published, I would probably make around $500/month net.

My goal at the beginning of the year was to reach $1000/month in gross revenue. That happened last month, and I am now above $1.5k. My next goal is to reach $500 in profit after all expenses. Or $1k in net profit considering all ads, which are a big part of the expenses and the main long term cost of this business.

The Summer months ahead are usually a bit slow for KDP. But it depends on the niche of course. My efforts in the Summer will go towards publishing two new books and start working towards a series. Fingers crossed it will make me closer to my ultimate goal which is to make KDP my main source of income for the next decade.

April 2026 Earnings

2026-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

In April I got a bit distracted. Still in self-publishing, but I decided to collaborate with some friends to launch a book in the Italian market. It took quite a lot of my free time, and I am not sure if it was worth it. It’s still early to say if this bet will pay off in the long term.

I also improved a bit some of my previous books. When I initially wrote them I didn’t pay much attention to the interior graphics, and I wasn’t really proud of what I made. Now, I can say they are really high-quality books, both the content and the formatting. I will always aim at publishing high-quality books that can get very good reviews.

My main income at this point is still coming from freelancing. But my goal is to publish one book every month between now and the end of the year, and I am starting to build a system that allows me to publish books faster than before. For now, I have managed to publish 4 books in 5 months. Let’s see if I can get to 12.

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Freelancing

Still working approximately 10 days per month.

Publishing

Most of my efforts and money in April were spent launching the latest puzzle book that I published. It’s a book in an emerging niche, a puzzle type that came out last year, and it’s getting more and more traction online. There is only one book on the market right now, with another couple coming before the end of the year from the same author. My goal was to take a slice of the pie, which I think is very big. I lost money in the first month, around $150 taking into account ads, but I started to get to profitability in the last week of April, and the initial data that I have for May confirms the trend. On the flip side, I am getting some 1-star reviews from unhappy readers. They find some of the puzzles not clear, and I need to do something about it. Apart from it, I think this is a book that has a great potential, and could potentially be part of a series.

My Quantum Physics book is unexpectedly performing very well. Especially the Kindle version is selling a few copies each day, and brought around $200 net. All other books are still profitable, around $100 on average. I will keep running ads for them as long as they bring profit.

The cashflow

Time to look at how much money I made/lost this month (without freelancing).

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $1240.05
Book Ads	- $903.96
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
Grammarly	- $14.00
Bookbeam	- $15.00
Publisher Champ	- $13.00
Bookreverb	- $120.00
Canva	- $14
Domain Renewal	- $26.00
Total	+$116.88

I am back in the green. Still not where I want to be and probably still not profitable this year, considering the book production costs. But I am confident that I can get back the money in the long run.

As long as I launch books I don’t expect to make a huge profit. In fact, I expect to break even or even lose a bit of money. From what I have heard from other publishers, this is what the first year usually looks like. Of course, once you have a few books selling and bringing royalties each month, the effect compounds and you will get bigger margins. Or at least it’s what I hope.

Let’s see how it goes. As I said, I plan to publish a few more books this year, and we’ll see where I am in a few months. Numbers in May are already looking better, with fewer costs and more revenue. For the next books I will definitely keep production costs low and that will improve my margins significantly.

March 2026 Earnings

2026-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

March was a good month. My Italian book was successful, I had a nice surprise with my other giftable book (since Easter) and launched another book at the end of the month. I smashed my revenue target and in general I see sustained growth in my self-publishing efforts month after month.

Most of my revenue still comes from freelancing, but I am getting to the point where the net profit from it is going to match one of my contracts. At that point I will have to make a serious decision, since the time spent on self-publishing might already be more financially efficient than spending time freelancing.

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Freelancing

I took a pause with one of my clients in March. So it was only 20 hours this month, less than 1 day per week.

Publishing

I finally published a book that I have been working at for almost 2 months. For this one I hired two people and I spent time mostly managing their work and formatting the book. This one is very visual, it cost me almost $1k to make, and it might not go as planned. I have just launched it at the end of March so it’s still early to say, but it definitely had a slow start.

The rest of the books have been performing all right. The Italian book peaked around Italian Father’s Day, which is what I planned it for. So at least that was expected and well executed. I think I am learning something, launch timing is very important.

I have also spent a bit of time creating some A+ content for almost all my books. Nothing fancy really, just one A+ module, made with Canva, that I think gave a little boost to the ads conversion. Each of those graphics took me less than 1 hour to create, and they are modeled on the same template so they are easily repeatable for all the next books.

The cashflow

Time to look at how much money I made/lost this month (without freelancing).

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $932.12
Book Ads	- $488.71
Book Content	- $542.71
Book Design	- $250.00
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
X Premium	- $8.72
Grammarly	- $14.00
Bookbeam	- $15.00
Publisher Champ	- $13.00
Domain Renewal	- $36.46
Total	-$453.60

I fell back in the red this month. Of course this is completely due to the fact that I spent almost $800 in production costs for my new book. If I had not spent that money, I would be $300+ in the green.

Now, the expectation is that I will make back this money in book sales in the next few months. I am not going to lie, I have big expectations for this puzzle book. It’s in a niche with lots of demand and no competitors yet, has the potential to start a series, and it’s been fun to work on it. But I must also say that the book has only sold a handful of copies in the first week, and my ads are not performing very well. It’s probably too early to say. Let’s see at the end of the month. But I need to define what success would look like for this book pretty soon. My competitor is coming out with a new book at the end of May and I can benefit from the wave that will come soon, if my book is promising enough.

February 2026 Earnings

2026-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Motivation fades when results don’t arrive. This is why I finally feel motivated these days. And I’m eager to write these posts.

In February, I think I finally reaped what I sow in the previous 3 months. After having published 3 books, I think I learned something from my mistakes, and this reflects in the revenue numbers. This definitely feels like progress, and it’s a combination of three things I think.

Learning, from other people and from my mistakes.
Focusing on one thing at a time.
Investing money in activities that move the needle (coaching, advertising, producing high quality books).

My main income still comes from freelancing, but I only devote 2 days per week to it. It looks increasingly likely that I will not need to commit more time to freelancing in the next months.

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Freelancing

Roughly working 60 hours per month, or around 2 days per week.

Publishing

My strategy was simple.

Optimizing existing ads for my books.
Publish one more book in a small niche.

The new book I published is in the Italian market. And it’s something new for me, because I never published in my local market. The demand is definitely lower, but on the other side, there is also less offer and the quality of the books is also lower. At the beginning of February I was able to find a book that was doing quite well for Italian standards, getting around 120 sales/month which is very good for my standards. And they had a bad cover, bad title, bad description. So everything was pointing in the right direction. I couldn’t believe it, so I asked the Royalty Hero community which I am part of and Sean himself encouraged me to pursue the KW, since the “Italian market is still in its infancy” and I could definitely make a better job than my competitor. I didn’t jump on it immediately, but I was able to publish the book by mid-February, the book production took a bit more than a week and I designed the cover myself with the help of AI of course. One day after the launch my competitor left a 1-star review, without even reading the book (I had not sold a single copy and had not yet shown the book to anyone). This shows you how cut-throat the Italian market can be. And in such a small market, even one bad review can make a difference. Anyway, I was able to counter that with the help of some ARC reviewers, and now I have got an overall 4 star-rating and the book is sitting at 5k BSR, selling 2-3 copies per day. I am now competing with the bestseller, but I still have a lower price, which gives me around $4 royalties per book. One thing that I am doing, that Italian competitors seem reluctant to do, is to run ads aggressively. I have set up ads to target many keywords, but also physical products. I don’t think this strategy is popular, but it’s quite cheap for the Italian market, and it makes sense for this type of book (and many others I suppose).

During the month my existing books kept performing decently, I am not losing money on ads anymore and actually one of them is performing surprisingly well, with a BSR that went as low as 45k at some point. I attribute this again to my Ads strategy. It looks like I’m targeting keywords with low volume but even lower competition, so basically I am getting tons of clicks even with few impressions.

My Quantum Physics book got a price-strike from Amazon. I think that’s because my e-book is selling well (at only $0.99) but my paperback is not. And in fact my paperback BSR is still at around 200k, and it’s getting even worse. If I could go back in time, I would not write a book in this niche. There is too much competition. But I might publish in a lateral niche in the future.

The cashflow

This is the detailed report of how much I made and spent in February.

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $461.02
X Creator Revenue Share	+ $19.55
Book Ads	- $279.45
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $7.12
X Premium	- $8.72
Grammarly	- $14.00
Other publishing services	- $12.00
Total	$149.28

I go back in the green after several months. To be honest, I didn’t expect to get to profitability already this month. My target was $300 which would put me at break-even. And I thought I would need another couple of months or at least a 10k BSR book to reach profitability. I guess it’s true that the self-publishing business is very beginner-friendly. And I am after all still very much a beginner.

The only downside is that the margins are low. I spent 60% of my revenue on ads. But to be honest, I really don’t mind. If I can get to the point where I make $10k, and I spend $6k I still get $4k in profit, which is more than I am making freelancing. And it leaves me much more free time, which is ultimately my goal. Long term the goal is to reduce the ad spend, and looking at this month numbers I think I am on the right track already. People say that a 50% margin is normal in this business. Again, I am more than ok with that. Margins are a vanity metric.

As you might have noticed, X revenue came back. I went viral a couple of times in February, with my usual shitposts. I guess the algorithm has become more friendly to my content in the last weeks. I tried to push the books under those viral posts, but I don’t see an uptick in sales. I won’t focus on X revenue, but with these payouts, I really think you can do this full-time and monetize, even if you have a small following. Even 1k followers are enough to go viral. Maybe one day I will repurpose xTopics to be an X topics analytics tool that does just that. Create viral and monetizable content. But not now, Now it’s time to focus on self-publishing.

For the future, I’m already working on the next book. This is something bigger, that I have been working with for over a month. I will be going into a unique niche, where there is only one competitor at 1k BSR, making a lot of money. I will invest almost $1k in production costs for this book. But I think it will be worth it. In general, I am reinvesting everything into self-publishing. As long as it’s not my main source of income, and I don’t depend on it to put food on the table, it just makes sense to grow it as fast as possible and as much as possible, and keep making mistakes, learning lessons and improving.

January 2026 Earnings

2026-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Finally, a write-up that appears in the first week of the month.

In January, I spent most of my time writing and launching the first book of the year. This is a short book, not like Quantum Physics for Beginners. And it’s aimed at selling around a specific holiday in February. And it’s not Valentine’s Day. Can’t say much more about it. But it’s definitely an experiment that, so far, is going quite well.

I kept freelancing, but not more than 2 days per week. Will I look for other freelancing opportunities? Let’s say not in the next couple of months.

Data Freelance

Paused.

Data Internships

Paused.

xTopics

Paused.

Soccrbets

Paused.

Freelancing

Roughly working 60 hours per month, or around 2 days per week.

Publishing

I kept spending on ads for the Quantum Physics book in January too, but with a reduced budget. Around the beginning of January I managed to reach was around 52k, which corresponds to 4 or 5 sales per day. And I also managed to keep the best-selling badge in a few categories for the e-book version. I think keeping the price of the e-book very low contributed to getting the badge, which is definitely helping the sales of the paperback too. I also pushed up the price a couple of times, and now I am not far from my competitors price tag, but there is still margin to go higher. At least I was slightly profitable on the book this month, or around break-even. To push sales, I need to market the book outside of Amazon ads. Which means TikTok.

For the second book I learnt from my mistakes and I published the e-book first, got more reviews than my direct competitor and then published the second book. The sales started slowly, but now they are picking up, and I have reached a healthy 100k BSR. The peak of the sales should happen next week. Let’s see how much I can sell. So far I have sold 20 copies, of which 10 paperback. I need to get to 50 paperback copies to break even and from there it will be all profit.

The cashflow

Time to look at how much money I lost this month (without freelancing).

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $359.71
Book Ads	- $327.47
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $6.65
X Premium	- $8.72
Grammarly	- $14.00
Ideogram	- $25.00
Book cover	- $50.00
Other publishing services	- $30.00
Total	-$112.13

Again in the red. This time is not as awful as last month, but still. My plan is to keep publishing one book each month, and there will be costs associated with it. So to make this work, I need to improve the profitability of the books I already published over time. Eventually I hope to publish a huge book, that will be selling 1000 copies per month, but until then, I have got to keep the costs low. For the next book, I plan to design the cover myself. I don’t think I can do it for every single book I publish. Other costs are difficult to keep low, so I will probably slightly increase the price of the books to balance the sheets.

December 2025 Earnings

2026-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

This report is so late it’s embarrassing. So let’s not talk about it.

In December, I was still focusing on the Quantum Physics book, and started to write a second one.

I am still freelancing, but the time I devote to it has significantly reduced. So has the income coming from it. Which makes it difficult to pay the bills.

I also really don’t see myself freelancing more than 50 hours per month and fulfilling the duties of being a dad at the same time. I just don’t have the time. Any advice you might have, would be welcome.

Data Freelance

Paused.

Data Internships

Paused.

xTopics

Paused.

Soccrbets

Paused.

Freelancing

Still doing it. Reduced hours, same rate. Barely pays the rent after taxes.

Publishing

After having published the book at the end of the November I spent aggressively on ads for the whole of December. I found out that December is probably the worst month to launch, since ads are very expensive. Also, I think I made a mistake launching the e-book and the paperback at the same time. Note to myself, next time do:

Publish the e-book
Gather reviews for the first 2-3 weeks (10 or 15 should be enough)
Publish the paperback
Run ads after

The launch was quite slow, but I managed to sell 169 copies of the book (40 paperbacks and 129 e-book copies) including the free ones. My main goal this month was to gather reviews, and I was able to get to 15, but I think I can get more, especially because some of my ARC readers have not submitted one yet.

Since it’s very hard to get reviews these days, it’s unrealistic for me to push much harder. It won’t help my rank unless I get to 100 reviews and I do not have the budget for it. But I hope to slowly get them organically over the next few months. I am keeping my e-book price very as low as I can at $0.99 and this helps to attract some readers that might leave a review. So basically, I use the e-book for the reviews, I’ll make the money with the paperback.

My BSR (Best Seller Rank) as of today is 152K, but I could get as low as 52k at the beginning of January. Ideally I would keep it lower than 100k, but I would have to spend much more on ads.

The cashflow

Time to look at the income for this month (without freelancing).

Item	Income/Expense
Amazon book sales	+ $205.60
Book Ads	- $290.51
Appliku	- $10.00
Hetzner	- $6.65
X Premium	- $8.72
Grammarly	- $14.00
CoPilot	- $9.68
Ideogram	- $25.00
Total	-$158.96

I am in terrible red. But I was expecting it, especially with the money spent on ads for the book launch. January seems to be already at break-even or even slightly profitable.

The book promotion could and should go on, and I am exploring a few ways, mainly using socials. For example, a post on Threads the other day got more than 50k views, and I am sure it was responsible for a spike in sales right at the beginning of January. TikTok is next, I already know what to do, I just x to execute.