It’s been a while since I actually wrote a blog post, let alone published my income reports. I havcontinued to publish those on YouTube.
So, if you missed any income reports, you can find them in the Income Report playlist here.
But for now, I’m going to share my income report for February and January for 2025. Because I missed my Jan one!
January was a lot lower than previous years. While I expected there to be a drop anyway, due to having to reduce my book prices after the VAT was added to books in the UK – I think it was more than that.
The problem with a majority of your income coming from a small number of books, it won’t take that much of a change to make a significant difference.
I suspect there was an algorithm change towards the end of the year on Amazon, which meant my books were just less visible on Amazon. There could be other things coming into play too, like increased competition.
So, I started ramping up publishing books again and have switched right now to coloring books. I’ve published 7 since mid january and I will talk about those a bit later on.
February & January Overview.
These months are typically some of the slowest for KDP low and medium-content books in general, but able insights as we prepare for the much-anticipated Q4 sales boost.
January royalties were $6007, (vs $9042 in 2024) and February royalties were $6450 (Vs $8347 2024).
So, this was my lowest January in several years and the lowest February since Feb 2022. Interesting that February was higher than January also, because it usually is higher than Feb.
While it can be disheartening to see such a large drop, it just goes to show how you cannot rely on your royalties continuing to rise year after year.
You can’t control the amazon algorithm, nor what niches come in and out of popularity.
What it did do was give me a bit of a push into publishing more again and that’s been interesting because it’s been in different areas outside of my comfort zone.
- January 2025:
- Total royalties: $6007
- Highest day: $432
- Lowest day: $16 (Jan 1st) Otherwise $117.
- Total ad spend: 1,360.68
- Total books sold: 2,940
- February 20025
- Total royalties: $6450
- Highest day: $642
- Lowest day: $101
- Total ad spend: $1,300.33
- Total books sold: 3,121
AD Spend Jan & Feb – High ACOS?
In the US in Feb, I had a high ACOS at 53% and in Canada, the high ACOS was at 46%.
I sometimes forget to check my Ads in Canada and Australia quite as often as the UK and the US, because the Ads seem to usually be pretty stable and I don’t spend as much.
But for some reason that has changed a bit recently and one of the Ads that used to be stable in Canada, suddenly wasn’t making sales hence, the high Acos.
When it came to the US, that was down to me running multiple new Ads to new books and initially, the ACOS is going to be high. Because ultimately you’re trying to get eyes on brand new books, with no reviews.
So, I’m happy to spend more than I’m making initially to get those first sales in. If the Ad then continues to overspend, I gradually reduce the bid to improve the ACOS. My intention initially is to get the book ranked.
There was also another thing that I hadn’t realised, which was a setting was switched on to spend up to 100% of my daily budget using unspent budget amounts!
I couldn’t understand why I was spending so much higher than my daily budget amount. This has now been swtiched to 25% so, that will have an impact.
Do I Have An Ad Budget For Book Launch?
Often people ask me if I have a set budget for book launch and I don’t. It depends how well the Ad is performing, as to what choices I make.
If the ACOS is running very high but SOME sales are coming in, I may let it run a while and then gradually reduce the bids.
But with the book that performed best in the US and generated the most sales, I spent around $100 in Ads in February and around £50 in the UK. This book interestingly performed best in BOTH the UK and the USA out of the five I published.
That book is now on page 1 for one of the main keywords and generating organic sales.
While this book had an ACOS of 70% initially in the US in February, that has now reduced to 20% going into March. So, just because your book has a high ACOS initially, don’t tempted to switch off your Ad if you’re generating sales.
You can gradually tweak your bids and reduce the ACOS over time.
How Will The Rest Of 2025 Be?
The concern is, Jan & Feb have been some of my highest royalty months historically, (I know that’s not the case for everyone). So, if these months have dropped this much… Then what will the typically lower summer months be like?
That is one reason why I’m spending a lot of time publishing right now. Hopefully some of these newer books will take off and I can increase royalties as the year goes on.
Goals for March 2025:
I need to complete a website for one of my pen names with a lead magnet and set it all up. There are quite a bunch of steps that need to be completed to make it work, but hopefully it will be worthwhile!
I also want to publish 2-3 new books for that pen name and concentrate on that.
Two new books were published yesterday and Ads set up, so I need to work towards trying to generate sales for those and ranking them.
I’ve switched off some of the Ads I was running because I was spending a lot mote than I was making with them – but all but one now have sales. So, I will wait a while and see if I get some reviews and then try with Ads again.
One of the books is working with Ads and is ranking for one of the main keywords now on page 1 in the USA.
This has made me realise there is obviously potential in that niche, so I will create some other related books.
For every book I’ve created recently, I’ve also created A+ content and have publsihed that to the UK, US, Australia and Canada.
How Has The Start Of The Year Been For You?
A much lower December was followed by a drop in January & Feb as well. I have heard some publishers mention reduced sales in Jan & Feb too…. But that doesn’t seem to be the case for all.
I did hear that there was a reporting delay in Jan & some posted that they suspected there was one in Feb too. This is where – for whatever reason – there is a delay in Amazon showing your sales in reports.
I did have a couple of big days in February, when perhaps some of these sales caught up.
Anyway! You just cannot predict with certainty how one month of KDP will be to the next. I’ve been fortunate that, until now, months appeared to be fairly predictable.
But you certainly can’t rely on that and that’s just the way it goes! I’m interested to see now how the next few months go, which typically are still pretty good for me.
July, August and even to some degree Sep & Oct, tend to be lower months than others.
As I’m not publishing books in different niches, it will be interesting to see how publishing regularly again impacts results.
Two books only just published yesterday – but out of the five other coloring books I published, only one hasn’t yet made sales. So, that’s promising!
How has the start of the year been for you? Has there been any change that you’ve noticed? Let me know in the comments!
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